Holy. Shit.

I read Dr. Seuss. Now kids get books like this?

things that have happened to me recently:

1. i just had a filling. it was a little one, so it wasn't bad. but the right side of my mouth is all wonky now. i can see it being a little sore as the novocaine wears off. such is life.

2. i just read a 'made in 24 hours' comic about crohns disease. it's really good and sums up a lot of the experiences i had prior to surgery. unfortunately, crohns doesn't have the 'cure' colitis does — namely, removing the offending organ (because crohns impacts both the large and the small intestines). the only exception to my experience in this story was the energy fro 'roids. i was so sick by the time they threw me on them that i didn't even notice — in fact, most of them seemed to almost make me feel worse.

the story about food ads on tv is especially true. i don't talk too much about being sick anymore with anyone but rachael really. if you're new to the game, the hospital saga seems to start around this post — but petunia and carter and roxy all posted stuff around then too from their experiences.

here is a morsel: i was hospitalized and my parents flew out to la. they basically lived in my apartment for the 40 days i was stuck in a hospital bed, making a few flights home to hold down the fort. one of the things they did in the mornings and evenings was clean the apartment. they had nothing else to do and no other outlet for the stress my illness was causing them.

and one day, cleaning, they found the list i had made before i got super-sick. it was titled "foods i will eat again when i am well". it was a solid sheet, though written in sharpie, of foods i missed eating. everything from pizza to biscuits n gravy (which i still haven't had — i'm unsure if this is due to my not really wanting it or just sheer laziness). anyway, the list is depressing and it made my parents cry. and i still have it; i found it in a box last week. maybe ill scan it. but it really is depressing.

so yeah, this comic is pretty much what life was like for me for a (short) while. and now it isn't. it's still not ideal but i have less than zero room for complaining or whining.

3. hima wrote me the other day about patrick. we all know i enjoy the 'the world is so small!' stories. well, this time, it turns out that hima has a friend. this friend is dating a boy. the boy is the brother of patrick's wife. so it seems i am connected to both sides of the family.

hima knew a few details i didn't, but we had to agree that nothing seemed to make sense. of course, we have little information and are sitting a continent away, but still.

that too, is what makes this so weird. i was attached through vcu peeps to all of this, because patrick taught there. and because i know meg. but hima, she is all the way out here with virtually no connection back. but yet, there is one. a fairly direct one. and the fact that she an i know each other just makes it all the more odd.

seriously, how many people do i know that are connected to other people i know, independently of me? the world is tiny.

* * *

seriously, i can't be the only one that freaks out over this article: Tests reveal high chemical levels in kids' bodies

But that fascination soon changed to fear, as tests revealed that their children — Rowan, then 18 months, and Mikaela, then 5 — had chemical exposure levels up to seven times those of their parents.

and then on npr this morning, i hear someone say that the earth has had 5 major extinctions. and we are about to be number 6.

sigh.
its enough to make me want panic in the streets.

I’ve got a new job. I’m now working in the marketing department at a hospital. After next week, I will have been there a month already. It’s exciting being in a hospital. I love my new job.

The director of surgery ran up to me one afternoon and asked, “what do you think of body parts?”

I told her I didn’t know, but that I was fond of my own.

She said not to worry, and to get the camera and some scrubs on right away. I would do fine. The proctor and the rest of the surgeons would be here soon, and needed me to take some photos of their new learning lab. The cadaver was thawing on the table and they would need to start soon.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be alright,” she said. “The body is decapitated. You won’t see its eyes. It doesn’t smell, either.” Relieved at the news, I scrubbed in.

Before the surgery started, I asked the guy who worked for the company that handled the cadavers about why it was decapitated. There’s a law in this state that you can’t transport an intact human body over the state line. So companies selling bodies that have been donated to science usually remove the head or the feet. Working with people’s bodies, there are lots of other crazy rules about how they need to be treated. You can’t really have any fun with them at all.

It’s a fact that most cadavers are sold in pieces. Like an old car, you can make more money on the parts than on the whole thing. So if you’re demonstrating a hand surgery, you would only want to buy an arm. Or for heart surgery, you would only need a torso. There are lots of other crazy rules about how bodies are handled. Our surgery was a hip resurfacing, and we needed as much body as we could get.

The surgery started, and I started snapping pictures. They unwrapped the unfrozen cadaver and lifted the sheet that covered it. When they opened it up, it looked like a big raw turkey. Since it was preserved, there was no blood. Everything was going fine, until the proctor announced that he was going to dislocate the hip.

The techs, nurses and observers in the room knew that this was my first time in a surgery. So they all looked at me as the doctor separated the bone from the wet socket.

It made a sucking sound, and then a moist *pop*. They laughed as I recoiled a little. I don’t think anyone noticed me when I heaved. I tried my best to hide it in a cough.

To tell the truth, watching Lisa’s Caesarian section was far worse. At least with the cadaver, there was no smell of cauterized flesh. There was no blood and I didn’t know the person it was happening to. Yesterday I was giving a tour in the operating room and saw a group of doctors working on a fat guy who was basically split open on the table. That was pretty gross.

My life is very different than it was a month ago. So many new things happening.

Betty is amazing. She is so interactive and interested in her new world. It’s frustrating because there never seems to be time for myself – to do most of the things I enjoyed before. Or for Lisa and I to have time to enjoy each other. But I wouldn't trade being a dad for the anything. There's something fulfilling about taking care of a whole living human person. This is true responsibility, and I feel so proud.