Yeah. That's about right.

There is going to be a theme on many of my blog posts - horrifying, hysterical hospital and/or doctor stories.

I have the most ABSURD luck when it comes to healthcare.

What's that? You don't believe me? Well, sit back and let's start to unpack my bold claim, shall we?

(Oh, and if you are easily embarrassed you might want to come back later - I have no shame. Seriously. The main character of this story is my hoo-ha.)

Some background: I have had three major surgeries, a bajillion diagnostic tests, a parade of odd diagnoses, etc. Nothing serious, just a lot of annoyances.

One of said diagnostic tests involved putting a camera in the artery (vein? I honestly don't know which one) at my groin and pushing it down my leg to look at something. Again, I don't really know what they were actually doing. I really need to start reading consent forms more closely...

What I DO know is that there is nothing quite as embarrassing as being 16 years old and contemplating the idea of a herd of people crowding around your crotch with a giant knife and a video camera. Thus, on the day of the procedure I was a LEETLE nervous.

::twinkly memory music:: (please feel free to imagine me staring vacantly into space)

I'm laying in the uncomfortable bed waiting, clutching the sheet up under my chin, and a nurse walks in and tells me she's here to help me get ready.

Oh, good. I need someone to hold my hand and make sure I feel ready for this. Phew.

Huh. I wonder what's that in her hand. It kind of looks like the razor my mom uses to cut my dad's hair, but ten times bigger.

Why is she grabbing my sheet? HEY, I WAS CLUTCHING THAT.

I'm paralyzed by horror. She yanks up my paper gown and asks me to lift my leg out of the way.

... out of the way of what? Oh. My. Gosh. She's shaving me like a poodle. What is happening? How did I end up here? Is this really in her job description?

I'm laying on the bed with my leg hiked up and the nurse is preparing the surgical site by removing the hair, standard procedure. EXCEPT THAT THE SURGICAL AREA IS MY LADY BITS.

Maybe if I don't move this isn't actually happening. Life doesn't get worse than this. I have no where to go but up.

Oh hey, it's my doctor. And a herd of medical students. Huh. I was wrong. This is worse.

I can't move. I don't even blink. No one is paying attention to me, which is unfortunate because I'm dying. Of humiliation.

The nurse looks at me, holding the world's largest razor and says in front of an audience of ten adult men, "would you like me to do the other side?"

GAH.

"You would not get out alive." Yes Bear, I'm aware of that.

Facts about John:

1. He’s an eagle scout.
2. He’s inherently athletic.
3. He’s a survivor type – he’d be the Rick in our zombie apocalypse camp.

Facts about Anna:

I’m a brownie reject (I was only a girl scout because my friends were).
I’m inherently dramatic.
I’m a run and scream and get eaten by zombies type – I’d be the Amy in our camp (you probably don’t remember her. She’s dead).

Keep these facts in mind as we discuss the following scenario.

John and I were watching Get Out Alive, which is the new Bear Grylls reality show. It has pairs of people competing for half a million dollars by going through ridiculous survival scenarios and skill tests. Some highlights of the episode we watched: they forded a glacial river (don’t worry their oxen didn’t die), bush whacked through a jungle, carved and ate a deer, drank their own pee mixed with muddy water, ate a giant fish eye, and other everyday survival tasks.

It was horrifying. I watched the whole thing slack-jawed and wide-eyed. John watched the whole thing excitedly, adding how he’d do things differently or giving them props when they did something smart. I had a sinking suspicion that he was envisioning us on this show that might as well be called, “Everything on the Planet That Anna Could Never, Ever Do.”

I finally said to him, “you do realize that I wouldn’t even survive the helicopter ride?” His response was something along the lines of, “oh no, we’d be fine, I’d help you.” Cue more bug-eyed staring.

Let’s exam this shall we.

What John would bring to the team:

1. Ability to start fire, build shelters, find food, purify water.
2. A can-do attitude and outside the box thinking.
3. General Bear Grylls like awesomeness.

What Anna would bring to the team:

1. A rousing rendition of “Welcome to the Jungle” sung off-key and with gusto.
2.The ability to state what everyone else is thinking but won’t say because they want to seem tough. For example:
“I don’t even know how I can get my pee in the bottle, let alone drink it.”
“Bear, why are you okay with us dying?”
"No, absolutely not.”
3.Vomit.

Needless to say, John needs someone else to be his buddy to take on the wild. We are now accepting applications.

