I want my tonsils back.

Just kidding. I don't, really. I've just been recovering from a tonsilectomy for six days and I'm disappointed in my own lack of resilience. I'm superhuman, dammit!!!

I was warned that it would be a long, difficult recovery. I have friends and family members who weighed in on Facebook telling me of their own experiences and begging me to reconsider my decision to have my tonsils removed. But after having about eight blazing cases of Strep Throat in the last year and a half, I figured it couldn't be a whole lot worse than what I had already endured.

The pain itself really isn't the worst part of it. Yes, there's pain, but there's also being hella tired and not being able to sleep. There's also an inability to taste anything. There's desperately wanting to wake up completely healed and instead waking up feeling noticably worse.

This morning I woke up gasping and choking on what must have been a big funky glob of gunk from my throat and it reminded me of a trailer I remember from an 1981 horror movie starring Sharon Stone called Deadly Blessing. Anybody know what I'm talking about?



These are the things that haunt my subconscious, people.

So with the fear of choking to death in my sleep, I don't think I've slept much in the last week. And my poor beloved R has been a prince. He's been working so hard to get stuff done so I wouldn't have to do it, he's exhausted and my tossing and turning and snoring and gagging isn't helping him at all. I feel really bad about that part, but I'll make it up to him. I'm hoping that removing my tonsils has had a positive effect on my gag reflex. (A-Bow chicka BOW!)

Then, there's the pain. And the incompetence of the genius nurse. And how the two have combined forces to prolong my suffering. I called the office yesterday, saying that I'd been unable to sleep for more than a few hours at a time because the pain meds wear off so quickly. The nurse's solution? Try taking fewer, less strong pain meds. That's what I did last night.

Tonight I'm trying something else. Called TAKE AS MANY DRUGS AS I CAN POSSIBLY CHOKE DOWN.

My sleep schedule is so completely screwed up, I don't even know what day it is. I think it's Tuesday. Tonight the boys have their karate class. They each have a ghi now because Beeb took karate for several years and we saved all of her karate stuff, so yay! That saved me sixty bucks!

And Pie has been riding his two-wheeler without the training wheels, so his elbows and knees are all scuffed up but he's determined as hell to ride like the big kids. So that's what's been going on in the world around me while I'm hiding out in my sickie cocoon.

My neck hurts from trying to sleep in an upright position. My throat hurts, my jaw hurts, my ears hurt, and I'm indescribably tired. R took FMLA so he was home with me Wednesday through Sunday, and now he's had to go back to work. Yesterday Kev came over to sit with me while I slept, but now he's back to work after recovering from his own surgery, so today's really the first day I'm completely on my own. It sucks.

I'm lonely and bored and absolutely no fun to be around. And I'm normally such a charming, effervescent person! I hate being boring.

And oh, I haven't even mentioned the other casualty of my tonsilectomy. Remember my mammogram last year? Click here if you missed it. It's a good read, particularly if you're new to my blog.

Remember how I FREAKED for a whole day about the possibility of having to take my tittie bling out for my mammogram? Well, it didn't even occur to me that I might have to take them out for my tonsilectomy. They weren't going to be cutting anywhere near my boobs, right? Didn't even enter my mind.

Fast forward to 6am last Wednesday when Grouchy Nurse - who, by the way, bruised my hand thusly when administering my IV -



asked me if I'd removed all of my jewelry. Wedding ring, earrings, piercings?

Yup, yup, huh??

Do you have Piercings?

Well, yeah, do I have to take them out, really?

What do you have done, your bellybutton?

(Scoffs)Ha, ha, no... that's so Spring Break... I have both nipples pierced.

They're gonna have to come out, ma'am.

Are ya sure?

Let me put it to you this way - Do you want to be electrocuted?

Not so much.

Then yes, they need to come out.

Shit. SHI-hi-hi-HIT.


So she handed me a plastic cup, drew the curtain, and, within a minute or two, the rings were out. The stainless steel rings that have been a part of me for about five years, symbolizing my ability to summon my inner badass and overcome my fear of needles and pain, were sitting, cold and lifeless, in a cup.




And I was really ok with it.

I hadn't spent the whole day before freaking out about it. I hadn't had a chance to stew or lament or even give it any thought at all. It was done. And there were my nipples; plain, unadorned and lovely.

Maybe I'll put them back, I don't know, but for now, I'm enjoying the novelty of Nips Au Naturale.