Manball: Part 2

I scheduled surgery with the surgeon who diagnosed the hydrocele in the canal of nuck because he seemed so impressive in the E.R.  Although I had reservations such as, the manball isn't painful, so why am I going in for purely aesthetic surgery, shouldn't I get a 2nd opinion, this is inconvenient, I'm not going to be able to run for a week or so, etc., I went ahead and went in for the surgery on July 24th.  I should've listened to my intuition because from the get-go, nothing seemed to go smoothly.

They told me to check-in at 8:00, I arrived at 8:00, walked in the front doors of the surgery center and sat down at the check-in desk.  The women at the desk was on the phone ordering fish tacos.  Who orders fish tacos at 8:00 in the morning?  Andrew was with me and we mumbled about how odd this was while she finished her phone call and then I filled out paperwork, handed it back to the woman and we had a seat in the waiting area.  They called me back and off I went to remove my clothes and put on a fabulous paper gown, which is more like a paper robe now a days, I was weighed and shown to a bed.  The woman brought me my medical bracelet which said, "ERICA BRITTNEY DUNN."  How someone could mis-spell 2 out of 3 of my names can only be explained by the woman preoccupied with ordering fish tacos, who made my bracelet. They told me they would get me another bracelet, which they didn't.  I'm not one to be finicky about my name.  Growing up, if someone called me Desiree (my sister) instead of Brittany, I never got irritated.  Call me Britt, B, Brittany or the like, and I'm fine with it.  But spell my name like Brittney Spears, and I'm irritated.  Anyone remotely familiar with geography knows that the proper way to spell Brittany is two t's, a-n-y.  I can't help it, I'm an English major and since my mom's mom was straight from England, I'm a bit English to boot.

So, the surgeon comes in and we talk about what is going to happen.  We get to the part about the anesthetic and I tell him that I'd rather not be knocked all the way out.  He says its up to the anesthesiologist, so when he comes over, he says that its up to the surgeon.  That should've been my a cue that something wasn't quite right.  The right foot doesn't know what the left foot is doing?  More like, it is up to ME, and I didn't take the cue.  The anesthesiologist convinces me to let him knock me out (no doubt because its easier) and then explains what happens, "I'm going to first give you some medicine that will make you lose consciousness.  Then I will insert a bladdy blah in your throat and then you'll get another medicine,"  

I interrupted, "Wait - why are you just calling everything "medicine?"  That's how I talk to my 3 1/2 year old."  He just giggled and asked if I had any more material for him . . .   

Why do they feel like they have to dumb everything down so much?  When the surgeon was explaining what a hernia was, he said it's a bladdy blah in your stomach . . . and I said, "My stomach?"  And he corrected himself and said, "well its really your small intestine, but I just say stomach."  There's a big difference between my stomach and my small intestine.  Like MILES of difference, to be exact. It is as if they think that I don't know I have something called "intestines" and anything called a name other than "medicine" is too complex for my simple-woman mind.    

After heaving myself from one gerny to another and accidentally mooning the entire room, we had a brief discussion about not having country music playing in the operating room, they shot something burny into my arm and I was out.  When I came to, I didn't have my glasses on, my entire "stomach" and pelvic region was numb.  Someone had taken off my hair net, which I found odd.  I'm lying in a strange place, numb from the waste down and my once hair-netted hair is not cascading down my paper gown?  Maybe after surgery, the surgeon says, "All sewn up!  Okay boys, time to let our hair down," and they all take off their hair nets, shake their locks out,  and they dance me out of the operating room.  

As I come to, I barely focused on the surgeon sitting at a desk, just across the hall from my bed.  "How did it go?"  I asked.  

"Oh, fine," he answered, "it wasn't a hydrocele after all.  It was a hernia."  

"It was?!"  I said.  The first thing on my mind was - bummer, hernia, now my recovery will be 3 weeks instead of 1

He says nothing.

"How long did it take?"  I asked (who knows why I asked this.)

"About 30 minutes," is what I heard.  I'm not a professional surgeon, I've only dissected worms in middle school biology.  I didn't sew it back up when I was finished but I'm pretty sure it took me longer than 30 minutes.  Maybe he said an hour and 30 minutes?  I HOPE it took longer than 30 minutes.  Brownies cook in 30 minutes.  Surgeries should take longer than 30 minutes. 

