I have stacks and files and reams of paper everywhere in my house. Paper finds me: It’s a law of nature, as sure as gravity. I’m currently—and always—trying to get rid of what papers I don’t really need, and today I was going through a file of papers from one of my Delta boxes. I came upon this specimen and initially wondered why I saved this messed up envelope. But then I remembered. I decided I had to post it for y’all, even though there’s no neckwear in sight.
I found this envelope sitting on Mom’s kitchen table one day about five years ago. It’s not an important document, in the traditional sense. It’s important to me because Mom wrote the message, while simultaneously talking to Kathi on the phone and mixing a batch of cookies. She wrote the note-to-self on the first paper thing she found handy, to remind her to pick up one of her great-grandkids the next day. It is so Mom-esque, with its hurried handwriting and the little blobs and smears of what is, no doubt, chocolate chip cookie dough from her busy-baking hands. This item is a scratch ‘n’ sniff treasure to me. It’s not going anywhere.
I’m wearing a diamond-point Bow Tie o’ the Day here as we erranded over the weekend. My Face Mask o’ the Day is the closest to my heart, with its own multitude o’ ties. Skitter is branching out with her own bold fashion statements by wearing her orange slices Tie o’ the Day curled and askew at the side of her neck. Skitter is so style-daring. It makes a neckwear mama proud.
I finally have a Cranky Hanky Panky medical procedure update. I have an appointment for a follow-up ERCP (scope-down-the-throat) on June 28 at University of Utah Hospital—to see if the lithotripsy I recently had successfully smashed my pancreatic boulder into bits and sent them on their way out of my body. I’m trying to be optimistic, but the fact that my Panky still stings makes me think the lithotripsy probably didn’t work. I won’t really know until they perform the ERCP.
I’m not complaining, but this current Hanky Panky round of appointments has taken waaaay too long. I’ve been trying to get this Panky problem solved since February. I know it’s because of the hospital backlog created by the pandemic, so I understand. But I can’t wait to get to the finish line on this particular Panky issue—even if that means having another surgery. I just want it finished. I know you’re probably sick of hearing about this seemingly never-ending saga. And I’m sick of writing about it. It just so happens to be what’s going on in my life, so we’re stuck with it as a tblog topic for a little while longer. Sorry.
Here’s an interesting thing to consider, though: My Panky appointment is on June 28. My PANCREATICODUODENECTOMY (I love writing that word) surgery was also on June 28, exactly three years ago, in 2018. You know I love a rich coincidence to think about. Is this date coincidence a sign telling me that I’ll find out at my ERCP appointment on this June 28th that I’m going to need another surgery? Or does it mean my ERCP will be the last procedure I will need this time around, because it will be as bigly a success as my PANCREATICODUODENECTOMY was? I could play this coincidence/meaning/connection game forever. In fact, I drive myself nuts with it. I can find meaning and connection, both literally and figuratively, in anything literal or figurative.
In this photo, my watermelon-y Bow Tie o’ the Day and I are waiting in line at the Dick’s Market pharmacy. Note that the ice cream aisle is directly behind me, which means I can shop for my most important food item while simultaneously waiting in line to pick up my meds.
This is the last photo which shows my left ear’s hearing device. What happened to it is a complete mystery to me, and I have been searching for it since I noticed it missing on Friday afternoon. Since discovering it was not in my ear, I have been unable to focus on anything but finding it. I have looked and looked and looked for it until my looker is sore. I’ve scoured my truck and my car. I have looked in all the potted plants in the house. I have checked the household garbage cans: under the kitchen sink, in the bathrooms, in the loft, in the bedrooms, and in the Tie Room. I even emptied the official bigly recycling and garbage cans, one stinky item at a time, searching for my hearing device. That was an experience I hope I never need to repeat. I had no luck finding my target.
I have swept the floors. Suzanne and I have lifted furniture to pull apart the dust bunnies beneath, in search of my little hearing gadget. I have sorted through our garden gravel near where I park my truck—although I did not rake the gravel like I had to do to find Dad’s lower dentures back in the day, as I wrote about a few weeks ago.
My next step is to check to see if someone might have found it at Dick’s and turned it in to customer service. It’s not just about the cost of replacing my hearing aid, it’s also about solving the mystery of how I lost it in the first place. I’m intrigued, and I will not give up the search. The hunt is personal, now.
As I was finishing up this post, it suddenly dawned on me that my left ear’s hearing aid is the same one the wind blew out of my ear in Farmington a few months ago. I wonder if, once it got a taste of freedom by flying around in that wind, its little gadget soul just could not face a life of captivity in my ear every day for the rest of its life. Somehow, it might have leapt to its escape. Now, that’s something I can understand.
