chock full o'fuck

I had surgery on Friday. Between post-op nausea and having seen what was done to my tonsils (presumably during intubation (or extubation)) the thought of bathing my throat in hot carcinogenic smog made me shudder a bit. This is why I have had so few cigarettes. I did smoke a little last night though. I had a really seriously rotten day yesterday. I mean rotten. Bad bad bad. There's at least one faculty member who I am planning to verbally spank when I am back in the swing of things.

The nice thing about the smoking is that I guess when I am emotionally ready to quit, perhaps I will have an easier time of it physically than I thought.

Today I'm feeling dangerously better. Dangerous in that I'm nowhere near healed up enough to be lifting stuff or engaging in my habitual cleaning fits which call to me when I am in a rotten mood (woke up thinking about yesterday's fuckery) but I feel well enough at times during the day that I find myself eyeing the vacuum cleaner warily, as if I might sneak up on it and wrestle it into coming along quietly and not putting up a fight.

My advisor called yesterday to ask how the surgery went. A____ talked to her since I was still in bed at 11:00 having been up at 5, 7, and 8 AM to take pain meds and chew on some rolaids since the pain meds have been beating up my stomach. A____ told her it went well and that I was recovering. No details. She'll press me for those later, sounding concerned. I will be inclined to answer very sincerely, as I usually do, only to find later that her extremely short term memory for any of the details and inability to apply the information pragmatically ("right, that's why you weren't in that first week in June...") suggest the concern was barely more than polite interest on her part. I can't stop her from being who she is. But I suppose I can try to modify my own behavior. So I feel like I need to come up with a version of an answer to the question of "how'd it go" which doesn't downplay serious health issues or their impact on me but also doesn't make me feel like I divulged too much personal detail for no good reason.

So here's the version she probably won't get.

It sucked, I felt like shit, but I am quite certain that the surgery was a very good call. I honestly hadn't expected it would be as extensively fucked as this. I had endo all over the place. It was in the uterosacral ligament, on a ureter, and all throughout my intestine. Regarding the last set of sites, some were quite deep. From what the doctor described to A___ just after the surgery, if I'd waited much longer I'd have been looking at a bowel resection.

Also, it turns out my uterus is not only enlarged but also had a few growths. The GYN removed the growths and they are being tested. Until I get the results, I'm supposed to be reassured that the cause of the enlargement may be adenomyosis, which is shitty and has no cure (other than hysterectomy) and little treatment, but won't kill ya. It will cause lots and lots of pain, but because it won't kill you it's called "relatively benign" in medical literature.

It's been almost a week since I heard all this news and I am still pretty damned pissed at my about to be fired GI doctors. I'm pissed at them because I now have confirmation of what I suspected which was that they were prematurely giving up on a diagnosis after having done everything one would to diagnose (one of them said that to me - like I was some freak who was just dying for another colonoscopy). Turns out they forgot I wasn't a 57 year old man but was in fact a premenopausal woman who has a stated, surgically confirmed history of endometriosis.

The whole situation has been like gasoline on the constantly smoldering disgust and contempt I have for the medical profession in general.