Surgery day

I opened my eyes at three a.m to the sound of my alarm.  The hospital had pushed my gastric bypass surgery up from ten in the morning to five a.m..  My husband and I drove over to Orange County nauseous from fatigue.  We arrived at the hospital early.  It was only four-thirty.  The guard instructed us to wait in the lobby.  I tapped my feet and considered bolting for the door. 

I thought about how the Fourth of July fireworks looked last night from our front yard and my nephew's shouts of delight as each one of them lit up the sky. 

The receptionist checked me in at five a.m..  I changed into a white hospital gown with nothing underneath and a blue shower cap for my head.  Adrian stayed with me as I waited to go into surgery.  Doctor Ali stopped by at seven and said surgery should be starting soon.  He told me not to worry. 

They wheeled me into the surgery room half an hour later.  The nurses joked about how much they ate the day before.  The anesthesiologist looked at them and said, "C'mon guys, no talking about food."  He leaned over me and whispered, "I will have you asleep in a second."

The next thing I remember is waking up in my hospital room moaning in pain.  I felt as if someone was stabbing me with a knife in my stomach over and over.  I screamed at Adrian, "Why did I do this?"

The next two days in the hospital were unpleasant (ahem, understatement).  The morphine helped me through the pain but every two hours or so I would be poked and prodded.  There were also mandatory breathing treatments (three a day), chaperoned bathroom trips and blood draws.  I tried to take liquid down but it was hard.  For the first time in many years, I was not hungry.

My favorite part was walking the hospital floor sans underwear.  A young nurse wrapped a second hospital gown around me like a robe and giggled as she said, "I wouldn't want my butt hanging out." 

The whole time in the hospital I didn't sleep.  I merely rested.  I couldn't even read.  My body had no energy for anything except my daily ritual of "The Price is Right".

My second night in the hospital, Wednesday night, was surreal.  A woman screamed as she gagged in the room next door.  She seemed to be having some serious complications from the gastric bypass surgery.  I kept thinking, "Make it stop."  I couldn't imagine how painful it would be to throw up with a stomach punctured by six open wounds. 

They took me off the morphine late Wednesday night.  I was sad to see it go.  Pressing the button was comforting.  "Drink this," the nurse said with a smile.  Feeling a little bit like Alice in Wonderland, I took a sip of the foul poison tasting concoction and gagged. 

"Do I have to drink this?" I asked.  "It will help with the pain," the nurse responded with a stern look.  I wanted my giggly nurse back.  The nurse watched as I drained the cup.

At about two a.m., I woke up from my drug induced coma and couldn't breathe.  My chest felt tight.  I paged the nursing station and the same stern nurse came by.  "I can't breathe," I told her with a gasp.  Her face turned concerned.  They checked my vitals and asked me if my chest hurt.  When I nodded yes, they paged the doctor.  An hour and one EKG later, I was diagnosed with gas and a bad reaction to the liquid pain medicine.

It just goes to show, our bodies know things.  If something tastes vial, do not drink it. 

Thursday morning, the young giggly nurse brought me the same liquid pain medicine.  This time I was firm.  "I cannot take that I said.  Give me something else."  She obliged.

That afternoon, the doctor released me from the hospital.  The nurse wheeled me out to my sister's car and my weight loss adventure began.

Mickey

I had a cousin named Mickey when I was little.  Mickey was fat.  Very fat.  He probably weighed over six hundred pounds.  Obesity was less common in those days, but according to my mom, it ran in my dad's side of the family. 

Mickey lived with his mom Gladys in Deer Lodge, Montana.  Gladys was my dad's aunt and Mickey was my dad's favorite cousin.  My mom recently told me that we used to drive to visit him on vacation. 

"You sat out on the steps with him don't you remember?  It was 1976, the same year Roberta got married," my mom said.  She rambled on, "Mickey was such a nice person."

Mickey was supposed to be Jackie's nino (godfather), but something happened and my uncle Roland offered to fill in.  I had to share my godfather just like everything else in my childhood. 

In 1977, Mickey had weight loss surgery.  Soon after, he had a heart attack and died.  Mickey lost his weight too fast and his body couldn't handle it.

At Jackie's high school graduation in 1989, Uncle Roland brought Jackie a present and gave her a big hug.  I remember thinking, I wish we had different godfathers.  Mickey's image flitted through my mind the way long forgotten memories sometimes do. 

I watched Jackie and my best friend Tracy graduate from the bleachers.  My mom wouldn't talk to me.  My former classmates looked at me with awkward faces.  I had dropped out after sleeping my way through most of my senior year.  That time is still fuzzy.  No one thought to ask why I slept so much.  I took my GED that summer. 

