September 15, 2006

Well ... I didn't die.

I honestly thought I might. Right up to the moment the anesthesiologist was slipping that little rubber cone over my face ("Count backwards from 100, Sweetie"), part of me was convinced that I was not going to survive the breast reduction surgery. Although I never went so far as to update my will or make a mix-tape of songs for my funeral -- I figured that as long as they didn't play "My Heart Will Go On," there would be no reason for me to rise out of my coffin and kick somebody's ass -- I did spend some time the night before the surgery looking at family photos and listening to weepy music. And I did write down some basic instructions for keeping *FootNotes* on the cyber airwaves, should I tragically expire on the operating table. (How else will my great-great-great-grandchildren be able to read about talking birds and middle-aged Spandex? I ask you?)

And I did make a big ceremony out of handing David my engagement and wedding rings, twenty minutes before the surgery:

Secra: "You can give these back to me when I wake up, Honey. I love you." (Sniff.)
David: "Um ... I think I have a hole in my pocket."

But I didn't die. Which -- I'm hoping at least some of you will agree -- is a good thing.

It's been a month and some change since I had the breast reduction. My goal, going in -- besides being able to see my feet again for the first time since Mouth & MacNeal were on the Billboard Hot 100 -- was to chronicle the whole surgical 'adventure' from start to finish ... a sort of *Boobage* Diary, as it were, complete with pictures and pathology and gruesome daily blurbs all about the color of the fluid in my drainage tubes. It was going to be epic! It was going to be cutting-edge! It was going to surpass even The Great 2002-In-2002 Riding Adventure in terms of grit and wit and all-around Pulitzer-worthiness! (Or -- at the very least -- it was going to rate me an occasional mention on What I Saw Today.)

But a funny thing happened on my way to *Boobage* Diary glory:

I had surgery.

Not just any surgery, either, but huge, scary, Slice-You-Open /Scoop-Out-Your-Innards /Rearrange-Everything/ Then-Sew-The-Whole-Mess-Back-Together surgery. And regardless of how prepared you think you may be, going into something like that ... trust me on this one ... YOU ARE NOT PREPARED. I was especially clueless about what the recovery period would be like. Before the surgery, I had this lovely vision of me sitting in bed in a pair of silk pajamas, sipping hot lemon tea, typing amusing *FootNotes* anecdotes on the laptop while my doting husband plumped my pillows and brought me fresh bowls of wonton soup. I thought the whole thing was going to be one big vacation, basically. And it was, I guess ... if your idea of a "vacation" involves squeezing bloody goop out of a hole in your cleavage and going for eleven days without taking a shower. The pain wasn't even the worst of it, either. The pain has been entirely manageable, thanks to the nice people at The Percocet Factory (and then later, once I'd reached the limits of my comfort zone with narcotics, the nice people at The Ibuprofen and Ice-Pack Factories). The worst part for me was (and continues to be) the absolute dearth of anything even approaching energy, these past six weeks. It's as though I am presented with precisely eight ounces of get-up-and-go, every morning ... and 7.99 ounces of that goes towards healing from surgery. The remaining .01 ounce has to be evenly divided between David, family, work, friends, housework, e-mail, laundry, meals, junky pop culture magazines, shopping, paying bills, pseudo-reality TV, exercise, catching up on world events and indulging in proper daily exfoliation.

By the time I finish writing this mini-entry, in fact, I will have used up my entire .01 allotment for the day.

Still, I have no regrets. I LOVE my new, streamlined boobage. Pain, mess, inconvenience, expense, lack of energy aside, I would do the whole thing over again in a hot minute. Best of all: I'm still alive. And I plan to STAY that way for the next forty or fifty or seventy-seven-and-a-half years, God -- and the San Andreas Fault -- willing. If nothing else, that should give me enough time to get a proper *FootNotes* entry written, finally.

Plus I'll have a chance to make that mix tape for my funeral.

Stay tuned.