HUMOR, HOPEFULLY

Boobs, Burgers and Drugs

Breast surgery, excellent drugs, and a practically life-saving fast-food burger

I’d planned to take a couple of days off after having a breast lumpectomy, but I feel inspired. Is it the news that things seemed to go well? Is it my relief that this dreaded surgery is now over?

Or is it the Norco?

Also, let’s find out how I write under the influence.

I’ll be curious to read this tomorrow.* I can always delete it in the morning before too many people see it.

Worst case scenario? It goes viral while I’m sleeping off the drugs and millions of people find out I can’t write high but I get sufficient reads to earn enough to at least pay the portion of my medical bill dedicated to the person who scanned my insurance card.

First of all, the hospital experience was pretty good. If I ever again need to have a metal coat hanger shoved deep into my breast while that breast is smooshed in the mammography machine (smooshed is not a typo; I am using this for effect, and I’d like to also point out my correct use of a semicolon in this parenthetical phrase because a lot of people struggle with that even when sober) and then have it smooshed into a few different shapes while I hold perfectly still, I would certainly choose the team I had today. Truly.**

And then, after cooling my heels in a wheelchair in a deserted hallway, they let my husband come in and hold my hand for a while. Which was nice, because it was a bit of a wait. One could almost have ordered a fast-food burger in the interim. (This comparison will make sense later.)

Thankfully, I was asleep while they did whatever they did to get the lump out. I assume a grapefruit spoon or perhaps a good long fish knife was involved. I didn’t ask. My surgeon told me she would follow the wire to find the exact bit to cut out and remove, and that’s enough for me.

I literally begged to be allowed to stay awake for the surgery.

I made my case several times over the past few weeks that I wanted just a local. They would not even consider it.

Look, I can handle my shit.

I once had an umbilical hernia repair (caused by a laparoscopic gallbladder removal) with just a local. The surgeon said he’d never done that procedure on a conscious person before.

For this surgery, the team’s unanimous refusal to only use a local might have been a case of medical professionals knowing better than me. Who would have thought?

As I was scooching myself from the stretcher to the surgical table, I became aware that I needed to pass gas, but there was no way I could handle this in my usual way — pretending I had to use the restroom (they knew damned well I hadn’t had anything to drink and the well was dry) or feigning interest in a boring painting across the room and walking over there to supposedly get a better look.

The way this works is, you spy a boring-ass painting a good distance from your host in your host’s living room. You walk up to the painting and you quickly and quietly pass gas while pretending to admire the art, and then you walk back to your host before they have a chance to walk toward you and find out the hard way what you’ve been up to.

Immediately change the subject before they start telling you a boring story about the charming Italian village where they bought it.

I desperately looked for such a painting.

But this operating room was pretty badly decorated. I shall take them to task about that on my feedback questionnaire, I’ll tell you that: “Do you guys not know about Pinterest? I bet there are millions of pins if you search for ‘bespoke surgical suite art’ or something like that.”

Anyway, I resolved to hold it until I passed out. I figured I could not be blamed if I passed gas while passed out. (Honestly, that’s a much better ruse than pretending to look at art, and I might try it at someone’s house sometime.)

However, the whole process of navigating this awkward movement while feeling nervous and being mindful of my IV distracted me and I committed an embarrassing indiscretion. A small one, but still.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said to the nurse who was helping me move. She graciously pretended it was fine. But she is, as you read this, probably telling her husband, “So this bitch just had to fart while I was leaning over her pelvis? Really?”

Two things: I cannot, in fact, handle my shit. I cannot even handle my farts. Also, this is the real reason surgical teams wear masks.

I woke up in recovery in a hideous and uncomfortable bra.

I spent $100 — on sale — buying two very comfortable and supportive and attractive bras last week that I intended to wear afterward. I bet this bra cost me a lot more than $100.

And it is hideous. Nobody even asked me what color I like. And there’s very little lifting going on — my poor boobs look like the breasts of a 57-year-old woman in this thing. For a woman who is 57, this is completely unacceptable. We 57-year-olds wish to have the boobs of a hot 47-year-old.

Again: Have these people not even searched for “pretty post-lumpectomy bras” on Pinterest? This is going to cost them a few points on the old feedback form. For the record, I prefer my bras black and a touch of lace is always nice.

