deeples

July 27, 2008

Rasp! Gasp!

Filed under: Deranged Denise — Tags: , , , , , , — denise @ 8:56 am

Dani asked me Friday if I wanted to go get a pedicure with her over our lunch hour.

What transpired ended up being one of the single most terrifying experiences I have EVER HAD in a salon.*

*Wherein if salon= bad stripmall space with terrible attempt at flower stencils on the wall.

The pedicure started reasonably enough.

Get in the chair. Put your feet in the bubbling water. Play with the massage chair buttons. Wonder how at my height I could possible be too short for the chair… and yet wonder why the BACK OF MY SKULL is being shiatstu’d to the degree that I look like an extremely agreeable bobble-head.

I’m holding my polish I selected in my hand.  It’s a fun, bright tangerine color.  I’m pretending that I am not bothered at ALL by the filing.  I AM. And the buffing.  I AM. Really, the entire pedicure process… because, truth be told, the whole thing is kind of disturbing to me…. but you know… pretty feet and all…

The guy working on Dani is the English speaker of the group.  The girl working on me keeps talking to him in another language and sort of gesturing to me.  He leans over and grabs my foot and gestures to THE BACK ROOM.

Meanwhile, there is a 3rd woman sitting in our bubbling chairs and her feet are NASTASTIC.  I mean, like a HOLY DRAGON FEET MISSING SEVERAL TOES kind of situation.  Her pedicurist is attacking her feet with what can only be described as a… cheese grater?  A straight razor?  What the sign on the wall refers to as, “MR. RASPER“.  Yes, really.

I tense when I see the gesture to the BACK ROOM because I am, of course, terrified that she is GETTING ONE OF THOSE FOOT RAZORS…. and she doesn’t disappoint when she digs through the drawer and presents one and turns it around in the light like I imagine a serial killer must hold a scalpel longingly up to the light….

“Psycho” shower scene music goes off in my head.

The FREAK OUT begins.

Me: DAAAAANI. DANI!  SHE HAS THE RAZOR THINGY. OH GOD. OH GOD. OH GOD.

Dani: Ohhhh… you are so lucky!  I love that thing.  You will love your feet!

Me: NO. NO. NO. NO.  NOOOOOOOO!  *eyes glazing over*  *heart-rate increasing*

Dani: It doesn’t hurt! You’ll love it!

Me: OH GOD. MY FEET WILL BLEED! OH NO. THIS IS TERRIBLE!!

*Flashback to the woman I saw getting this treatment moment before…. as they scraped and sliced her feet.*

I AM TELLING YOU IT LOOKS LIKE SOMEONE OPENED A GIANT BAG OF POTATO CHIPS and started flinging them around like Edward Scissorhands peeling potatoes.

Barf me out.

And I clenched my hands into claws and opened my eyes as wide as they could go and went into a state of catatonia while people around me glanced warily at me and giggled. The woman working on my feet started to freak out, herself, watching me freak out.  She and the little Asian man working on Dani have a very low, but tense conversation in another language that I believe went something like this:

Her: I am not working on this big, crazy women.

Him: Dude! Do your job! Don’t be such a baby!

Her: Seriously, if you do not take over for me I am going to start crying and and also, I will punch you in the face.

Him: FINE! WHATEVER! GEEZ!

(they switch… and I hardly notice..)

When he switched to my other foot, I noticed.

Me: OH GOD! OH JESUS! THE OTHER FOOT! HE’S GOING FOR THE OTHER FOOT!

Dani: (laughing)  It doesn’t hurt does it?

Me: BUT IT WILL! IT WILL REALLY HURT WHEN THE BLEEDING STARTS! OH GOD! OH GOD!

Dani: Man, you should SEE all the dead crap they are slicing off your feet!  You are going to love your feet so much you won’t be able to stop touching them!

Me: *finally just passes out from fear*

When I finally notice that I can stop freaking out because Mr. Rasper has been put away and my little Asian guy is rummaging in the shelf for what I assume will be lotion or something like that…  I decide to unclench and look at what I have to imagine are my poor bloody feet.

