by Jenny Lawson
Laura’s possum hair story always struck me as being one of the worst ways to wake up at two a.m. until the day when I woke up at that exact same time and found that my right arm had been ripped off and replaced with bees. Or at least, that’s what it felt like. And I lay there for a second, thinking that I was certainly dying and that if a possum had chewed off my arm I would probably bleed out within minutes and that this was exactly the sort of way I would die. I considered nudging Victor softly so that his last moments with me would be romantic and tender but then my chest spasmed and I may have involuntarily punched him in the neck as hard as I could. Luckily for him, that wasn’t very hard (as I was fragile and dying) and so he groggily asked, “Christ. Did you just punch me in the neck?” and I screamed, “A POSSUM JUST ATE OFF MY ARM,” and that’s probably the worst way to wake up ever.
I felt certain I was near death and Victor switched on the lights and pointed out that there was no blood and that I was probably just having a charley horse in my chest, which I’m pretty sure is not a real thing. I gasped for breath and told Victor that I was having a heart attack. Then he pointed out that I was clutching the wrong side of my chest for it to be my heart and that’s when I realized that I was probably having a heart attack so bad that my heart was trying to run away. Or maybe my right boob was exploding. I tried to explain this to Victor but he was too busy yelling at me to calm down and so I explained that I needed to go to the hospital, except what came out was, “I’VE SWALLOWED A LEPRECHAUN AND IT’S EATING ITS WAY OUT OF MY CHEST.” This is when Victor assumed I’d had some sort of stroke and he got Hailey and me in the car as quickly as possible.
Hailey was still mostly asleep so I tried to stay quiet so I wouldn’t scare her. Victor kept telling me to breathe, and I told him that I already knew how to breathe and why do people even say that because it’s not like people just forget to breathe. He pointed out that perhaps people do and maybe that’s why people die all the time, and then another spasm hit me and I bit through my lip and passed out. When I came to there were police lights flashing and Victor was in the process of getting arrested for speeding. But then he explained that he was speeding because his wife was having a heart attack and the cops came to my door, looked at me, and called for an ambulance. Then they proceeded to yell at Victor for stupidly driving so fast when he could have just called for an ambulance but in his defense, he wasn’t thinking straight and he’d just been punched in the neck by a woman who claimed to have a leprechaun inside her.
The ambulance arrived and the EMTs tried to get me to walk to the gurney but my entire body was shutting down and I couldn’t stand up straight from what I just assumed was spontaneous retroactive scoliosis. The next twenty minutes were a blur, but I remember looking at my feet as the ambulance careened down the road and thinking that I should totally tweet a picture of this. Then I realized I hurt too much to use Twitter and that’s when I knew I was dying.
The EMT strapped monitors to my heart and took my vitals and then told the driver to make it quicker. Then he said, “Sweetheart, are you allergic to nitroglycerin? Because I need to give you some,” and that seemed really bizarre because I clearly remember that episode of Little House on the Prairie when the wheat crop failed and Pa had to take that job driving a wagon of highly explosive nitroglycerin and almost blew his balls off. Then the EMT asked again and I said, “I’m allergic to exploding,” and he looked at me funny and told the driver to speed up again. Probably he thought I was hallucinating because he didn’t watch enough Little House on the Prairie. Regardless, he made me hold nitroglycerin under my tongue and it tasted a lot like pain, but that sort of made sense since I was letting an explosive melt in my mouth like a poisonous Jolly Rancher.
Moments later I was being whisked into the emergency room while a horde of doctors tried to ascertain what was wrong with me. “Patient complained of severe chest pains. Blood pressure is elevated,” the EMT said.
“And I ate explosives,” I whispered, but no one was listening because they were too busy pulling my shirt off and doing an EKG, which apparently told the doctor that my heart was perfectly fine and that I probably had gas. I was relieved that I wasn’t having a heart attack but I was pretty sure I was still dying and so I screamed, “MAKE IT STOP OR I’LL CUT YOU,” right as Victor rushed into the room.