I hadn’t planned to write a post this morning because I didn’t think I would have time. You see, I had a virtual therapy appointment scheduled with my “crazy head” doctor, so I planned nothing for an early TIE O’ THE DAY. I donned a nuts-and-bolts-and-screws Bow Tie o’ the Day to symbolically scream to my doc that I have many screws loose, for which I must be treated. But when it got close to my scheduled appointment time, I got a text from my doctor asking if we could switch my appointment to 3:00 PM this afternoon.
Now, you know what time 3:00 PM on weekdays really is to me, right? It’s Judge Judy o’ clock! My world stops at Judy o’ clock. Skitter knows not to need anything at that time of day. I won’t answer the door or the phone. From 3-4 PM, I exist only in theory—not in the flesh. Judge Judy is my daily respite from mundane household tasks, the pessimism of the world, and the conspiracy theories of those who believe in something only if it’s a conspiracy theory.
So, where was I at Judy o’ clock today? In a Zoom therapy session with my “crazy head” doctor. I didn’t say “yes” to switching the appointment time because I’m in any kind of dire bipolar pothole and must be seen ASAP. I agreed to switch times for one simple fact: My parents taught me to help make things easier on folks, even in small ways. If switching the time of my appointment helps my doctor’s day work better—and it doesn’t do me any damage—I have an obligation to do it, whether I’m gleeful about it or not. And, believe me, I was not gleeful about it. But I can adapt. I can make concessions. I can get along. Judge Judy would be so proud of me.
This past weekend, my nephew, Jeff, tied the nuptial knot with the beauteous Sharida. If my aging memory is correct, the first time I met Sharida was exactly four years ago this week, when she and Jeff visited Mom in her hospital room at Utah Valley Hospital—where Mom was recovering from emergency hip replacement surgery. I was not at all surprised to see Jeff walk into Mom’s hospital room. He is Mom’s first grandchild, and he adamantly maintains he is her favorite grandchild. (Of course, each of Mom’s grandkids claims to be her favorite.) But the fact that Jeff brought Sharida to join us in the chaos of Mom’s High-flying, Broken Hip Trick Adventure spoke volumes to me about how Jeff and Sharida thought about each other. Sharida’s concern for Mom was all it took for her to win me over.
Anyhoo… Suzanne and I drove to Ogden for the wedding celebration, which was held on the rooftop at Ogden River Brewing—a place which did not yet exist when we lived in Ogden. It was a fine-and-funky venue for the event. I can verify that the Diet Coke was good. Suzanne can verify that the wine was of yummy vintage. Oh, and Suzanne liked the peach cobbler, too. My one sadness of the day is that I missed running into the Father of the Groom, my longtime bro-in-law, Kent. Fortunately, my sister, Mercedes/BT, sent me a photo of Kent being his cute self in his neckwear. I have included the snapshot here. Kent’s wearing a paisley tie, in honor of me and my love for paisles. I regret that Kent and I missed out on gawking, in person, at each other’s neckwear choices.
For my own Tie o’ the Day, I chose to don my “usual” wedding tie. It’s kissy and romantic. I haven’t worn it to every wedding get-together I’ve attended since I bought it in the late 80’s, but I’ve probably worn it to more than half of them.
It is sometimes tricky for me to dress for events like wedding celebrations. It’s not that I don’t have anything appropriate to wear. It’s that I”m…well,…me. I have too much to wear, and—if left to think of only of myself—it would be kinda easy for me to devise a way to wear all of it at once! But somebody else’s wedding reception is not my show. I don’t want to stand out from anybody’s event’s purpose in any way whatsoever. On the other hand, after all these years of expressing my fashion ingenious-ness, I do have a style reputation to uphold. People expect a little flash-and-chuckle from me, in terms of my attire—whether I’m at a funeral, or at church, or at an Elton John concert. If I’m not wearing some piece of clothing or an accessory that is—for lack of a better word—LOUD, people tend to worry that I’m not feeling well. I have to carefully calculate to find the style balance between being who I am and being part of a family/community gathering.
My style mission is further complicated by my Bigfoot-like/Loch Ness Monster-like way of attending bigly events. Ask anyone who has ever thrown a party I’ve been invited to: I’m there, and then I’m suddenly gone. Sometimes, the only way people are completely convinced I even attended a shindig is that they tend to remember seeing something weird or excessively cool about what I was wearing. Someone will ask, “Was Helen there?” Then someone else will say, “I think so, because I remember seeing chicken-print Sloggers shoes under a bathroom stall door.” And then, someone else will say, “I’m pretty sure she showed up, because I saw someone wearing a cape out on the patio.” They tabulate the eccentric evidence, and eventually come to the conclusion that I had, in fact, been wherever I was invited to be.