Two things happen almost simultaneously:

1. I see my pretty baby-soft pink feet that are NOT bleeding and NOT deformed, as I’d imagined.

2. I NOTICE THAT MR. ASIAN MAN IS PULLING A LONG, BLACK, RUBBER GLOVE ONTO ONE ARM.

…and I say something along the lines of….

JESUS CHRIST WHAT IS HE GOING TO DO WITH THAT ARM THAT IT NEEDS A GIANT BLACK RUBBER GLOVE?!!!!

My brain decides to deal with this new and terrifying event by completely losing it’s shit.

He is lotioning and buffing my feet and I am hysterically, loudly, gaspingly, laughing my ass off.  According to Dani, so was everyone else in the Chamber of Terror salon.  I wouldn’t know.  Because, as I mentioned… I’d totally lost my shit by now.

I laughed and laughed and laughed as tears ran down my face…

Then I jumped up and puked all over everyone.

……..

No, I didn’t.  But it kind of seemed like that was next, didn’t it?

No, what happened next was Mr. Little Asian Man massaged my legs and feet and like the Dog Whisperer who knows exactly where to put pressure points on rowdy animals, and I immediately calmed as he accupressured my feet/brain into submission.

He then painted my pretty toes that gorgeous tangerine color and it seemed like everything was going to hunky-dory.  Yes, it did.  He planted me under the UV/blower thing that is supposed to dry your polish, which I swear is some fake machine that is supposed to make you feel like it’s working… and after a few moments, we pay and Dani goes out into the car to wait for me.  I only have 3 minutes to go under the fake machine.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

So, I notice that some of my polish is actually on the cuticle of my big toe.  I gingerly lift my foot up and just sort of scrape my fingernail along the cuticle and Mr. Little Asian Man sees this and FLINGS HIMSELF ACROSS THE SALON in a flash of ZIPPITY ZAM!!…. and inexplicably runs his thumb ROUGHLY over the entire nail.

!!!!

Which, OF COURSE, results in the ruination of the entire nail as the whole thing wrinkles up like saran wrap.

I gasp!

He gasps! Then, flings himself back across the salon and pounces on the floor next to me with white gauze dipped in acetone and the bottle of tangerine polish.

He props my foot up on his leg and takes all the polish off…. and then repaints it.  Carefully… carefully…

And it immediately smears. So, we GASP! again in unison and he removes the polish again and painfully, carefully, starts to apply the polish again.

And THAT is the true story of how I tried to get a pedicure and ended up losing my shit, while my feet are attacked by a potato-chipper and a little Asian man wearing one enormous black rubber glove came to be lying on the floor in the middle of the salon, gently blowing on my big toe.

June 25, 2008

Post Op Real & Imagined

Filed under: Deranged Denise — Tags: — denise @ 4:03 pm

Kory says this morning, “Hey, I can tell you exactly how your post-op appointment is going to go today.”

And because who isn’t into some role-play at 7:30 in the morning, I was totally on board.  “Ok!” I said, “I’ll be me and you be Dr. S.”  Dr. S is a tiny Asian man, so Kory sort of hunched over and jogged over to me.

“Hi Denise!”

“Hi Dr. S.”

I put my hand out to shake and Kory is momentarily thrown out of character.  Then we shake.

Kory lifts my shirt and pokes my belly and says, “Looks good! See you later!” and runs out of the room.

This is what actually happened:

First of all, the nurse took my blood pressure on my LOWER ARM which no one has like EVER DONE IN THE HISTORY OF MY EVER… and I was extremely excited about this, because getting my blood pressure taken always is sort of painful, especially when they use the machines that seem intent on just seeing if 3 limbs is probably all I need to get through life.  When I woke up from my surgery, my right bicep looked like it had been used to tenderize a leg of lamb.  It was bruised terribly.  Pam, the Helpful and Thoughtful Nurse informed me that during my surgery the machine would have checked my blood pressure every 15 minutes.  FOR 2 1/2 HOURS.  So, mystery solved on that one.

The door then flung open and Dr. S took 2 steps into the room and then stopped and knocked. Which totally made me wish I’d somehow misunderstood the nurse when the told me to just sit in the chair and instead had removed all my clothes and stood in the middle of the room, causing all of us to scream hysterically and hide our faces when he walked in without knocking…  alas, I was just sitting… clothed.