I was always skinny when I was little.  My favorite outfit in elementary school was a pair of "slim" pale blue dittos and my green frog shirt.   Jackie struggled with her weight.  I never had to worry.

My dietician and I went over my weight history about six months ago.  My weight gain has been slow, about ten pounds a year for the last ten or twelve years.  It has been a gradual slide downhill. 

Yet, I refuse to categorize myself as merely a fat girl.  I am more than the sum of my pounds.  About twelve years ago, I graduated from UCR with high honors and watched my mom and dad cry in the audience.  Nine years ago, I graduated from USC Law School and got a job at the largest law firm in Texas.  Yeah, that's right, this high school dropout and former waitress rubbing elbows with Texas elite, except, I never really fit in.

Six years ago, my dad died and I moved back home and started writing about my childhood.  Four years ago, I decided to share my stories and attended the VONA writing workshop in San Francisco.  That same year, I applied to the Public Defender's Office.  In short, I found my bliss.  Then, my weight started to get to me both emotionally and physically.

Life is strange.  If you are not careful it can pass you by.  I am almost forty and I hope I can change again.  I have a lot left in me.  Just like I know I have a book in me, I know there is still a skinny girl inside of me.  She is gorgeous.  Her outside matches her inner strength. 

In ten years, I hope I will look back at the last years as my fat, albiet productive, phase.

Countdown

My fat girl surgery is this Tuesday.  I got a call today from the surgeon's assistant who told me my surgery had been moved up to five a.m.  My surgery was originally scheduled for ten a.m. and I knew it was too good to be true.  After the assistant called, I ran into the house to tell Adrian.  He teased me into almost believing he wouldn't take me that early. 

I walked outside to let the dogs out and looked down at my feet.  The polish on my feel was chipped and my souls were calloused.  I was going into surgery with ugly feet.  Not good.  I drove down to the pedicure salon and waited an hour to get my toenails cut and polished and my soles buffed until they were soft.

The days before surgery are going by fast.  Some days, I wish I was a super hero who had the power to slow down time.  Other days, I want time to speed up so I can hurry up and get it over with.  I have never had surgery before and the prospect of being "under" and at the mercy of others makes me nervous. 

What bothers me the most is the idea of not knowing what will happen after.  Will I be hungry?  Will I be in pain?  How long will it take for the weight to drop off? 

Was it Bob Dylan who said that the answer is blowing in the wind?  If so, the answer is a hot breeze that makes me sweat.  The day before my surgery I have to scrub down with an anti bacterial soap and take off all my jewelery and wear no lotion or deodorant.  It is fitting.  This is a new me, a new season and a new day.

Three days and eight hours to go.  But who's counting?

Mysterious Ways

On Saturday night, we went to the U2 concert.  I had never seen U2 live.  It is surprising considering that I had a long time love affair with Bono in the 1980's.  He slept in my bedroom on the wall albeit on a poster board that was a present from my best friend Tracy. 

I have written blogs about music before.  I would hope dear readers that you know how much Morrisey and the Smiths mean to me.  Similarly, the Pixies, my second favorite band of all time, make me want to run in circles and jump up and down.  Listening to X makes me want to drive fast.  Siouxsie inspires me to dance and wave my hands in their air in the way only a goth girl can do.

U2 always made me sway.  There is something about their music that is transcendent. 

When the guitar went low Saturday night and Bono's voice rose into the air, it felt like the sky had opened up for a moment.  I am a teller of tales, some say I am prone to exaggeration, but when Bono sang "One" I cried.    That is the power of music for me.  It takes me somewhere else.  It floats me away and I am captivated. 

The night ended on a low note.  It took us an hour to get out of the parking lot.  Tracy was more than tipsy and argued with J in the car.  Adrian and I got into a little spat.

The next morning Adrian and I took the moms out to Hesperia again.  Adrian planted some more trees and I laid out on the concrete and sunned myself like a lizard.  We barbequed some hamburgers on the grill and swam in the cold pool.  The last time I dove in, I held my breath for as long as I could and danced underwater.

High and Low

For those of you who don't know the distinction, there is a high and low desert in California.  The high desert is Hesperia and beyond off of the Interstate 15 North and the low desert is Palm Springs and beyond off the 10 (East) freeway.  Calling the Interstate 10 freeway by its numerical designation with a "the" in front of it is the California way of saying it. 

My father-in-law Alberto bought a ranch house in the high desert in Hesperia about six months before he died.  Alberto became obesessed with remodeling the house.  It was like he was in a race.  With the help of a contractor, Alberto gutted the entire interior and put in red and white tile in the living room and family room.  He bought dark wood floors for all of the bedrooms and painted the white walls with bright colors.

