Sunday, November 12, 2006

Cross that one off your list

I am happy to report that I finished reading "The Fountainhead" last week. I'm not so happy to report that I think I'm a Peter Keating. But what do you think?

Also, I finally got the plantar wart removed. I've never had surgery, except for maybe getting all 4 wisdom teeth removed. I wouldn't have called this surgery either, except that the pamphlet they gave me on my way out the door says, "Post-operative instructions for WART SURGERY." And WART SURGERY is in bigger bold text, as if it wasn't shameful enough. So, I'm calling it surgery, and now I can cross that off my list of things to do before I die*, although I'm fairly confident that would have naturally been one of the last things that would have happened anyway.

My foot fucking hurts. I had the surgery on Thursday afternoon. Another reason I wouldn't have called it surgery is because all I did was sit in a chair and take off my sock & shoe. My sister asked if I had to take my pants off, which is a natural question to ask if you picture me laid up in a hospital bed with nurses and doctors scrambling about. But really, I just took off the one sock & one shoe and sat in a chair, door to the treatroom still open, with all the employees & patients & delivery men poking their heads in saying, "Geez, how long have you had that?" So the thought of me sitting there with my pants off was pretty funny.

First they shot me in the foot with novacaine. Before the doctor started the procedure, I asked him if he'd ever been kicked in the face, because that was the image that flashed in my head when I thought of him sticking me with a needle. He held my foot tight enough so that didn't happen, although I did squirm in the chair and grit my teeth and clench my fists. I let out a cry of pain, and then immediately started laughing because by the time I stopped shouting, I realized my foot was numb, and then I just felt stupid. That was the worst part of the procedure, which I wished I knew at the time. I sat so rigid in the chair for the rest of the procedure, waiting for excrutiating pain that never came. My right thigh was spasming the whole time, which I'm fairly positive was self-induced and was not a medical result of the procedure they were performing on my foot. The procedure itself just felt like he was drawing on my foot with a sharpie. It took about 10 minutes, and then it was done. They had successfully cut the wart out of my foot.

I put my shoe & sock on and walked out. I was limping a little bit, but there wasn't much pain. It wasn't until he prescribed vicadin that I thought, hey wait a minute, is this going to hurt? Let me tell you, it fucking hurts. I have a hole in my foot that seems to be getting bigger. It's getting to the point where I can't even limp around on it. Today I'm going to my parents' house to get crutches, which I've also never had to use before. So cross that off the list* too!

* Footnote: The list of things to do before I die is too long and too all encompassing to post in a blog. And I'm sure my list is nearly identical to everyone else's list. At least Peter Keating's list anyway.