Et tu, Brute?

My body has a bad habit. It is in the habit of rising up against me and stabbing me in the back right when everything seems to be going my way. (The only reason I'm saying this is because it gives me the excuse to look at pictures of a young Marlon Brando... who did not play Brutus, but he was in the film, okay? James Mason isn't nearly as much fun to look at.)

It seems like every year, we find something new that's wrong with me, physically. Now, if we were finding superpowers that meant I could attract metal objects to my hands using only the force of my mind, that would be okay (maybe... driving could be hazardous, though). But no, we keep coming up with things that require surgery.

Yes. More surgery.

And I was wrong about XXXXXX being what's wrong with me, because according to the more precise internal imaging tests I had done today, I don't have XXXXXX. At all. Because CT scans are apparently notoriously bad about showing up "false positives" for differences in tissues within organs. This in itself teaches us a very important lesson: Don't trust CaTs. Go with dogs, instead.

I do appear to have tissue growing where it's not supposed to grow, though, not in a cancerous kind of way, but in a "you're not supposed to play Legos in the dining room, take those back to the playroom" kind of way.

Playing Legos in the dining room still requires surgery, though.

So surgery it is.

The timing on this is terrible. My sister is due to give me a niece any day now, and here, I need to have surgery. I informed my mom that, if I happen to have surgery and my sister has the baby that same day, she and my dad can just throw me in the back of their minivan, dose me heavily with painkillers, and I'll meet my niece through a haze of opiates.

Heck, it's not like she'll remember the experience and hold it against me, and once she hits college, she'll probably find the whole episode amusing.

That is not, however, what I'm hoping will happen. Besides, my doctor can't perform the surgery until the week after my niece is due to join the big wide wonderful world, which one would think would be okay, right?

Except my mom is supposed to go stay with my sister the second week...

So after some discussion during much needed manicures and pedicures and then a little further discussion over Mexican food, my mom and I decided that we would request that my dad help out by taking care of me for a few days, if possible.

If he can swing it: awesome. If not: I'll just have to put off my surgery a little longer and hit my doctor up for an extension on the prescription for the painkillers she granted me (she was incredulous that Dr. L had given me nothing to alleviate the pain, and said it was "ridiculous.")

Right now, the only way I'm getting through the (half) day is by taking the painkillers. We have yet to see if I can make it a whole day. But four hours is better than two.

Maybe with Mr. Brando's help I can make it the full eight.