My "Lily" Encounter

Monday night was Christmas play night for Tracker. Yet one more source of stress during every holiday season...run like a mad woman home from work picking up children as I go, start yelling orders for bathing and clothing as soon as I hit the back door, hoping and praying the whole time that I will find something suitable to wear and when I look in the mirror, a supermodel will be looking back at me wearing my "suitable" outfit. Yeah right. I actually just hope for a good hair day and for the clock to stop for just about 15 minutes so I can be on time to the big annual affair at Leflore. Needless to say, we were late, as usual.

I went to school at Leflore off and on thru out childhood and was there for part of my Jr and Sr years. I do not have many fond memories of my time spent there so breaking the threshold of that auditorium is always interesting for me. I have two extremes, I've discovered: 1) I keep my head down and speak to no one and hope no one speaks to me or even remembers me, really or 2) I'm loud and obnoxious and overly friendly...even to people I can't stand. I even flip back and forth between the two extremes at times. Ugh...I drive myself nuts. Monday night was a "combo" night, I was all over the grid emotionally. Something about this time of year does it to me anyway then add in the whole school thing...I don't know how I'm makin' it without Valium.

I picked my seat quickly, my little entourage in tow, nearly running to keep up. No "hello"'s or pleasantries.....just get me to the top, back row....corner pocket if it's available. But, since my daughter is baby crazy, I made a trip back down to grab a friends' precious little boy. Turns out, he doesn't much care for the dark. Or strange people. And he particularly didn't care for the Pre-K's caroling with us strangers all up in his face in the dark. So, back down to the momma I went. By this time, I've hit the loud, obnoxious stage of my emotional extremes. Completely inappropriate since the program had already begun and silence had fallen thru out the audience...ahem. I'm a master of timing, what can I say?

Instead of climbing back up to my perch, whispering, "excuse me" and "I'm sorry", and disturbing the show a second time, I decided to just stand by the back exit. I picked the spot where all the restless 3 and 4 year olds were drivin' their moms bananas. Since I no longer have a 3 or 4 year old driving me bananas, I find them completely amusing and entertaining. They were playing tag...around and around and around the adults who were trying to video and take pictures. I was taking turns watching them and the play. I felt a little tug on the arm of my sweater and looked down to see a tiny, white-headed girl. I leaned down to see what it was she wanted and she jumped into my arms.

I really don't consider myself to be much of a "kid" person. I love them, love to watch them play, but as far as really interacting with one? I'm not so pretty good at it, I barely make it thru with my own! I seem to be "relationally challenged", I do best from a distance. But this kid was havin' none of it. I was looking at her, trying to decide what to do with her now that she was in my arms. Do I put her back down? Will she cry if I do? Or worse yet, throw a fit? Is she lost? Has she mistaken me for someone she knows? Where's her mom? Does her mom want a strange lady holdin' her kid? I was in full panic mode: WHAT do I do with this child????

First thing out of her mouth, "What are you chewing on?"

"Gum."

"Let me see it."

So, I show her. She tries to grab it right off my tongue, I almost wasn't fast enough. I thought I might better take control of the conversation. I asked her what her name was.

"Lily."

"Did you know you're named after a flower?", I asked her.

"I am?"

Then, she laid her head on my chest and I thought, "Awwww!". But then she raised up and put her tiny hands on each side of my face and began to turn my head back and forth. "Look over there. Who's that?", she'd say as she turned my face from side to side. She ran those little hands all OVER my face...my eyes, my mouth and then up into my hair. She twisted my freshly flat ironed hair into pigtails and jerked 'em back and forth til I just knew she'd leave me bald headed. She smoothed it all out again and pretended she was cuttin' it off only to wad it back up in a ball. "Why is your hair brown? Why is your hair yellow?", as she flipped it from one side to the other. I stood there thinking, "Why ME? All these people, and she picks me??"

Have I mentioned I have space issues?? And I can't stand for anyone to touch my face or hair, sends me into orbit. My boundaries were being stomped all over by a twenty pound, three year old I'd never even seen before. Had my kids been standing next to me, they would have been thoroughly entertained. I'm sure the expression on my face was a painful one. I literally don't know what to DO when things like this happen. The logical thing would be to put her down and send her on her way...but I didn't do it. I was really kinda just mesmorized by her. I found her absolutely irresistable, adorable. Even as intrusive as she was. Maybe that was the irresistable part, that she had no walls and was completely unaware that she was climbing all over mine!

I held her for about 20 minutes while her hands worked my hair into a frenzy. Then, her mom appeared and told her it was time to go. She stuck herself to me, wasn't goin' anywhere. Her mom finally got her ripped off of me while she yelled, "NO! I want to hold her!". Made me feel just pretty good. The play was cute but Lily was definately the highlight of my evening.

"You can learn many things from a child. How much patience you have, for instance."

-Franklin P. Jones

Simple, routine, outpatient surgery!

Holy cow...feels like it's been 6 months since I looked at my blogger account or even sat at a keyboard. It'd be nice to say that the time flew cuz I was havin' fun...but that'd be a big, fat lie. It's been like a really fast, really un-fun whirlwind that was supposed to NOT be a whirlwind, but only a light breeze.

