Anne Nahm

Well, this is not funny or witty. But rather ranty and embarrassing in the way that I’m pretty sure while you are reading it, I will look a lot like one of those really stupid screamy teenagers in a B rate horror flick. The slutty best friend to the heroine, perhaps? The one who shrieks a lot, and looks over her shoulder and stumbles and cannot seem to crawl away from the ax murder on crutches who is hobbling towards her at a brisk 20 minute mile? Yeah. I’m that chick today. You will roll your eyes at me and groan and close the browser in disgust. You will want to reach through the computer and kick me squarely in my ass a few times.

And also you will feel kicky because this stupid effing blog is now medical effup update 2007. Gah, Anne! We do not tune in to watch you crawl up your own medical file with an odoscope. You are exactly the reason people don’t go visit Old Folks Home: No one wants to hear unremitting bitching about irresolvable medical conditions. SHUT UP.

So very briefly as you are running away, plugging your ears, and muttering, “la-la-lahhhh can’t hear you” under your breath:

1. I called my doctor Friday to tell him symptoms of infection were returning. Re: Tooth pressure, headache, chills. And duh. This is like the fiftybillionth weekly sinus infection I have had since October. Fiftybillionth verse, same as the first!

Nurse returns call: Tooth pressure and headache are symptoms of recent surgery. Chills? (I muthereffin’ kid you not, these words left her lips and who is the greater asshole? She who said it or she who let it slide?) Were probably a symptom of the recent virus that is going around and unrelated. Get some sleep. THERE IS NO PROBLEM. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM, PATIENT WHO KEEPS CALLING AND SAYING THERE IS A PROBLEM. ALSO, WE LOCK OUR CAPS BECAUSE OF OUR MEDICAL AUTHORITY. SUCK THAT AS YOU BOW TO OUR POWER.

And although I have the backbone of a marshmallow when it comes to protecting my own health against what has got to be some kind of certifiable medical disservice at this point, I am not entirely stupid. I am so smart I can stumble and scream a lot before getting killed off, no? And perhaps jiggle my boobs in front of the camera or spend my last dying breaths writing the killer’s name in my own blood at the crime scene. But actually save myself? Pshhh. And also? Jiggle-jiggle. Enjoy!

So I got off the phone and started calling local doctors. I got an appointment for the following Friday. There was this catchy little loop-hole, see? If the pain was so bad it was a medical emergency, I should go to the emergency room, not the Ear, Nose & Throat (ENT) doc. But at the emergency room? They do not do the little operation where they stick a needle up your nose and let the pressure building infected fluid out of your sinus. Only an ENT can do that. When can an ENT see you? Friday. And why are you crying, miss? If you are already on antibiotics, surely the doctor who prescribed them to you can help you, no?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahhhaahahahahahahaha.

Ha.

So I got to spend the weekend waiting for my head to explode. And taking the rest of the Vicodin I had not taken for surgical, bone-cut pain.**

I tucked my tail between my legs this morning and called the Cheekbone Implant Doctor back. I told the nurse my symptoms again. Seriously. I just got off the phone with her two hours ago. She told me that if I traveled 120 miles to see the doc, he would take a scan of my head***. But that my symptoms were probably related to post surgical pain. The sludge stuck in the back of my throat? Not infected post nasal drip from a partially blocked sinus. That was post-surgical material sloughing down my throat. Suddenly. After not doing that for a week after surgery.

At which point I found the last of my battered self respect and told her that I had an ENT appointment Friday and she needed to either refer me to an ENT that could see me today or I was going to the emergency room, but she was completely ridiculous if she thought I was going to drive five hours round trip so the doctor could take the same scan he takes every time and which tells him nothing except that I have a sinus full of pus. TAKE THAT MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT, SAYS I IN MY OWN DAMN CAP LOCKS BECAUSE I NEED NO MEDICAL DEGREE TO SHIT A BRICK AT THIS POINT AND THE PAIN IS SO BAD THE VICODIN IS ONLY PUTTING A DENT IN IT.

To which the nurse told me that I either drive down and see the doctor or I take my chances with the emergency room. She was rather short with me and I thought she might threaten to put me in Time Out, but I was hardly bothered at that point seeing as I was already curled up in a little fetal ball on the floor from all the pain and pressure.

Which is where I was when I called back the local ENT and cried into the phone until someone promised to see me today.

For the two of you still reading at this point, I want to say I am not a litigious person. But I do want to know if this guy is actually working in what could be construed as an ethical manner. I think that he’s probably outside the scope of his medical expertise, and I think that he’s afraid to have me see another doctor because then he will probably have to actually declare my infection on his list of screw-ups. And I certainly think he is a jack-ass.

