People Should Not Be Inflated!

Today I had my ‘tubes tied’ or rather clamped. My understanding of the procedure is this: they shove a line in your hand, then pump a wonderous magical potion through it to relax you. I now have a fantasy of laying on the floor under the influence of this magic potion for the rest of my life. Next, they stab you with a straw, inflate you like a balloon with carbon dioxide. Then stab you with a camera stick, shove a couple of clamps down the straw, whack those on your fallopian tubes, out come the stick and straw then they glue your stab-holes shut. Turns out the stabbing is not the worst part, the inflating is. You see, when you deflate, not all of the CO2 comes out, and it becomes trapped against your diaphragm, organs and nerves. This makes breathing difficult and causes sharp pains through your abdomen and shoulders. The pain that comes and goes is enough to nearly make me pass out.

These embroidered lady-parts add a touch of classic country style to any kitchen or living room.

Official advice is to lie flat to help the gas move away from the diaphragm, but for me, laying down has the opposite effect. I attempted to go to bed, but the pain intensified too much to bear. Mr. Flatmate will be relieved, as he wasn’t too keen on sleeping next to me because surgical wounds are “gross”. Mine are particularly gross because they’re purple. I tried to explain that it’s the surgical glue that is purple, but it just wouldn’t sink in.  The river of empathy within him runs extremely shallow. I slept next to him when his face was a smashed up gore-fest, but two little laparoscopic incisions and I’m demoted to plague-corpse status.

So here I am, again, up in the middle of the night, eating codeine like candy and wishing they’d sent me home with the oxycodone that they were giving me in the ward. Good shit, that is. I’m tempted to go and sleep in my car because the seats in there are ideal, but Mum is staying the night and I don’t want her to wake up and think I’ve lost my mind and gone walkabout in the night. Still, no biggie if I don’t get any sleep, the kids are at Ex’s house for the weekend; if I’m a drooling zombie tomorrow, that’s ok.

 

Rest in Peace Mr. Flatmate

This afternoon I grabbed a blanket and lay down on the sofa-bed for a quick nap in preparation for tonight’s Game of Thrones marathon, so that we know what everyone on the internet is talking about. Naps are crucial preparation for such events, as you have to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to keep track of who’s fucking who, and who just got their brains dashed against the cobbles.

Well, I’m super prepared now. I woke up hours later, in complete darkness, unsure of my location or whether it was evening or morning. My viewing companion has mysteriously disappeared, presumably in the search of dinner, which I didn’t cook on account of being unconscious. His computer lays eerily abandoned, no gameplay or YLYL videos grace it’s monitor. Jealous McCuntbeak is strangely silent, her life partner, and therefore her joy, dissolved into nothingness. Now he’s out there, on his own, like a cub in the wilderness fending for himself. In the middle of winter, no less. I can only assume that he didn’t make it, and is now food for the predators.

And this begs the question, how long is it appropriate to wait before I start watching Game of Thrones by myself?

 

I bet he was delicious. Photo by Forest Gilbakian