“She’s not good with pain,” he explained as the doctor backed away from the gurney. Then the doctor nodded and ordered something diluted to give to me. I told him I wanted the full strength and then he explained that he’d actually said “Dilaudid” and that this was a major pain reliever. A few excruciating minutes later a nurse injected me with the Dilaudid1 and then the pain abated and I decided not to set fire to the hospital after all. In fact, I felt so grateful that I thought I should make up for my poor behavior by sharing a bit of trivia.
“Did you know,” I asked no one in particular, “that sharks are attracted to urine?”
“She’ll be a bit high for a while,” the nurse said to Victor.
“So no matter how scared you are,” I continued, “DO NOT URINATE.”
“And that’s how you can tell the drugs are working,” said the nurse.
“No,” Victor sighed. “It’s actually not. This is your tip. She does this at restaurants too.”
I tried to protest but I was a bit too nauseous to point out that I only do it when we have excellent service or when the waiter refills my Diet Coke without my having to ask for it.
Then I blinked and we were home. I might have been high. Also, I was a little mortified that I’d mistaken gas for a heart attack but I trusted the doctor and was relieved that it would never happen again.
Until two weeks later when it totally happened again.
This time I was certain I was dying but I was calm enough to let Victor drive me to the hospital at a normal rate of speed because in spite of the fact that I hurt more than when I was in labor, I was pretty sure the doctor was just going to tell me I needed to fart really bad. We arrived and they recognized me immediately because apparently I have that sort of face, or maybe because most people don’t give out valuable shark advice for services rendered.
I calmly explained that this was not gas and that it felt like I was having labor pains in my chest and that possibly I’d developed an extra vagina and needed to push. No one believed me and so I screamed, “I HURT AND YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO FIX ME SO GIVE ME DILAUDID,” and then Victor told me to stop talking because I looked like a drug seeker. I explained that that was very astute of him because I was a drug seeker and I was seeking drugs to make my invisible chest vagina stop being such an asshole. Then he explained that “drug seeker” is medical code for addicts who come into the hospital looking for a fix and that screaming the actual name of the drug that I wanted was not helping my case. Luckily there was a doctor there who did a ton of blood work while I was screaming and realized that there was something wrong and that I was probably passing a gallstone. They gave me drugs and told me to see a gallbladder specialist to make sure the stone had passed. I told them that hamsters can only blink one eye at a time. I considered this a fair trade but they billed my insurance company anyway.
I went to see a group of gallbladder specialists but they all said that it was better to not do surgery because maybe I wouldn’t have another attack, but I always find that removing body parts that want to kill you is a good thing so they referred me to Dr. Morales, who was known for taking out gallbladders like crazy. Maybe he collects them. Hard to know. What I did know though was that Dr. Morales didn’t have a normal office and instead just used one from the nearby colon and rectal surgery clinic, which was disconcerting for a number of reasons. First, because I was pretty sure I didn’t want my gallbladder removed rectally, and second, because the pictures in the waiting room were of asses. Literally.
Dr. Morales was over eighty, spoke English only when he had to, and had been doing gallbladder removal since before my mom was alive. He was odd but brilliant, and after a loo
k at my chart he told me that my gallbladder was lingering and was diseased. I explained that it wasn’t really “lingering” so much as it was “loitering” and that I wanted it removed. I wondered if you could file a restraining order against your gallbladder for loitering since it’s not wanted and it’s also trying to kill you. Then you could call the police and have your gallbladder removed and never have to pay for it because it was creating a public nuisance. Unless you have to pay the police to remove people who are public nuisances. I don’t know. Frankly, I’ve never actually been on the complaining side of that scenario.