Osie the Oompii

All Oompiis are born looking similar. They are lean, four-legged creatures with tightly fitting shells around their torsos. It isn’t long after an Oompii is born that their shells start to get damaged. Most adult Oompiis work all day to earn paint to cover up the scars and dents on their shells. All Oompiis know that a beautiful shell is the only way to be happy and to earn the favor of Papa Oompii, the village elder.

Osie was a happy Oompii who worked hard for her paints. She worked as a carrier, moving rocks down to the river, where they were used to build a bridge. She enjoyed carrying the rocks. She liked being outside and spending time with other Oompiis, it was the perfect job for her. The problem was that Osie always carried too much. She would haul rocks that were too big for her, damaging her shell, in an effort to earn more paint. She desperately wanted to make her shell beautiful, because she wanted to be one of Papa Oompii’s favorites.

Osie often saw Papa Oompii from afar by the river, but would make sure that he didn’t get too close because she did not want him to see her ugly shell. As he would try to walk closer to her, she would yell towards him that she would come see him later after she had done some more work. He would always look sadly at her when she said that, and she knew it was because she wasn’t earning her paint fast enough.  

One morning Osie realized she was close to earning a soft pink color that would make her shell perfect. As she was gathering up rocks to carry down to the river she got more than she ever had before, in the hopes of earning the pink that very day. Straining as hard as she could, she started to move the load of rocks.

Suddenly, a horrible cracking sound surrounded her and she realized she had shattered her shell. She stood staring in shock at the broken pieces of all her hard work surrounding her. She sat back in surprise and started to cry. She couldn’t believe it. She would never be able to impress Papa Oompii now. She would never be a favorite. She couldn’t even do the job she loved anymore. Everything had gone so wrong.

“What happened here?” Osie looked up, startled, and saw Papa Oompii looking down at her.

“I was trying so hard to earn paints so that I could paint my shell for you,” Osie sobbed out, “I just wanted everything to be perfect and now it’s all ruined. I can’t work, I can’t come see you, I can’t do anything.” Osie put her head on the ground, squeezing her eyes shut, and felt the grief welling up in her. It was hard to breath and it felt like everything in her was broken, not just her shell. Everything was destroyed, and now Papa Oompii knew it too.

After a long silence Osie opened her eyes and saw Papa Oompii gathering the pieces of her ugly, shattered shell. His face was twisted in concentration and pain and he was carefully putting her shell back together. Osie could not believe what she was seeing. What magic was this?

As she continued to watch she saw that every break Papa Oompii fixed appeared as a vivid cut on his shell. She had never seen his shell up close before, but saw now that it was covered in scars like the ones that were appearing before her eyes. She cried out as she realized what was happening, “What are you doing? You are ruining your shell! My shell is broken. There’s no point!”  

Papa Oompii looked at her as he continued to work, teeth gritted in pain. “There’s always a point. No shell is beyond my power to fix. It’s always been so sad to me how hard my Oompiis work for useless paint. A shell’s beauty is not in fake color, but in the healed wounds that show the work that has been done by you and done by me. I am able to heal any break, and the beautiful scar is a reminder of my love for you.” Sighing in relief, he handed her back her shell which was now whole again.

Red Letter Day

For the last few weeks I have been bogged down by a sinus infection. The kind of sickness that feels like your eyes are trying to escape your body by sheer force of will and you don’t understand how your body is still producing mucus. I was super foggy during it all, as a side effect of feeling like I had the plague.

Examples of said fogginess:

-          Talking with the doctor after he expressed concern that I had circled ‘shortness of breath’ as one of my symptoms – “Oh no, I meant shortness of breath like, when I walk upstairs I can’t breathe through the snot and it makes me want to rip my own face off. Sorry. I didn’t mean to be alarming with my circling.”

-          Thirty minutes later to the pharmacist – “Yes, I need the medication that will un-inflame my face and that I have to show you my I.D. for so you can make sure I don’t do meth.” (Sudafed was the answer we were looking for).

-          Standing at my car trying to unlock it for ten minutes, only to realize it isn’t my car. The realization came after the actual owner of the car pityingly told me it was hers.

-          Tripping every few steps because walking is apparently one of the hardest things I do all day.

You get the picture. It wasn’t pretty. Luckily, over the last week things have been on the uphill – hizzah! (I figured this blog needs regular hizzahs to keep things interesting). By this weekend I felt back to 100%. So imagine my surprise when all afternoon I was a walking mess.

Examples of said embarrassing events with no excuse whatsoever:

-          I noticed at about three, after John pointed it out to me, that I had spilled tea all down the front of me. I had no recollection of this event at all.