I am seriously so pissed I feel like I need to debrief, and so am using this post as therapy. Hopefully, I’ll post tomorrow that through a simple procedure, all this crap is over. But until then, can someone shed any light on how bad this looks? I’ve been sitting in it too long to really have a good picture.

** If you are law enforcement or my mom, I was going to toss those. If you are anybody else, I was really enjoying the idea that they would be sitting in the back of the bathroom cabinet, awaiting a day when a cold beer just wasn’t going to cut it.

*** I have since found out that the scanner this doctor has in his office is very good for taking pictures of people’s jaws. But as far as being able to see a sinus cavity? Well he would have equal luck cramming a Polaroid disposable up my nostril and snapping some shots.

Oh please, please go read this and get pissed off at the shovel full of crapulence NBC wants you to dine upon. Yes, we should all be watched carefully because women together are not trustworthy.

Just because a certain phrase shouts itself inside your head at 80 decibels while you are in the shower, striking you with it’s complete genius and accuracy? Does not a great blog title make. And also? Men tend to become the thing they are called. Which is why I should really have more titles with the word ‘husband’ and ‘jewelry buying sugardaddy’ in them. Calling them ‘jackass’ is almost like giving them permission to be so.

However.

I have recently had surgery as you may or may not know. And I’ll tell you some ugly truths about that. Surgery was 10 days ago. And in that time, I have indeed showered, despite my husband’s moaning and groaning that I have not. I do not smell (that much anyway) like a pizza joint. But here are some other unpleasant truths:

1. Our bathroom goes by the nickname “The Morgue” in the winter, and getting naked while feverish and dizzy around all that icy cold head-smackable-tile wasn’t pushing my self preservation buttons these past ten days. And PS? If you want to know what it feels like to have every goosepimple on your entire body stick out like a farah fawcett nipple? Come take a shower at my place sometime this winter! Every hair follicle on your body will fill an A cup.

2. I am on doctor’s instructions not to brush my teeth for ten days. And no amount of showering, tweezing, muff buffing, or make-up is going to make me presentable or even thinking sexy thoughts during that time period. Any oral fantasies I’ve had this week? Only involve a toothbrush. And maybe some baking soda. Mmmmm… Cleanliness….

3. Do I really need a three? I had been showering regularly since the surgery, but I just wasn’t showing up in bed all squeaky and sparkly in a fluffy negligee. In fact, I crawled into bed last night in sweats I had picked up off the floor the previous day and worn all afternoon. Before you get on your hygienic high horse, let me just say, Pfffff! Vicodin!

This morning, I quietly announced that as our baby napped and our child watched a rainy morning movie? I was going to sneak off and shower. To which my normally genteel and suave husband practically broke both his knee caps falling down on them, singing praises to several deities because Oh My God! How Long Has It Been! Yes! Go! Shower! Now!

And there is nothing more worrisome than when your spouse thinks you are gross and he may actually have a justifiable point.

And so, shivering, butt naked in “the morgue”, feeling terrible about myself and repeatedly sniffing my pits in an attempt to discover if I actually smelled like a dead body as was implied by my husband’s frenetic attempts to shove me into the bathroom, I re-evaluated myself as a wife and a mother and a woman. Were my standards for post-surgical hygiene so low I was truly offensive?

When the shower got all steamy, I stepped in and doused my grungy hair. I washed my bruised face. And then I realized: My husband is a jackass! Part I of many!

There was no soap.

Everything became crystal clear. I was not terribly stinky. I was not some untouchable within my own house, horrifying all who had to live with me. Or maybe I was, but that was not the reason my husband was physically pushing me into the bathroom.

The reason was that my husband does not know where I keep the extra soap. That bastard had probably been showering two days with no way to clean himself. And why? You ask. Why would a man in need of soap not simply ask his wife, “hey babe, where are the extra bath supplies?” Instead of washing himself with his empty hand in misery for two day?. Possibly soaping up his underarms with his shampoo in a desperate attempt to stay clean? This man who surely lived some time alone between the time his mother placed soap in the shower and his wife came along to do the same? And now, ten days with me capacitated is as dirty as a Frenchman?***

Maybe he secretly thinks I am the soap fairy. Or that all women pop soap out of some secret orifice and leave it in the shower for the man to clean himself with. Maybe he is unaware that a six pack of Dove Bars can be purchased for under ten dollars at the local supermart. Or that a pack, right this very moment, sits pristine and ready for use, right under the bathroom sink where he brushes his teeth every day.