I now know that my troubles began about ten years ago, that what I thought was really bad heartburn was actually my gallbladder beginning to tucker out on me. Who knew? Certainly not me. I don't know that I even thought about the fact that I HAD such an organ before 2 months ago. There were all kinds of lively circumstances leading up to the discovery that this piece of me had to go, but the important thing is, I went in for surgery on the 12th of November. I felt perfectly awful the two weeks before I went in; threw up routinely every six hours, my chest felt like it would surely explode 18 out of 24 hours every day. Everyone kept telling me I was gonna (and I quote) "feel like a brand new person" as soon as that thing was out. So, as scared as I was of scalpels, lasers, IV's, surgical masks, and the thought of being incoherent and unable to control what secrets I may or may not reveal about myself, I was actually looking forward to feeling better.

I got dressed up in my fancy, purple hospital gown that had a nifty hose attachment that pumped in either hot or cold air, whichever suited me at the moment, and the socks with the nobby tread (in case I decided to four wheel thru the corridor, I reckon) that they gave me. And then....... I laid there for a couple of hours. Just long enough to get good and nervous and to start having second thoughts about the whole thing, especially since my gallbladder had gone silent the day before and I felt pretty darn good. But, I was outnumbered and surrounded by my family so a mad dash for the nearest exit was no option. The nice little man with the syringe made all that nerve stuff stop in about five seconds flat. Let me just say, it's a good thing that whatever they pumped into my veins is not readily available for me to get my hands on...I'd be a worthless addict. No doubt. The whole world just gets soft and fuzzy and I can't even really remember my own name.... :) Good times, good times.

Anyway! They wheeled me into an operating room, another first for me. At this point, I'm talking nonstop cuz #1-I feel pretty good, and #2-I run my mouth to hide the fact that I'm scared and want to cry. I don't know for sure when I went out but it must've been an all of a sudden thing. When I woke up, ceiling tiles and fluorescent lights were whizzing by and I couldn't get my bearings for all the turns I was being wheeled around. Whoever was pushin' that bed had obviously done it many times before. I kept ripping an oxygen mask off my face...who in the world can breathe with those things on?? They finally shoved the little tube-y things up my nose which I didn't really appreciate at all. They were all talkin' about me like I wasn't there and I couldn't get my mouth to work to demand to know just WHAT was goin' on! About the time they flipped my butt into another bed with its own room and TV, I MADE my tongue work. An overnite stay was not on the itinerary! But, it happened.

The surgery didn't go as planned...that gallbladder was in sad, sad shape. Needless to say, I did not feel like a brand new person and promptly said so. Lies, all lies!! PAIN is what I felt. Not for long tho...they doped me up on enough morphine to make me sleep til two the next afternoon. As sore as I still was when I woke up, I wanted to go home and since it was Friday, the good doc was agreeable.

However, I woke up at 3:00 a.m. on Monday morning with extreme chest pains...JUST like when I had a gallbladder. Hmmmm. It took about 5 seconds for me to lose complete hope that I would ever feel good again. If the gallbladder was GONE and I STILL felt this way....well, as I told Josh, "Just shoot me and don't miss." And, I meant it. And so, about six hours later, I began my trek to the ER. I have serious issues with emergency rooms...all I've ever done is sit in them for hours on end only to have someone send me on my way feeling as bad as I did before. I had no hope they would do one single thing to help me and I would sit in that stupid waiting room for hours in this horrid pain and retching over a public toilet with sick people staring at me. Or, worse, they would simply tell me that I had to live this way...forever.

I'm happy to say that I was wrong. I had a gown and my very own room (again) within an hour. More & better drugs..good thing too, cuz they starved me for the better part of two days (ice chips..whatever!)in preparation of Surgery #2 to remove a stone that was hidin' out when Surgery #1 went down. I was given the consent of now two good docs on the third day to go home again...this time minus 11 staples and a JP drain. Okay, the drain is a really disgusting part of the story that I'm just gonna leave out cuz I'm already shuddering remembering the removal part. Ugh.

Surgery #2 was an "endo" surgery so they just went down my throat instead of cutting or slicing anything. BUT (and it's a big one) , I missed the whole lecture he gave me on possible after effects (couldn't have been the pain or maybe the pain medication). Internal bleeding was one of those effects, apparently. I knew I felt bad the next day but I had already decided I was just gonna be sickly for the rest of my life so I was tryin' to grow accustomed to feeling bad. But, three days later, I couldn't stand up without losing my vision and hearing and well, that scared me more than the pain ever hurt me.

Back to the ER we flew. I didn't even worry this time about whether or not they'd treat me...I knew if they didn't, I was a goner anyway and quite frankly, I just didn't care right then. Three units of blood, more starvation, one more time down the throat to have a look see, four more days in the hospital, two of those in ICU, lots of invasive routines that pretty much took care of every shred of modesty I ever had, seven IV attempts (3 of which were successful), and at least 10 blood draws from every possible source on my arms and hands and they released me for what I hope was the final time. Those people all took excellent care of me but if I never see any of them again, that'll be just fine. I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual.

And now...I STILL don't feel like a brand new person. Lies! All lies!! But, I AM alive and I'm pretty grateful for that. At least for today.