Cue up the dystopian movie background music.

Although so far I’m pretty happy with the actual medical care I received, I must comment that I’ve gathered more information about the dystopian hellscape we are heading for.

My family just visited the cemetery in my hometown where my sister is buried. My son, Uncle Snack, my daughter, Erma, and my grandchildren, Lillian and Rupert (I probably don’t need to tell you these are not their real names but I guess I just did) walked around looking at my family’s graves. Visiting the newer section is very much like visiting my hometown 30 years ago — I knew everybody. My tiny hometown has only 170 residents. I know far more people in the cemetery.

Visiting the older section is a reminder that medical science has come a long way. My daughter hugged her kids hard each time we saw the grave for an infant or young child. Lillian and Rupert are probably both sporting more bruises today than I am.

She expressed her thankfulness for modern medicine.

She said it each time we found a cluster of graves bearing witness to families that endured the loss of numerous children.

Yes. We have to remember how much better things are now. Until modern times, about 25 percent of babies died in their first year and about half died before adulthood.

There aren’t many graves for babies and young children in the newer section of my village’s graveyard. It’s mostly people who lived reasonably long lives.

But the future section of the graveyard may skew younger.

My mother, my daughter, and I each had two children and we and our babies did fine. Maternal deaths have risen to the point that they’re about what they were when my mother gave birth to me in 1966. Chew on that. Income inequality and racism play a part but that’s a different piece for a non-drugged day.

After visiting my sister’s grave, we headed back to my dad’s hunting cabin and spent some time with my dad and his wife. My son was there just for the day, but my daughter and grandchildren and I slept there.

We love that place so much. My dad is planning to sell his land this year, and we get it — it was always part of his retirement-funding plans to sell his hunting property when he became old enough that it became more of a burden than a joy.

So my enjoyment of the cabin was bittersweet. I felt like I was saying goodbye to it. I would buy the place myself if there were any possibility of doing so, but there’s not.

We enjoyed a night of marshmallow roasting, star-gazing and family storytelling.

When we woke up, we each ate a muffin and headed for an early-morning walk in the woods.

It was such a joy. The cabin was my sister’s favorite place in the world. She still lived close to our hometown and loved to hunt for morels every spring and then berries and other things in their seasons. She’d fish or just walk the timber.

She had breast cancer far too young, but had beaten it years ago only to die last April in a car wreck at age 52. She would have turned 53 this month. Obviously this is fucking me up.

I felt close to her there. I think we all did.

And then it was time to make the drive back to my place. After that, my daughter had to drive an additional few hours to where she lives.

You know how I frequently note that I almost never eat fast food?

We decided to eat fast food.

It is about two hours from my hometown to my house, and all of us were hungry. We’d made an unscheduled stop at a relative’s house. It was lovely seeing my great aunt and uncle and catching up. But we’d worn off our muffins hiking the hills and hollers and now we were hangry and out in the middle of nowhere.

My grandkids are city kids who believe there will always be a fast-food place just a few blocks off. This is not the case where I come from, and we were really, really hungry. I was already looking at a pre-surgery fast and didn’t fancy a pre-fast fast. So, we resolved to hit a fast-food place when we got to the one town on our route that has them.

Ordering did not go well.

We ordered normal things without asking for anything special. The woman at the drive-through kept asking us to repeat it, explaining that the equipment was not working right. My daughter and I both did stints in fast food as students. We are never rude to these people. We took it in stride.

About half an hour later, we were taking it a bit less in stride. I had begun looking with interest at a piece of candy ground into the floor mat.

Erma went inside and learned that on this particular Sunday afternoon, the place was staffed by one teenager who was working his first day and who said he was thinking of walking out, one very elderly woman, a manager who looked to be 20 who was doing his best, and one guy of indeterminate age in the back.

With our vast fast-food experience, Erma and I agreed that the absolute minimum staff for this time and place should have been six. You’d have one drive-through worker, two people in the back and two people at the counter. Ideally, you’d have at least one extra person to make up for the fact that, statistically speaking, one worker would be stoned.

Back in the day, I’d have suspected the young guy, but nowadays, you can’t ignore the possibility that Great-Grandma had an edible on her way to work.

We didn’t blame the people working there.

They were all stressed to the max and clearly at their breaking point.