I've seen a doctor or two in my day.  I had a lumpectomy in my teens, major back surgery in my teens, wisdom teeth pulled, scar revision and a bad kidney infection.  When you have a surgery, they follow up with you the next day or the same day to see how you're doing.  I liked the surgeon personally, but professionally, he totally sucked.  After my surgery a nurse lady told me not to lift anything, get these pain pills, take it easy, don't do a lot of stairs and my mom and I walked out, all the while, I'm still loopy from being knocked out.  Since nobody de-briefed me or my mom directly after the surgery, I expected someone to call and give me the dirt.  That day, nobody called.  The following day was Friday, and nobody called.  The swelling was three times the size of the original manball, and I was starting to get worried.  After the numbing shots from surgery wore off, it was painful.  Since pre-surgery, we talked about hydrocele surgery and recovery, not hernia surgery and recovery, I felt totally in the dark.  I didn't know what to expect, how I should feel, when I should start feeling better and looking less like a dude.

On Monday, I phoned the surgeon's office.  The office ladies were completely put out to speak with me and informed me in no uncertain terms that it was not their job to phone people post-surgery, that was the job of the surgical center.  After a short, frustrating conversation with the medical assistant, I learned that he repaired the hernia with mesh and also that the biopsy that he did came back benign.  "Biopsy?"  In EVERY doctor's office I've ever dealt with, when lab work is performed, they call right away to relay the results.  Not in this office!  And the medical assistant is being completely unapologetic, so I can only assume that this is standard practice. I called back clearly stated that I felt there was a lack of care and communication and that I needed to speak with the doctor.  They took a message and told me they would give him the message.  4:00 rolls around and no call, so I phone again.  "He's in surgery all day, there's a note here so you'll probably hear from him tomorrow."  Again, unapologetic, so all I could do was relay that I felt that the lack of care I was getting and lack of communication I had experienced was very frustrating.  She made me an appointment for the next day.    

I arrived at my appointment 15 minutes late, signed in and sat down.  Upon entering the office, I wasn't greeted or acknowledged while signing in.  I sat down and made note.  While waiting, another woman waiting was called up to the window and handed back her I.D. card and insurance card.  Then the receptionist said, "Your 15 minutes early for your appointment, so you have plenty of time to fill these out."  

"I thought my appointment was at 1:30?  I was told 1:30?"  the woman said.

"Yes, well, now you have plenty of time to fill that paperwork out," answered the women behind the desk.  The patient turned confusedly with her paperwork and sat down.  I felt slightly validated.  So it was not just that I slipped between the cracks, this is just standard practice at this practice/factory.

My phone rang and I answered.  It was the doctor.  "I'm sitting out in your waiting area."  

"How long have you been waiting there?"  he asked.

"Only about 2 minutes.  I was late.  I'm sorry.  Do you still have time to see me"  I answered.

"Yes, of course," he answered, "I'll have them send you right back."

So when the doctor entered the office, I was sitting in a chair and he sat across from me, then a gigantic woman came in and stood directly above and next to me.  I guess this was his bad cop, in case things got nasty?  I'm not sure, because she was never introduced.  I can only assume that she was the medical assistant I spoke with the previous day.

I began to launch into what I had rehearsed about the lack of care and communication I had received and was interrupted, "Yeah - I'm sorry.  I usually do talk to people post-op, but I was filling out some paperwork from the last patient when you came to, and then when I went to talk to you, you were gone."  Was that an apology?  Did I miss something?  If it was an apology, it went right by me.

Nevertheless, he felt the manball and wanted to see me again next week, in which case, if the swelling hasn't gone down, he will "order another ultrasound."  That sounds so majestic when he says it like that.  

I left feeling no satisfaction and am still not sure if he really fixed the manball or not.  Its still much bigger than the original.  I made an appointment with another surgeon and the soonest I could get in is August 7th, so I guess I'll just wait and see.  My cousin suggested I make an appointment with a plastic surgeon that did some work on her husband and I think I will do that, too.  She said he is really anal, which I guess is something I want in a surgeon.  Plus, if I'm going to have to go under the knife again and be numb from the waist down, maybe I can get a free or discounted butt-lift while they're down in that area.  What the heck.  

The Manball: Part 1

So a few months ago (like about 18 months ago) I noticed a knot in my groin area, to the right of my 'lady butt,' in the area where my body stops and my right leg begins.  I ignored it, thinking it was a swollen gland or something associated with what Newt Gingrich so fondly calls our "monthly infections."  It wasn't painful or bothersome until bikini season, when I discovered that what I thought of as a small lump, actually looked more like a good sized manball.

