This post is being typed by my emanuensis, Joey A. Woestman, on account of the fact that I can’t sit up, and I certainly can’t put a computer on my lap.

Today started out wrong. I forgot my ID and insurance card at home, even though they reminded me yesterday not to forget them. They still let me have surgery, which was kinda cool, I guess.

Once they got that all sorted out, they put me in my very own room. We paid extra for a private room so Joey could stay here with me. I then sat around in a really ugly hospital gown for an hour doing crossword puzzles (thanks Amy and Michelle!) until the doc came in to talk to me.

She told me what she was going to do and said, I hope I don’t ahve to make an incision in your stomach, but I might have to, if I can’t get done what I need to do laproscopically. Then, they came to suck my blood.

Four tubes of blood.

It took them five tries before they got one that worked. I was shaking, and crying, and when the anesthesiologist came in, he yelled at teh nurses, which made me cry because they had been nice to me, and it wasn’t their fault that they couldn’t get the blood out, I have bad veins. I have since apologized for the anesthesiologist’s rude behavior to my poor nurses.

The surgery was supposed to be thirty minutes, but it might have been a little bit longer. It’s hard for me to know ’cause I was asleep. I woke up with a four to five inch incision in my tummy. They couldn’t do it laproscopically, so now I’m going to be here for two nights, at least.

And, because nothing in this whole situation has gone the way they said it would go, once they got inside of me they had to untwist and move stuff around because apparently the puzzle pieces weren’t in the right place. I don’t know what picture they made, but it wasn’t the right one.

They still didn’t find the ectopic pregnancy, just a “mass” that they saw on the ultrasound a couple days ago. They took it out and cleaned everything up. They say I’m in better shape now then I was going in!

I have a morphine bump. Every six and a half minutes I can have more, if I want it. I don’t use it much. Whenever I push the button it makes a cool beeping sound, and then locks me out from pushing the button again anytime soon.

When they brought me up from surgery, Joey’s uncle Ken and two cute kids were here. Lexi gave me a little sad-eyed dog that was sooo cute. She even told me what the message said, even though she can’t read. Charlie sensed my pain and attempted to  push buttons on the morphine pump. Good thing his dad caught him.

I’ve tried to take a nap four times, but everytime I do, someone walks in the door, so I’ve scrapped the nap idea. When I talk my voice sounds like I’ve been smoking for sixty-seven years, and I’ve never even tried a cigarette. I’m thinking of moonlighting as a sort of hospital-bed-confined Louis Armstrong impersonator. If the other people’s families are as bored as Joey, I should be able to make good money singing “What a Wonderful World” up and down the corridors.

Once we found out that I was going to have to spend the night, I sent Joey home with a very specific list of stuff to get. It could probably have been less specific, but I was feeling pretty OCD and wanted my Bliss shampoo, not any of the other stuff.

Fortunately for me (unfortunately for y’all), there will be no pictures today. I don’t think I’ve ever looked this bad in my entire life. Plus, we forgot the camera (but really, we all know that’s just an excuse – I mean, c’mon, we have our cell phones!). I have pictures of the inside of me, which I might post sometime in the future. If I get enough comments and some free chocolate from y’all.

They were talking about discharging me on Tuesday. So, you can guarantee that there will be more confusing, morphine-laced posts before then. I’ll keep using Joey, though, because he’s good at reading my mind and interpreting my babbling and feeding me ice chips (not all at the same time).

I have a window in my hopsital room, and there’s a flapping piece of plastic across teh way and I want to go out there and cut it, but it’s on the outside of the fifth floor. they’re doing construction. If this were my house, there would be no flapping plastic.