He had a young female intern with him. She looked very serious and competent, though she had the wobbly, boneless handshake that makes my skin crawl.

He lifted my shirt and poked my belly and said, “Looks great!” and was about to run from the room when I created what is referred to actual conversation.

I was all “Doc, I think maybe I broke my soccer net.”

And he was all, “No. It’s just swollen.”

And I was all, “I can not tell a lie. I’ve been picking up The Baby. Also, I carried in a Kohls bag from the car.”

And he was all, “It’s supposed to be swollen. It will be like that.”

And I was all, “Are you sure I didn’t break it?”

And he was all, “It could be that swollen for up to 3 months! You should wear your girdle!”

And I was all, “You mean the 9 yards of white, itchy rubberband fabric that makes me sweat like JUST LOOKING AT IT  much less putting it on and by the way, did you know it’s 92 degrees outside?”

And he smiled and said, “Well, you really only need to use it for 4-6 weeks.”

And I looked at the intern and said, “How about not?”

And he was all, “At least when you are doing things that are strenuous.”

And I was all, “Like the 30 times a day I pick up a 28 pound baby?  Like that?”

And he was all, “You are doing just great.”

And then I licked him all over his face.

Ok, not that.  It would have scared the intern.

I can just see her shrieking and him going, “Dammit, Intern Girl! This is a teaching hospital!”

And without Dr. Pratt there to talk her through it, who knows what it would have done to her psyche.

June 17, 2008

#17 of 30 – the unabridged version

Filed under: 30/100/30,Deranged Denise — Tags: , , , , , , , , — denise @ 8:26 pm

Still in hospital.. hopefully getting out tomorrow…

Surgery went very well except that they did have to open me up.  Once they got the camera in, they could tell there was too much scar tissue to safely perfom the repair that way.  So I have an incision on the right side about 4 inches long and one on my left about 2 inches long.

My anesthesiologist was funny and caring and lovely… the nurses have all been wonderful (with the possible exception of P____, who has painfully flushed my IV without warning me first, threatened to throw Kory’s muffin away because she “doesn’t like food sitting around” – which would be fine if we were like, hanging around HER LIVINGROOM, but we essentially live in this room right now and there is no place else to put the goddamned muffin!  She also keeps forgetting about me when I ask her for something and she calls me “honey” in a “oh, it’s a poor retarded girl” way and not an endearing way. So, she’s at the bottom of the list of nice nurses….

I’ve forced myself to go against the very grain of my nature and just do what I’m told.  I’ve been walking laps around the nurses station, drinking tons of liquids, using my breathing machine, etc, etc.

Kory’s been sleeping in a chair so he can stay by me when I need him.  The meds make me itch (WHY DO ALL MEDS MAKE ME ITCH??)  and Kory has been so sweet when I wake him at 3am and ask him to scrach my back and my feet.

My roommate is an old lady who has had a heartattack AND had most of her colon removed… I know this because she’s a bit of a talker.  She’s full of complaints and thinks the nurses aren’t taking care of her. She doesn’t understand that she can bump her own pain meds and freaks out everytime an IV alarm or monitor alarm goes off (which is about every 5 minutes) … and she burps constantly like an old sheep.

Baaaaaaaaah.

Baaaaah.

BAAAAAAAAAAH.

Swear to god. JUST LIKE THAT.

Oddly, instead of wanting to stab her with my bendy straw and tell her to please SHUT IT because I’m dealing with my own pain, etc… I just feel sorry for her and Kory and I help her as much as we can by calling the nurse for her, listening when she talks, etc…  she’s had no visitors and I’ve had many.

Even now, waiting for the Percocet to kick in so I can sleep, I know how lucky I am.  The presents from my team, the “smile in a box” that I got in the mail from Dani… my mom flying here from Tucson to help take care of me and The Baby, Kory’s parents taking The Baby so both my mom and my husband can be with me…the phone calls and emails from my friends, coworkers and boss… the 3 bouquets of flowers that ALL had gerbera daisies in them… CaraLin and her daughter, Peanut, who drove all the way here to see me…  I’m lucky.

I’m luck

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