We blamed the way corporations are screwing workers. I told my husband about this, and we both immediately thought of The Pizza. (Link at end. You’re going to want to read that one.)

I am also reminded of a Medium piece (I can’t remember who wrote it, so please self-tag if you see this) about places in Great Britain trying to recruit people in nursing homes.

I can only imagine someone from the fast-food industry also read that story and felt inspiration strike.

“Mrs. Jones!” the fast-food recruiter said to Mrs. Mabel Jones of Shady Acres Assisted Living. “I said, ‘Mrs. Jones! Can you hear me? Our records show you were a very successful counter girl at one of our stores back in the summer of 1972, and we’d like to have you rejoin the team!’”

Mrs. Jones accepted his offer. Her Social Security doesn’t come close to covering her groceries. Her new job would help in three important ways:

№1. She’d earn a paycheck that probably would exceed her monthly Social Security payments.

№2. She could likely snitch free dinner if she was clever about it.

№3. Adding copious amounts of fast food to her diet would likely reduce her lifespan, solving all her financial issues in a permanent way.

This is what we call a win-win-win.

The grandkids did not need to use the restroom while we were waiting.

We asked several times. They denied even having a bladder.

When we finally got our food, my burger was soggy but delicious in the way food is when you have been working up an appetite hiking in the woods and then have to wait an hour longer than expected to eat. We wolfed down our food.

My daughter took it in stride that we were far, far behind our schedule and that she still had a really long drive back to her house after dropping me off and collecting the rest of their things.

“We’re not stopping for anything else until we get to your house,” Erma said to me.

“I have to pee,” came a voice from the backseat.

I’d guess we were five minutes out from the restaurant. The one where we had been waiting and waiting for half an hour, with nothing to do.

We were out in the sticks.

There was nowhere to stop. Or to go, I should say. Finally, we found a nature area I knew to have outhouses. Erma took Rupert to one of them.

Lillian waited almost exactly the period of time it takes a young boy to pee and announced she had to go, too. She entered the other outhouse in tandem with my daughter and grandson coming out.

Thank God my daughter is a licensed therapist. They must have taught a class on coping skills called “How Not To Murder Family Members Who Are Surely Pissing You Off On Purpose,” because both her children are still alive.

We eventually made it to my house.

My daughter decided that instead of immediately driving home and trying to work with two overtired and overstimulated kids, she’d catch up on paperwork in her old bedroom while the kids and my husband played in the treehouse he built for them.

Good call. My husband and I got to enjoy more time with the kids and my daughter got quiet laptop time. Was she really working or was she playing a video game? Either would have been a great choice at that point. She claims she was actually working. I’d not have judged her either way.

It’s been two hours since I took the Norco.

Its peak blood plasma concentration has long since passed, although it’s supposed to be effective for another hour or two. I noticed I had written it’s in the beginning of the previous sentence and immediately fixed it.

Could a high person do that?

I don’t know.

I’ve never been much of a pill person, beyond ibuprofen.

Or, I may read this tomorrow and notice I found one error but missed 72 others. I am counting on my friends, the Grammar Nazis (the only good Nazis on the planet) to tell me.

Incidentally, I sent my husband to fetch the same burger I had yesterday. This one wasn’t soggy and I’d been fasting for surgery so it was pretty damned good. And I know from experience (ask me how I know) that opioids tend to make me vomit profusely if I don’t eat a substantial meal before taking them. My husband is an awesome guy but not a great cook. I am happy to say the fast food I got today was fast food at its best and it was actually fast, which is really all I was asking for today.

I meant to tie this in with the dystopian future I know is coming.

I’m going to skip writing a clever segue here because I can’t think of one and I believe you will blame my surgery and medication for it and forgive me — even though I think laziness is the real culprit here.

Everybody has multiple stories of restaurant disasters now. Everybody who has tried to get a prescription does, too. One of my family members couldn’t get the ADHD medication from her pharmacy she really needs to function at her best.

The process of calling dozens of pharmacies to figure out which one might have the medication you need and then making a bunch of special arrangements is not that easy when you have the sort of ADHD that makes it really hard for you to handle tedious details. It’s pretty ironic but it’s not funny.

My point, which I’ve already made a bunch of times in other pieces and don’t feel like making again, is that our world is going to hell in a handbasket and I blame the corporate people because they’re the ones unwilling to spend the money to make things run smoothly.