As I exited the shower, clean and superior in my knowledge of cleanliness, my husband busied me out of the way and climbed in.

The mysteries of a man’s heart are unknowable. But I think this man will probably never divorce me. He apparently must live some barbarian bachelor lifestyle without my daily care.

At least until he figures out about the Personal Hygiene Isle at Albertsons. Then I may be effed.

*** See #79

Here’s a steaming pile of embarrassing confession for you: I think I pooped on the operating table.

(And PS? This one is so embarrassing I actually practice confessed it to my husband a few days ago. Completely straight-faced he said to me, “Why, Anne? Why would you ever tell me that?”)

I had no good answer. But I’ll tell you something else: That part I just told you is not really the heart of the confession. I mean, as far as unconscious acts go, unless the scenario includes binge drinking, I don’t think that a person should be held responsible for things they do when they are unable to control themselves.

And c’mon. It’s just poop. I have two small children. Bodily functions in all their glory do not hold the same terror they did when I was 19 and single. Everybody poops. I’ve had to read the picture book on that subject more times than I can count.

The embarrassing part is that as time goes on? And this doctor pisses me off more and more? I am secretly kind of gleeful that I pooped on his operating table. I hope it was really stinky. And had interesting acoustics. And maybe? That the doc has some kind of phobia re: fecal matter.

Ok. Hitting publish now before I can think through whether doing so is a good idea. My only defense is that I’m really angry with my doctor. And also? Am psychologically about two years old, evidently.

Enjoy!

After five days languishing in the fluffy, warm, snuggly incubator known as the Ultram-Vicodin Happy Place, I realized (read: My husband’s freaky eyed glances my way suggested to me) that maybe it was time to lower the dosage and come play in the real world. Turns out? When I’m not going about my regularly scheduled activities of flitting around the house and chattering like a magpie, my family considers our house to be eerily quiet. My one word answers and slightly unfocused eye contact? Freaking everyone out. Wimps! I say.
Unfortunately, I then had to spend the next few days with Happy Place Hangover. I guess my body chemistry translates ‘hangover’ as playing Opposite Day. So, you know, happy-warm-snuggly evaporated into a big honking dose of insomnia and anxiety. Yay body chemistry! Eff you very much.

As you may or may not have surmised, I naturally tend towards bouts of anxiety. I don’t really mind anxiety per se. What pisses me off is a bout of irrational anxiety. I mean, not only is that totally useless? But it makes me feel kind of stupid. There is plenty of worthwhile stuff to freak out about instead of sleeping. But not sleeping because you are freaking out about stupid stuff? Quit insulting me, brain.

I can hear you anxiety advocates clearing your throats in the back there, ready to marshal up with those pat statements that all anxious thoughts are equally detrimental and I shouldn’t hound myself for the stupidity of my inner freak outedness. I suggest you choke that phlegm ball down and listen to these actual anxiety inducing thoughts I’ve had the last few days before going into you pat speech:

1. Fear that I! had! shaken! my! baby! When what was being shaken? Was a bottle of formula. To mix it. The baby was in the other room playing quietly.
2. That I will mix the baby some of mine and make myself some of the baby’s**:

3. And then the baby will realize that formula tastes like crap and will Bogart all the strawberry flavored slim fast.
4. And that I will have to drink the formula. What? I’m gonna throw it out? That stuff is expensive.
5. That I won’t be able to figure out one more stupid thing I’ve been anxious about the last twenty four hours. Does this count? Maybe. I’ve had a kind of generalized fear that I will never be able to write anything coherent again. Not really sure if this post is enhancing that fear or not.

Usually when I get anxious, the antidote is exercise. However, I’m restricted for two weeks due to blood clot concern. I don’t know if secretly exercising to reduce my anxiety would help if I had to be constantly fearing keeling over from some sort of exercise related embolism.

Anyway, at the end here are my head screws. They are very tiny:

And here is a link to the close up of one very blurry picture where the top of the screw looks filled in with toothpaste. Except the toothpaste is bone. It’s not really that gross, and kind of a bad picture as I don’t have a camera equipped to take super refined pictures of tiny things. But I said I’d post them, so there you go. Still haven’t heard back about the biopsy results which probably means there was nothing too dire found. Although rumour has it my doc is back to tooling around in his 911 porshe, so go figure.
More when my brain is out of detox.

** Am on liquid diet for 10 days post op because sutures inside my mouth. Again. Also helping in my brain not functioning quite right. Because there are only so many shakes a person can drink before they declare, “screw 800 calorie minimum! I ain’t chokin any more of that crap down.”