Alberto stained the fence and outdoor bar a warm brown and planted palm trees by the stone rock pool.  In a mere six months, the house was coming together.  Alberto and Orieta started moving their clothes over from the West Covina house.  They planned on moving in the next weekend.

Then Alberto died.  Orieta walked into his bedroom at their house in West Covina and found him dead in his bed.   His arms were crossed over his heart.  I was in court all morning with my phone turned off and it took two hours for the police to reach me.  Orieta's neighbor held her hand while the police questioned her.  I drove over to their house in a panic.  I called my brother-in-law Vinnie who tried to calm me down.  My hands were shaking as I pulled over to have Adran paged at his office  When his assistant put him on the phone, I didn't have to say a word because Adrian knew. 

The last nine months, the house has fallen into disrepair.  Adrian stops by after work sometimes, but the weeds have taken over and the pool is a slight greenish color.  The wood floors have a coat of dust. 

Last night, I drove the moms out to the Hesperia house and Adrian met us there after work.  We went out to dinner at Steer and Stine, a local IE steakhouse.  We played Apples to Apples and I took a Tylenol PM to fall asleep.  Adrian and I took the master bedroom and in the morning, I got up early and walked outside.  Adrian was already up and testing the water of the pool with a PH kit.  

"We slept in the same bed my dad died in," Adrian said looking at me. 

"I wish you hadn't told me that," I said.

"It doesn't bother me," Adrian said and shook his head as he looked out at the mountains.  "It's father's day weekend."

My husband has always been a bit morbid.  It is probably what attracted me to him.  I am a former Goth girl.  I think what he was getting at is that he feels closer to his father out there in the high desert.  Alberto may be dead, but his project lives on.

There ain't no fairy tale endings

I wish someone told me this when I was little.  There are no fairy tale endings.  People don't live happily ever after.  No prince ever comes on a white horse and spirits you away.  Or if they do, years later, the horse breaks down and the prince turns out to be a frog.

The best you can hope for is to get through the drudgery and savor those little moments of happiness that make life worthwhile.  Let's face it, being an adult sucks.  It sucks ass. 

It is much easier to be a child or a teenager or even a young adult.  I think that is why so many of my stories deal with the past because whatever my childhood was, that is, chaotic, scary, happy, adventurous, traumatic, and sometimes surprising, it was better than the day to day drudgery of an ordinary adult existence.  I remember the freedom of it.  That sense that one's whole life was an unknown. 

Now, at about forty, and maybe this post is just a symptom of the almost forty blues, I see life as hard and disappointing.  Most days, I get up and go to work and work hard to get through my court calendar.  My life is somewhat like my calendar.  I have felony settlement conferences, i.e. negotiations, there are sentencing hearings, i.e. punishments and even oral arguments, i.e. fights.  And, like my calendar, I just gotta get through it because tomorrow is another day.

This blog is not meant to be depressing.  It is meant to express how the world can get you down.   One can only hope, I mean I can only hope, to pick myself up again and start over every day.  The goal is to try and be a better person, to treat people with kindness and be positive.

In the end, that's the best we can do.  Just try.  And try again.

Bye Bye Fat Girl

I have my fat girl surgery in less than a month.  Soon, I will be a shadow of my former self.  My only fear is looking like a bobblehead.  That's not really true of course.  My fears contain multitudes. 

One fear is that I will die on the operating table looking up at a florescent light.  They say death is hardest on those you leave behind, but I would be horrified to die from an operation designed to to make one stop eating.  It would a very American way to die. 

Don't take this wrong.  My goal in talking about this is not to trivialize it.  Instead, I want to bring my fears out in the open with the hope that they will dissolve in the sun of recognition. 

This fear of death includes leaving my husband all alone with the dogs and the two moms.  I don't know what he would do without me by his side.  My outgoing optimism balances out his pessimistic and hermit like tendancies.  Plus, I know him pretty well after almost nineteen years and he loves me.   He really loves me despite my round tummy.  What can I say?  I know he is hot as only an Argentine can be, but I am just plain loveable. 

Another fear is that I will get a staph infection and end up very sick.  I read an article by one of my favorite doctor writers Atul Gawande about staph infections and it freaked me out.  I told my husband that I asked my doctor about the risks, but I lied.  When my doctor asked me if I had any questions, I shook my head.  Maybe I don't want to know.

Finally, there is always the fear of failure.  Despite my purported confidence to everyone that everything will go well, I am afraid I won't be able to stop eating.  That I have eaten whatever I wanted for far too long.   That I will will have surgery and give it a go for a couple of months and slowly start sliding back to eating too much too quickly and drinking beer and Diet Coke.

Then I look in the mirror and tell myself, this has to change, you have to change.   There is no more time.  My hand lifts and almost without thinking, I give a sad little wave to the person in the mirror.