Stop trying to save paltry amounts on payroll and get enough people to make things run smoothly. Things mostly did run smooth-ish when the poor people making our shitty fast food stayed in their jobs long enough for there to be enough institutional memory to make a cheeseburger. That’s no longer true. Pay people, OK? Damn it. This paragraph is too long. If I were a bit soberer I’d cut it. (It is actually “soberer,” not “more sober.” I learned something just now, which is if you look shit up, your paragraphs might end up longer. Not more long, by the way. Longer.)

I arrived home from the hospital around 11:30 a.m.

I know from experience that you want to keep ahead of the pain. Once the pain has set in, you can forget it — you’re not going to catch up to it. My approach is always to take something right away. Half the time, that single dose is all you even need. You escape the pain that sets in as the local wears off and sleep. That’s often enough.

The pharmacy I had used for years — one of the big pharmacies I am sure you have used yourself — was out of a very common medication a few months ago and it was the last straw. I switched to the other big pharmacy I am sure you have used yourself because they had the stuff available.

Today, the Big-Ass Pharmacy №1 told me they were out of Norco but would have it in two to three weeks.

Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me?

I called Big-Ass Pharmacy №2. They asked me for my name and date of birth. I was not playing that game. We could get to that if they had the goods. “Never mind that. Norco: Do you have it?”

Imagine this scene in Pulp Fiction but without a nasty tone, violence, profanity or throwing of things. I badly wanted to say, “Norco, motherfucker! Do you have it!” But I did not, and yes, I want a medal for this.

It was 2 p.m., according to my phone. Big-Ass Pharmacy №1 said they would have it at 2:30.

At 2:43, they told my husband, who had been waiting since 2 p.m., that it would be another 10-15 minutes.

At about 3:30, I finally got my Norco. Google tells me I started this file at 4:11 p.m. — apparently just when it was really doing its thing. (Researchers probably don’t need to keep drawing patients’ blood to determine peak plasma concentration. They can probably just say, “Let me know when you think it’s a good idea to start writing. And if you could let me know the precise moment when you get the idea to take and share a post-surgical boob shot, that would be great.”)

It is now 6:07 p.m. I will add my pictures (the one of my sad breasts is starting not to* sound like the best idea, but this will not be my breasts’ first time on Medium so why not) and I’ll post it. And then I need another nap. These make excellent sleeping pills, and my medical team is going to get extra points for their excellent choice of drugs.

It’s worth noting that they sent me an email at 2:58 p.m. asking me the following:

“Thank you for your recent visit at (redacted). We are committed to excellent patient care and your feedback matters to us. We invite you to click here and submit your thoughts about your visit. It should take about a minute.

Thank you for choosing us as your healthcare partner.”

I’m just pointing out that we now live in a world where you can be asked for feedback about your surgery before you can even get drugs for your surgery. I used to do a lot of healthcare copywriting, and I have written this sort of email for clients many, many times.

I’m a damned professional, as you can no doubt tell by the contents of this piece. So I feel qualified to suggest that if my hospital thinks patients will give them better feedback while under the influence, they need to hold off a little bit later or perhaps provide the first dose and a tablet right in the recovery room.

I will probably just send them a link to this piece. It’s a guaranteed click.

*No paid freelance work will be written today. I’m stupid but not that stupid.

**It wasn’t a metal coat hanger. It was much thinner than that. But this is a humor (?) piece, not a how-to. Do not try this at home.

For more:

Never have I written a piece with so many must-read related pieces. Take tomorrow off (vaguely suggest your reason is lumpectomy-related, especially if you are male) and read them all. What are they going to do — hire another little old lady from a nursing home to replace you? Well, maybe.

An ironic piece, considering:

Another ironic piece, considering:

Yes, that is the actual pizza I got, with bonus rants about pharmacies being off their game:

Read about the shortage of healthcare professionals:

Find out why hospitals are forced to care as much about their reviews as the medical services they provide:

Why I should have gotten these damned lumps out sooner and a bonus boob shot for people who have, I guess, a fetish for old ladies with old breasts:

Another rant about healthcare costs:

About me:

I’m a writer in central Illinois. Find me on Substack, Mastodon, Twitter or LinkedIn.