I went to my doctor and he felt that it wasn't a hernia, which was what many of my friends thought it was (once I realized it looked like a manball, I suddenly realized a fondness for showing off my big ball.)  My doctor thought it was a varicose vein.  Varicose veins are usually a lot smaller, but for whatever reason, he didn't feel like it was a hernia, but a varicose vein.  My midwife friend confirmed this and recommended that I get T.E.D.s, which are like super tight pantie hose shorts, to wear under my clothes.  That sounded hot, gross, tight and uncomfortable.  It gives me a stomach ache now just thinking about it, so I ignored her well meaning advice.  

In April of this year, I ran a 25 mile trail race with my friend who, as my husband puts it, "left me in the desert to die."  This is a sore losery way of saying that she ran considerably faster than me that day, which in my defense was an unseasonably hot and windy day.  Also in my defense, I began and ended the race with a very nasty head cold - or more accurately a Mancold, which if your a man and your reading this, then you know what I'm talking about.  The kind of cold that any man would call 911 for, if his wife or significant other didn't come running when he, lying on the couch, needed a tissue.  Anyway, post-race, instead of putting gas in my car and driving home, I threw up everything I'd eaten or drank for the past few hours, so I knew I was in trouble.  In the emergency room, feeling much better with the I.V. in my arm that they should have given me with my swag bag at the starting line, I noticed that my manball is extra manly - more than golf ball size, more like the size of a non-organic lemon.  The E.R. doctor wasn't too sure about it and the student E.R. doctor in training took one look at it and said, "Hernia."  

"Nope," I said with confidence, "its a varicose vein."  When she wasn't convinced, she brought in a surgeon to check it out and he said, with even greater confidence, "It's a hydrocele in the canal of nuck.  Named after the 17th century anatomist Antoine Nuck, who discovered the phenomenon.  It usually happens in men, but very rarely, occurs also in women."

We were all very impressed with his seemingly informed diagnosis, and he told me to call him in a matter of months to take care of it.

Victory dinner in bird's nest

Dinner is always a trying event for my family and me.  As a child, I would have to sit at the dinner table for HOURS not eating my dinner, so I suppose that lots of grandparents would say that this is payback.  (I hate it when people say that because I feel it implies some form of intention on my daughters' part.  My 3 1/2 year old and 1 1/2 year old probably think that payback is when you lay on your stomach while your sister puts pennies on your back, so how can this really be payback?)  

I'm always amazed when I go to friends houses and their kids sit down and chow down.  The only time Francesca and Cecilia do that is when I goof around too long and feed them dinner or lunch or breakfast way later than I should, so in essence, they only sit down and chow down when they're starving.  I'm not willing to starve my kids in order to get them to eat, so I have to be creative.

Tonight, we sat down to eat outside on the patio.  I ate, while they dipped their string beans in their water goblets (the only non-breakable glasses I have are the silver goblets my sister gave me as a wedding present, so they make great outside drink cups.)  Anyway, I'm eating this great dinner, chowing down because I'm starving and they're dipping their string beans in their water goblets, licking off the water and saying, "YUCK!"  Times like these, I wonder - "Why do I bother making three course dinners, balanced healthy dinners, when they just want to play in their food and insult my string beans?"  So after I finished eating and they had escaped to the backyard swing set, I let them play for a few minutes and then gathered their plates for re-heating and round two.

Round 2:  Francesca and Cecilia are running around the house screaming, while I'm blaring my broken record, "Girls, its time to come and eat."  So I resort to play, I resort to humor and EUREKA!  I told them I was the mother bird and it was time to come to the nest let the mother bird feed you.  I spread out my wings and whistled while I tiptoed/flew to the kitchen table. When I got to the table, I turned around and there were my baby birds, on their toes, flying/galloping/tiptoeing to the table, trying to whistle but just blowing air, but trying all the more.  We reach the table and my two birds perched themselves on their booster seats and pried open their beaks.  I put a bite into Cecilia's mouth - "Good baby bird!"  I put a bite into Francesca's mouth, "Good big baby bird!"  A few more bites and then I told Francesca real mother birds chew up the food and then spit it into their babies mouth.  She giggled with a mouthful of food.  "I'm thirsty!"  My big baby bird squawked!  "Let me swoop down to the stream to get a drink for you, baby bird."  And I jumped up for a drink with two straws.  And so it went until their plates were fairly clean.  Cecilia finished first and fluttered around the kitchen for awhile while Francesca continued to let me feed her while we giggled at Cecilia's flying tricks.  

When I remember to use humor to get the girls to do something, I always kick myself for not thinking of it sooner, but I'm sure that this mama bird gets low blood sugar and isn't so quick on her feet from time to time.