The Tie o’ the Day. I have worn it to decades of wedding celebrations.The beautiful people. My nephew, Jeff, and his bride, Sharida. They like each other. A lot.The wedding celebration was held on the roof at Ogden River Brewing.My soda pop Socks o’ the Day and my animal-print Sloggers o’ the Day.The Father of the Groom wore a paisley tie just for me. Thanks, Nuk.Suzanne enjoyed the view by the river and a tomato or two.And the sunset view to the east of the party was dreamy too.
Bow Tie o’ the Day and I went on a bit of a boring, pre-weekend erranding escapade today, which had nothing to do with shopping for new clothing. But as I erranded—from far across a crowded discount store—I spied out of the corner of my eye, this lonely SpongeBob SquarePants shirt on a clearance rack. You know I had to have it. More specifically, I had to have the embroidered SpongeBob Squarepants with his signature red Tie o’ the Day. Ah, the unmitigated exuberance of running across psychedelic striped attire I can’t possibly ever actually need! I feel like I’m wearing Lucky Charms marshmallows. I so win bigly!
Yesterday was finally my bigly lithotripsy procedure at the University of Utah Hospital. Technically, the procedure is called Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy (ESWL). The word “lithotripsy” is derived from Greek words meaning “breaking stones.” (Insert joke here.) Yup, a machine called a lithotriptor pinpoints the offending calcification/stone, then zaps high energy shock waves at it to blow it to smithereens tiny enough to pass through your system and be eliminated by your body. Thank the heavens I was sedated while the pulverizing occurred. I didn’t feel a thing at the time, but I sure do now. The left side of my upper torso feels like someone beat the HELLen out of me. And it looks like it too. My ribs appear battered, bruised, and swollen. I tried to take a snapshot of the gore to post, but I couldn’t keep my left breasticle out of the picture. I decided it was best to not post that on TIE O’ THE DAY.
Anyhoo…The lithotripsy procedure itself went well, but I won’t know if the stone in my Cranky Hanky Panky was sufficiently pulverized until I go back to undergo yet another scope-down-the-gullet procedure (another ERCP). I wish I had something more definitive to tell you about whether yesterday was successful or not, but I don’t. Welcome to My So-Called Pancreatic Life.
However, I consider my day at the hospital a screaming success for two reasons—neither of which really has anything to do with my Cranky Hanky Panky. The first triumph is that, just by being ourselves, Suzanne and I made professional healthcare workers guffaw, chuckle, and snicker for about 5 hours. We didn’t mean to be entertaining. We were just entertaining ourselves in our usual banter about whatever crossed our minds, and doctors and nurses happened to overhear us. A good time was had by all, as the saying goes. At one point, one of my anesthesiologists stepped back into my room and said, “I love to hear you both laughing in here. Your conversations are so strange. That stuff about the yellow, fungal toenails was something I never even thought about.” I guess he had heard me when for some reason I said to Suzanne, “If I ever get a thick, crumbly, yellow, fungal toenail, just grab the pliers and yank it out.” Suzanne and I are highly educated gals. We think deeply. Sometimes, Suzanne and I speak about profound philosophical complexities. Apparently, we were sometimes Shakespearean stinkards, engaged in coarse—but relatively clean—conversation at the hospital yesterday.
But my ultimate triumph yesterday was the pickin’ out o’ the perfectly appropriate Tie o’ the Day. For weeks, I had been asking myself what clever neckwear I should wear to experience this new-to-me thing called lithotripsy. I was stymied. And then, when I was in The Tie Room the night before the procedure, a tie caught my eye and my wit: my cartoon “BAM, BOOM, WOW, HEY” lightning bolts and stars print kids’ tie. BAM and BOOM was exactly what the lithotriptor machine did to my torso. Tie o’ the Day was so lithotripsy-y. 👔
Before the procedure.After the procedure.You can never make “kindness” disappear completely.I was feeling it.I was proud to know I owned an appropriate Tie o’ the Day for lithotripsy. It’s a real stone smasher.The ball-and-chain. My better half.
I spent yesterday at the University of Utah Hospital having a lithotripsy procedure directed at the pancreatic boulder my panky seems to have gone out of its way to grow. I’m moving gingerly this morning. Stay tuned for this afternoon’s Cranky Hanky Panky update, in which I regale you with details of my latest medical adventure.
FYI Excuse my fish-belly-white legs, but note that my socks reveal I am honest when I say I never go anywhere without books.🤓
