On Hubris and Such...

In just under 9 hours, I will go under the knife again and finally get spayed. I've hoped for this surgery for some time as I have already dealt with a whole host of health issues stemming from those particular organs. It certainly made it easier to persuade my doctor to do the surgery when I just came out and told him that aside form just those issues, I was transitioning as well. He has firsthand knowledge of the mess in there, so I didn't have to do much arm-twisting. So, for the second time in six months, I will entrust my life to some medical professionals and hope nothing unexpected happens.

I write about surgery in this tone because I have different moments in life where I feel like I'm exhibiting a great deal of hubris. Many things we humans do seem to reek of it. Any time I fly, I think about it. Was mere mortal man ever supposed to sit in a giant tube of steel tonnage and hurtle through the air at 30,000+ feet? Every time we do, it's as if we're saying, "(Insert chosen Higher Being's/Power's name here), you can't keep me confined to the ground. I shall take to the sky any time I wish, and even higher than your most perfect winged creature."

Was mere mortal man supposed to be able to scale the walls of those geographical miracles to reach heights almost as high as he ascends in those aforementioned tubes of steel tonnage? I'm not sure. Just because it's been accomplished doesn't mean it was meant to be. There is a reason the oxygen levels up there aren't sufficient for the feeble human creatures' lungs: we're feeble!! Didn't you just see that I wrote that?? Why are you going up a mountain?? Why have I ever climbed into an airplane?? And why am I going to allow someone to put enough anesthetic in me to cause me to skip a portion of my life as if I were dead?

I'm not here to put a pall over my impending surgery. I think I just think too much. I was reading an article the other day about a girl dying during wisdom teeth surgery. Though we have a very high success rate in Western medicine's surgical practices, it's not perfect. We cannot expect to achieve success when we are doing things to one's body that should easily result in death.

Still, I'm going to march willingly into the NYU Langone Center and let a team of highly-skilled professionals take care of me for the second time in six short months. I'm not thrilled about it in the sense of putting myself at risk; believe me, I just wish it wasn't a necessity for a better quality of life down the road. But I am grateful I have quality health care and that this is one of the finest medical facilities in the world. And I'm excited that, for once, I'm not having an ambulatory procedure. Don't these people know I need to sleep off the anesthesia like I'd need to sleep off the worst hangover?? Thank God I get to spend one night doing that so that this time, I don't have to sit in the cab heaving into my "Fendi bag" (the fun nickname the staff gives the semi-fancy barf bag) all the way to Brooklyn.

Also, it hopefully means I won't get too many of the meds that are intended to counteract the nausea, because those make me want to drift back into my little coma where unfortunately, I tend to get to a respiration rate of about 4... I thoroughly enjoyed the physician in the recovery room stopping by my bed for what seemed like every minute to bang on the table and tell me to wake up and breathe. Trust me, homeslice, I wasn't trying to see if I could make that fancy machine beep every minute. I just wanted to pass back out and leave super-uber-hangover-nausea land. Is that such a crime?

So folks, off I go to complete last-minute preparations around here so we can roll out of here at the buttcrack of dawn to make it to the East Side by 6:30 AM. I am truly blessed with a very loving, giving woman who will get me through this, and parents who sent me some Christmas cheer a little early so I could actually enjoy the idea of it before I lay around in a drug-induced stupor for a few days. After my perfectly legal shanking in the name of medicine, I'm going to have to pop a couple of pills this time around. If I can, I might try to deliver on the promise I made last time to at least get some good, disoriented, foggy posts up on Facebook. If not, I will get back to the blog as soon as I can. Until then, thanks for reading, and I really do hope everyone has a very excellent holiday season. I appreciate all of you who have stood in my corner throughout my life. God bless.