A Big Imagination and Far Too Much Free Time

Years ago, when I first started this job I was on night shift. I live down the road from my parents who retired the same month I got this job. One day I was sleeping and I woke up with severe abdominal pain. It was right under my breasts and it was intense and it seemed to move. In my mind I could see a round shaped, organ colored blob that was in between two fists and they were squeezing the heck out of it. It eventually went away and I went back to sleep. I told my mother about it and she said nothing because she thinks I am a hypochondriac. A little while later, my parents go on a 3 or 4 week driving trip to see the west. Not even two days later, and still new to my job, I woke up again with the same pain. I had this feeling I was going to die. I had never had a pain like this except that one time before and I knew it wasn’t normal. I live by myself in the country and my parents were gone. Both my brothers lived an hour away. I was single and had friends that weren’t very good at being friends or they had their own families and life going on. The point was, I was going to die and I would be at my home dead for at least two days before someone checked on me and it was probably gonna be my mama who texted me asking me how I was doing. Then as she always did and still does, she wouldn’t look at her phone for another few hours to check the answer to the question she asked. When she would have checked her phone and found I had not answered, she’d have given me two more days to rot and get eaten by my cat NOLA before she asked anyone to check on me. I knew I had to be proactive. I got up and drove to the Emergency Room. I can remember telling the Doctor after describing my symptoms, that they needed to make sure I don’t die. Because if I die, I’ll be there for a long time before someone came to look in on me. I think he found that amusing and a little sad. He sonogramed me and I had gall stones, so I wasn’t going to die. He got me in with another Doctor who does gall bladder surgery. I made sure to get a work excuse because I had no sleep that day and was drained physically and emotionally. The job I worked at had a day shift and a night shift. I knew my big boss would be at work and I was already passing by there so I decided giving her the excuse in person. After I explained myself and gave her the excuse, she noticed the Dr’s excuse was for two days and not just that one. I hadn’t been working at this job for six weeks, and I was still on probation and I didn’t need to take two days off so, I asked her to give me back my excuse. Well she didn’t. That night I was hungry and feeling better. I asked a friend to meet me somewhere to eat supper. On the way home that night I hit a huge deer and destroyed my car.  I’m not going to go into that gem of an adventure but, just know, things usually don’t go my way. I’m the one whose take out order of food is usually wrong and I don’t find out until I’m 35 minutes away or I have a big mouthful of nasty, shredded lettuce. In olden times, Netflix used to mail DVD’s to my house. I’d usually get two DVDs at a time and the packaging they were in always covered the title of what was on the DVD. Every time they arrived, I’d make a bet with myself and guess which movie was which. Every time I guessed wrong. I had two DVDs delivered probably every week for well over a year. I had a 50% chance to get the name of the DVD correct and never did. That is a metaphor of my life. I’ve always imagined that an ancestor of mine was walking down the road and came upon an old lady begging for some bread. Instead of helping her out, my ancestor told the old lady to get a job and kicked dirt in her face and walked off laughing. Of course that little old lady was a witch or a fairy Godmother and of course she laid a curse out on that jerk and his descendants. This is the, “May every road you choose be rocky” kind of curse. The kind of curse where life is bad enough to want to complain about but just good enough that you’d be viewed as a privileged brat if you did. Back to my gallbladder… Weeks later, my parents came home and I had my gallbladder removed. Everyone I talked to said close to the same thing about what their body would do after the surgery. Well, my body was doing the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do. As un-lady like as this is, I feel I need to tell you my most painful symptom so my story could be understood better. Please forgive the crudeness. I was not able to go number 2. As the days passed, I was getting more and more concerned so I googled my symptoms. I was really specific with my symptoms and made sure to type, “after gallbladder surgery “ after everyone. After all the research I did on Google and Web MD, I diagnosed myself with liver failure. I’d gotten really depressed and started making plans on what I needed to do and who I needed to tell. I figured I’d tell my parents later. I was at church one Sunday and my Sister n law told me she was pregnant with her second child. I said, “congratulations! I’m going through liver failure.” Thinking back on it, I probably could have picked a better time to tell her that but it was the  second time she got pregnant. It would have been a far greater thunder stealer had it been her first pregnancy. I got my mom to ride to my follow up appointment with me so I could be with someone when I was given the bad news. I told her she needed to prepare herself for what was going to happen. I went into the patient room, the Dr. checked my scars and poked on me and said everything looked good. I sat up and told him all my symptoms and how I couldn’t go to the bathroom and I googled that my liver was failing. He said, “you probably are still getting over the anesthesia and you should never google your symptoms till at least 6 weeks after any procedure”. As soon as I got out of the Doctor’s office, I had to race home because I had to use the bathroom. Throughout this experience, I thought I was going to die more than once. I had emotionally prepared myself for the Doctor to give me my death sentence. I was so anxious and stressed about everything, I think my brain said to my body, “Why bother doing your job? We’re all gonna die anyway.” As soon as I and/or my brain heard the good news, my brain then said to my body, “would you start doing your job?! It’s not like you are dying or anything!” My body and I think my brain is an ahole.