2003-07-29 - 4:24 p.m.
dear diary,
the nurse tapped the inside of my elbow for a good solid eight minutes, at least. it's funny with the blood nurses, because you can always tell right away who knows what they're doing and who doesn't.
this one didn't really know what she was doing.
i had to sit and tell bold-faced lies* in order to get this surgery done next week. the lies mostly included the following: no, i don't suffer from severe and crippling headaches. what? my foot is swollen with infection? no it isn't. irregular menstruation? no i haven't had that for the last two years. insane doubling over pain in my ovaries and gall bladder area? nope. swollen and tender lymph nodes? i didn't mean to gasp when you squeezed my neck, really. you hear an asthmatic wheeze in my chest? must be something wrong with your stethascope, dr maam.
*incidentally, what classifies a lie as a "bold-faced" lie? is it because you can lie so thoroughly and effectively that you virtually render your audience, well... unchanged? or does it count that i couldn't meet their eyes when i lied? does that still make it bold-faced? or does bold-faced just mean that i lied with conscious intent, as in there was some form of planning? like if bold-face lying was comparable to murder, i had intent to kill, as opposed to a crime of passion? anyway, i lied. i'm not proud.
so as i was hopping off the dr's table in what i hoped was a generous display of my physical health ie: perkiness and hoppability, i pulled something in my back. there was an awful crunching noise and i think i immediately collapsed an inch. as short as i am, i can't really afford the loss of vertebrae at this point. and since i had back surgery earlier this year, and can now no longer walk or sit or wipe my ass with the same carefree ease i had yesterday, i guess it's ok to say that more than a few tears were shed out of frustration and anger at this body. this body ages and grows and droops and does its own thing regardless of whether or not i'm consciously involved. and i fucking hate it for doing that to me.
yeah yeah, cry me a river.
a river full of ligament, needles, exposed bulging disks and poorly circulated blood.