Okay, so we won’t ACTUALLY call you

Neal reminded me yesterday that we aren’t actually very good at calling people at all.  True, but we’ll email, and that’s very nice too.  It’s just not our last name.

And if you were wondering what prompted this exchange…Neal read my blog for the FIRST TIME!  It only took 8 months!  It’s really taken our relationship to a whole other level.  Now if I could just get my parents to care…

I feel I must briefly address my incarceration-loving audience since this is the 3rd non-jail-related post in a row.  Since this weird spiral (at this point, it feels like a downward spiral, but I’m willing to consider that it may just be a VERY SNEAKY upward spiral, so I’m withholding judgment) I’ve been on since December began, I’ve devoted very little time to my jailed men.  I still love them and they’ll be back in my life very soon…as in next week, since I have a paper to write that I’m presenting at a conference in San Diego in April.

Neal wants me to give up the conference on account of said spiral and how stressful it will be to write a paper in two weeks, but I just can’t because:

1.

Duh, it's San Diego

2.

It's a chance to see my adorable niece

3.

It's the discussant for my paper who knows where I live

It’s very hard to be serious or profound in the middle of the night

So I won’t even try.

I will, however, be random.  That is very easy in the middle of the night.

1. I love Google Reader.  Now I have only been using Google Reader for about 11 hours, but I’m already a big believer in it.  I am amazed at how much time it is going to save me by alerting me to the latest blog posts and delivering Slate articles the moment they’re published.  This is all I do lately, and now I can do it much, much faster.  Thanks Audrey, my awesome cousin/tech adviser.

2. I love this family picture from this Christmas.  How Neal is almost smiling, almost.  How my dad’s eyes are closed…this never fails!  How I am the only one wearing pajamas and making an intentionally strange face, two things I always do and sadly, too many people rarely do.  How many people look either suspicious or awkward, which is so often the case because pictures are rarely requested by the masses but by the select few who don’t mind making other people uncomfortable (I am in the latter category, although I didn’t request this particular pic).

L to R: Steve and Sharon (my parents), me, Neal, Robin-Elise (N's sister), Lorie and Kevin (N's parents)

3. I love how children give you occasion to write very strange captions on photos, like this one of my adorable niece, which I have very aptly titled, “Ayda sticking head in washing machine.”

4. I love this bebe with the ridiculously long tongue!

Surgery: $1105. Sedation: Priceless.

I must veer from my usual jail-related fare to share a video that has been taking the edge off my pain this morning.

Background: I had neck surgery yesterday…one in a string of 6, 7…we’ve lost track.  My former doctor moved out of state to start his own practice, so I ended up with the “Big Guy” yesterday.  Big Guy as in the owner of the practice that spends only about 2.5 seconds with any one patient unless he is sticking, cutting, or burning them.  I was warned that he has a very different style than Dr. Peterson, whose calm and conservative nature I found appealing.

They were NOT joking.  I’ll spare you all of the medical-related minutiae because nobody would relate except people who frequent doctors’ offices, except to say that 1) he puts in his own IVs [doctors usually suck at this because they're out of practice, but man, can this guy deliver an only minorly painful IV--I was wowed] and 2) he prefers to sedate EVERYBODY.  This was particularly surprising to me because Dr. Peterson prefers to have his patients fully lucid; he asks frequently, “Where do you feel this?  Does this hurt?  How are you doing?”‘  During one procedure, Dr. Peterson could tell I was kind of losing it–the pain was dulling my senses and my words were getting slurred–so he stopped.  He only did 1 level (too hard to explain what that means) when he had intended to do 3.  All that is just to illustrate that Dr. Peterson wants you there with him, and the Big Guy most definitely does not.

If this were the only difference, I would take the Big Guy everyday of the week and twice on Sundays.  Being sedated was, frankly, wonderful.  I barely even knew what happened whereas usually it’s the most grueling 1-2 hours of my life.  Unfortunately, with this difference comes a lot of other little things related to his bedside manner, which isn’t the worst I’ve seen, nor the best.  On this particular occasion, he came to the prep area moments before the surgery was supposed to begin to 1) deliver bad news, 2) get authorization for more extensive treatment than we had discussed previously, and 3) remind me that I could bleed, bruise, or die from this.  “Sound good?  Let’s get you up on the operating table!”

This isn’t really the story of the bad news (and I didn’t consent to the additional work); this is an ODE TO SEDATION…which beautifully erased those distressing moments beforehand, the whole of the surgery, and left me hilariously stumbling out of the OR, bumping into doors, and laughing hysterically.

Neal wants the world to know what he had to deal with afterward, and this youtube clip pretty much sums it up.

God bless sedation.