Dr. Morales said he’d fill me full of carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide (whichever one is not poisonous) and yank out my gallbladder through a hole in my belly button, but when I asked if I could keep my gallstones (so I could make a necklace out of them) he said that he couldn’t do that because the new regulations are assholes, and he said that he couldn’t even give people who’d been shot the bullets he dug out of them because they’re considered “medical waste” once they’ve been pulled out of your body. This seems a bit hypocritical because my daughter came out of my body and they totally let me take her home. And some people even bring home their placenta and make their family eat it (seriously … that’s a thing) and no one ever complains about that. (Except for the people who have to eat placenta, probably.) I explained that I was pretty sure that wearing my gallstones was less offensive than making your family unwittingly eat your placenta and Dr. Morales agreed with me and said he’d totally had this same argument a dozen times, which seems like an odd argument to have more than once. He did, however, agree to take lots of pictures and share them with me. My friend Maile offered to come take pictures of the surgery, and I almost took her up on it because she’s an amazing photographer. But then I remembered hearing that after the surgery the doctor pushes all of the leftover carbon-whatever gas out of your belly button. I don’t think I’d want anyone to witness me forcibly farting out of my own belly button, because if people are really your friends this is exactly the sort of shit you should want to protect them from. Like it says in the Bible, being a friend means never having to witness farting belly buttons. Or something. I might be misremembering.
As I waited in the hospital room for the surgery to commence I was a bit worried because you always hear horror stories about people getting things left in them or having the wrong body part removed. “What if I wake up and have a penis?” I asked the nurse.
She assured me that wouldn’t happen. She said that it was a normal fear and that often she sees people write “NOT THIS LEG” on their good leg when they’re in for knee surgery. I considered doing that, but everywhere. Small notes all over my body saying things like: “No, not there.” “You’re getting warmer.” “What the shit are you doing? I need that.” “Don’t fuck with that. That’s mine.” But Victor wouldn’t give me a Sharpie because he said I couldn’t be trusted when I was fully sober, much less high on pain drugs.
So instead I pulled out my lucky nipple. (Side note: On book tour once a woman brought me a fake nipple that she makes for people who want bigger nipples or are recovering from a mastectomy. It looks amazingly realistic and I often wear it peeking out of my shirt to see if people will tell me I have a nip slip. If they do I remove the nipple and thank them for being decent. It’s an excellent way to single out the awesome people. Also, if I’m at a bar and the bartender won’t look at me I’ll put the nipple on my forehead because it always gets people’s attention.) I stuck my lucky nipple to my stomach and when the nurse came back in I said, “I think I’m having some sort of allergic reaction. Is this supposed to be there?” as I pointed at the very realistic stomach nipple that wasn’t there a few minutes ago when she’d begun prepping me for surgery. To her credit, she was not surprised at all, which makes me think that there are more people than you think growing extra nipples and also that she’s probably not the most observant nurse ever.
They eventually wheeled me in and the surgery was probably very surgical but I don’t remember it because I was high. The recovery was a bit painful because my gallbladder was more infected than expected but it was also somewhat entertaining for people who weren’t me.
“I need drugs,” I moaned to Victor from my hospital bed.
He looked at his watch. “Not for another twenty minutes.”
“Why do you hate me?”
“I don’t hate you,” he said as he looked back down at his magazine. “I just don’t want you to overdose on morphine.”
“Fine,” I said. “Distract me then.”
“Okay. This magazine says that you can tell what you should do with your life if you just take away all thoughts of risks. So what would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?”
“I’d be a Pegasus.”
“That’s not really how this works.”
“I’d be a brown Pegasus though, because if you were a white Pegasus you’d be hounded by Lisa Frank fans and nine-year-olds. And black Pegasuses are just as bad because they’re all badass and heavy metal bands would probably want to kidnap them. But no one wants a shabby brown Pegasus. I could just flap around the neighborhood and no one would really care. And maybe I’d wish for back herpes so that people wouldn’t hassle me for rides.”
Victor looked back at his magazine. “I’m not going to talk to you if you’re not taking this seriously.”
“I am taking this seriously,” I said. “I’d be a rumpled, brown Pegasus with back herpes if I knew I couldn’t fail.”
“That’s not how this works,” Victor said. “It’s supposed to teach you what you really want in life.”
“That is what I want.”
“PICK SOMETHING REAL.”
