Feeling: recovered
Listening to: Brahms - Intermezzo in D
Reading/Watching: Georgette Heyer - Bath Tangle

In case you missed Part 1...

Sunday, 10:55 a.m. At least I have a bed to lie down in. Nimsay took a bus, and is now crowded into the tiny room with the three of us and the nurse.

I've never had a serious injury before, so when the nurses ask me "on a scale of one to ten, how much pain are you in right now?" I don't know how to answer. I try to be polite; I say seven or eight. They take my blood pressure, my temperature, and write things down. They say they'll get me some pain medication "soon."

Nothing I do helps. Not sitting, not standing, not lying down, not curled up, not stretched out. All I know is that lying on my back is unbearable, and lying on my side merely hurts like a bitch. They put me in a hospital gown, and try to start an IV, but the nurse apparently never went to medical school, and sticks me four times without finding a decent vein.

Then I go into a different room, leaving Mary, Nimsay and mon coeur behind, and the new room has stirrups. Dear God in heaven. I've never visited a gynecologist before, and now I'm lying on my back, feet in embarrassingly wide-spread stirrups, while a strange man explores my girly parts with various instruments. The nurse manages to get an IV started in my hand, but for some reason, leaves the syringe of morphine sitting on the counter while my privates are examined. I experience the joy of a pap smear, and a catheter. I beg the nurse to give me the damn morphine. Not because the smear or catheter hurt, but because it feels like there is a wild animal somewhere inside my pelvis, shredding and braiding my innards every second. She doesn't seem to quite realize this.

I might have gotten a bit snippy with her when I pointed this out. Then the woman gave me morphine.

I blacked out a couple times during the ultrasound that followed, but the morphine didn't make much of a dent. I was just grateful to be sleepy.

When I came back from the ultrasound, Mom was there in the tiny hospital room, crammed in with Nimsay and Mary and mon coeur, smiling. They kept adding morphine to my blood, and I wanted to cry because I'd always expected that drugs would make pain magically float away. Not this time, apparently.

Three or four hours passed, I'm not sure how many. Nimsay eventually had to leave, and Mary went home shortly after Mom arrived. I knew a surgery was scheduled for seven p.m., to remove a cyst from my left ovary. The ultrasound said it was nine centimeters across. Apparently they start to become painful when they're two centimeters wide. Lucky me.

Lots of questions, a couple bags of saline, and endless hours later, I'm put under for the surgery. I wake up what seems like a few minutes later, and my stomach still hurts, but in a different way. My eyes are weird and gummy, and the nurse says it's because they put a gel on them to keep them from drying out.

As they're wheeling me back to a room where I'll be staying the night, the nurse is chatty and sympathetic. She pats my shoulder, marveling at how I held it together (as far as I know, whining and passing out is not holding it together, but everyone has a right to their own opinion). Then she tells me that the cyst wasn't nine centimeters, it was sixteen. And that they didn't just drain it, they removed it. That, the ovary, and the fallopian tube, because the cyst caused torsion (a twisting of the tube), and effectively killed it.

I arrive alone in my private room, and cry for the first time that day.

Mom and mon coeur show up, all smiles and hugs, and Mom is going to stay the night with me. She's slightly pissed that the nurse told me what she did, because Mom wanted to break it to me more gently. She promises that the other ovary is still fine, that it still works, that I can still have children someday. I remember that Nimsay's mom had three children with only one ovary, and calm down a bit.

Apparently the surgery was much more involved than the doctors expected, however, so they had to cut me open instead of just make three little holes to do it all laproscopically. As a reward, I have a weird jagged purple smile across my lower belly, punctuated by metal staples, like teeth. I'll have to be in the hospital for a few days. I'll have to stay off my feet for a few weeks. I may not be back to full strength for six weeks.

Naturally, I flipped out. This can't happen. I'm graduating. I have to work, I have to go to school, I have to sing. I'm the girl who's never broken a bone, never needed stitches. I'm the girl who complains because nothing exciting ever happens to her.

Now, apparently, I'm the girl with the funky folded-belly smile. And Mom is using her spring break to stay with me for a week, and take care of me in my apartment. She keeps reminding me that school will work itself out, that I can still graduate on time, but I need to remember that I've had "major abdominal surgery", and I need time to recover.

Hell with recovery, I wanted to leap out of the bed right then and run home. It was incredibly surreal. Even now, days later, I can still hardly believe that this has happened.

Not that I'm ungrateful for the two-week break from school, but this was not what I was expecting in terms of vacation. I'm still slightly stressed (despite everyone's admonitions to "relax, and focus on healing"), but after talking to the dean of students, calling my professors, and setting up my bedroom so that virtually everything I need is within arm's reach, I'm getting more accustomed to the idea.

I think the five or six bouquets of flowers (from Mom, Mary, Maffrew, my mom's sisters, Bri, & mon coeur), giant "get well" butterfly balloon (Bri), hilarious little stuffed puppy with floppy French hat (Mini-Me), and huge fruit basket (Dad) are helping me reconcile to the getting-well thing. I've always been secretly envious of the complete pampering that the bedridden are lavished with, and now I've got more of it than I can stand. I'm so pampered, I feel guilty. It's wonderful. It sucks. It's confusing.

I have to say that my mother is amazing. She's sleeping on my couch, helping me towel off in the shower, cooking me food, bringing it to me in bed. When it comes to full-on Sickbed Mommy mode, my mother kicks Florence Nightingale's ass.

And not to be mushy, but mon coeur is quite amazing as well. He's been almost jealous of how much he gets to take care of me, to the point that I have to remind him that he can't be in charge of looking after me all the time. He has a job. He needs to go to it, from time to time. But he's been completely devoted to helping me out of bed, taking me for (frustratingly slow) walks around the apartment, bringing me whatever I ask for (which isn't much; I'm reigning myself in from complete brattiness).

My friends are also amazing. Bri, Jules, Krynn, and Mini-Me have visited me so often it's exhausting. They're the reason my mom isn't forcing me to come stay in Hometown for the remainder of the time I'm bed-ridden. She trusts that I have enough people looking after me that if I need help in the middle of the day, I can call on about half a dozen different people.

The crowning glory of this week, however, was a brief conversation I had with Miller on Sunday night. He called with his customary greeting, "What're you doing?"

I answered, "Well, I'm in the hospital. I just had abdominal surgery, my uterus is half-empty, I'm getting high on a steady Demerol drip, I'm going to be out of school for two weeks, and I'll have a weird scar reminiscent of a C-section for the rest of my life. What's new with you?"

He just laughed. I guess that's the best way to handle the current state of things: laugh and go with it.

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