“Fine,” I huffed. I thought for a few seconds. “Then I guess I choose failing. I’d choose to fail but I couldn’t fail so that would create a wormhole or some sort of paradox and then the whole world would explode.”
Victor raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to blow up the world because you didn’t get your way? Don’t you think you’re overreacting a bit?”
“I think I need more morphine.”
“I think this conversation proves you’ve had enough.”
I crossed my arms. “I’m going to tell the nurse that you’re mean to me and won’t let me have back herpes or drugs.”
Victor looked back at his magazine. “Good luck with that.”
I looked at the “on duty” chart in my room and was very confused about the fact that there was a nurse assigned to my room whose name was “Labya” and I couldn’t stop myself from wondering if it was actually pronounced like “labia” or if it was more of a short “a” like “LAH-bee-yuh.”
When the nurse came back to give me a shot in my ass cheek I figured all social pretenses were gone and so I said, “I just have to ask … is it pronounced ‘Lay-bee-uh’ or ‘Lah-bee-uh’?” and she shook her head in confusion, saying, “I thought you were here because of your gallbladder.”
“No,” I explained. “I mean, on the menu. Is that Labia?”
And she asked, “You’re asking me if labia is on the menu?”
Victor sank into his chair and tried to pretend he wasn’t there.
I explained that I wasn’t hitting on her and that I was referring to the chart on the desk and then she stared at it and then at me with a furrowed, confused brow, probably because she was now offended that I wasn’t hitting on her.
Then she took a deep breath and said … “Latoya. That says Latoya.”
And I looked closer and it totally did say Latoya. But in my defense, it looked liked “Labia” from a distance. Much like tacos. Or Georgia O’Keeffe paintings.
Then Dr. Morales came in and showed me pictures of my gross, removed gallbladder, which was filled with stones, and he said it was really good that we did the surgery because my gallbladder was mostly dead and was beginning to affect my other body parts because it had started to gangrene.
“Gangrene?” I asked. “I didn’t even know t
hat was still a thing. It’s like I’m on the Oregon Trail all over again.” Then Victor pointed out that I was thinking of dysentery and Dr. Morales was like, “You had dysentery on the Oregon Trail? None of this is in your chart.”
I said, “I’m guessing you didn’t play a lot of educational computer games when you were a kid?” and he said that they didn’t have computer games when he was a kid and I explained that that’s why he probably never got dysentery in a video game.
Dr. Morales shook his head. “Sounds unsanitary. Just where were you putting those games?” I explained that that wasn’t really what I meant and I redirected the conversation to my zombie gallbladder.
Victor tried to argue that my gallbladder was not zombified but I disagreed. It was slightly alive but mostly dead and was infecting everything it touched. It was literally the living dead. That’s kind of the very definition of a zombie. So basically I was turning into a zombie one organ at a time. And I had a bunch of tubes in me to drain out all the bad stuff, which was shitty because I had to keep them in for a week. When I went home the cats thought that the tubes coming out of my stomach were great cat toys and kept batting at them and trying to hang on them. It’s funny until your pain pills wear off. I don’t recommend it for recovery.
Victor said he wasn’t surprised that my ordinary gallbladder surgery—that he’d had as an outpatient—had turned into weeks of hassle because my body is known for being as complicated and weird as I am. But I’m not the only one with weird body parts. For example, Victor insists that he has “internal ear flaps,” which is just ridiculous. When I go underwater I always end up with an ear infection and then Victor blames me because I don’t close my ear flaps. And he’s right because they don’t exist. He disagrees and claims my ear flaps are just weak. He says his ear flaps are almost superhuman. “I use them to drown out your crazy so they get a lot of practice.” I don’t believe in ear flaps, but if I did have them I probably lost them when I was little and I got so many ear infections my eardrums burst. My mom would always try to cure them the old-fashioned way, by pouring olive oil in my ear and putting a cotton ball in it. The first time I tried olive oil in a restaurant I was like, “This tastes like ear ointment,” and that’s because it was ear ointment. This is why I don’t like olives or olive oil. Because they taste like ear infections.