-          At the annual liter sale (where I buy all my shampoo for the whole year in one swoop) – I was holding four bottles of hair care products when the sales lady said I could leave them on the counter. I was hugely relieved because my arms were wicked tired. I then dropped them all on the ground. Apparently, my brain thought “put on counter” meant “LET GO NOW!” We all stared at the bottles and all I could say was, “huh. I have absolutely no explanation for what just happened.”

-          Went to a store to buy a dress for an upcoming wedding and smacked into the wrong side of a sliding glass door. Really hard – I was very committed to walking through that door.

-          And finally, walking back out of the store I decided at the last second to not go through the automatic door again since it had ended poorly for me earlier, whipped around, and slammed into the giant anti-theft screen thingies.

Moral of the story: don’t stand near me. I’ll probably run you over with my car or accidentally tar and feather you.  

Bombs Away!

Everyone hopes that one day they will have a claim to fame. Okay. Maybe not everyone. But put “some people” in place of “everyone” in that sentence and it makes it kind of wimpy. And grammatically incorrect.

Carrying on.

Everyone hopes that one day they will have a claim to fame. Whether that be, “I was once Miss America,” or, “I can put thirty-five marshmallows in my mouth without suffocating to death,” it is that sentence that you state and the whole room goes “wow!”

Without meaning to, I started on my legacy at the tender age of 18. Are you ready?

I have been pooped on by a bird on three different continents.

I’ll wait while you recover from your mind being blown.

But seriously, that is my claim to fame. And I will now share my tragic tales with you.

Time #3 – North America: Standing in line at the Denver Aquarium: Teeny little sparrow. Due to the previous occurrences, I was not even fazed. I felt the little poop hit the back of my hand, looked down, and thought to myself, “hmm. You aren’t even trying sparrow. That’s just pathetic. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Time #2 – Asia: Running through the streets of Calcutta, India: Albatross or bird of equal size. While in India, there were often moments of I NEED A BATHROOM IMMEDIATELY OR THIS STORY WILL REALLY STINK TO WRITE HOME ABOUT. One of those times started innocently enough, while I was walking from an internet café back to the hostel. A few minutes in to the walk I realized I needed to pick up the pace. A few more minutes it was emergency time and I started running like the world was about to end. As I was sprinting along I felt something hit my stomach and looked down. I. Was. Covered. In. Bird. Poop. The poop that I had apparently run into mid-fall from some unknown humongous bird covered me from sternum to pelvis. I was horrified, but none the less kept running because stopping would have made this story a whole lot grosser.

Time #1 – Europe: Walking under a bridge in London, England: Very sick pigeon. I was 18 and with a group of friends on our senior trip. As we were taking a leisurely walk through the city, I felt something on my cheek. At first I thought it was rain and was confused about why it was so warm. I looked down and saw that I had bird poop on my chest and all down my leg. With slowly dawning horror I knew.

There was bird poop. On my face. Bird poop. On. My. Face. Deep breath. Do not freak out. You are an adult. You are in Europe with your friends. You have to be a grown up.

“Um. Guys, there’s,” deep, shaky breath, “bird poop on my,” shuttering gasp, “face.” Everyone turns, looks at me, and then frantically starts looking for something to wipe it up. A well-meaning friend grabs a Dorito bag, out of the gutter, and starts walking towards me with it.

I spaz out. Luckily, another friend yanks me towards her and uses her sleeve to clean up my cheek and crisis is averted.   

So, my goal in life is now this - to be able to say, I have been pooped on, on all seven continents. And don’t worry; there are some horrifying pictures of penguins pooping that show that this is completely doable if I really put my mind to it.          

Scars

I got a massage on Saturday (thanks John!) and it was wonderful. As amazing as it was, there is a major downside to massages – the nekidness. Holy moly, I do not like being naked around strangers (which I’m going to go ahead and chalk up as a positive personality trait). That feeling when they leave you in the room and say, “ok go ahead and get undressed and get under the covers facedown,” is the worst.

After she made the typical pronouncement, I stood there like I had been stun gunned for a few seconds, cursing myself for forgetting how much I hate semi-public nudity. Then I ripped all my clothes off like a Tasmanian devil, because heaven forbid she knocks on the door before I’m safely tucked away under the covers.

She came back in and I tried to will myself to relax:

“I’M NAKED. THIS IS HORRIBLY AWKWARD.”

“It doesn’t matter. I have to get my money’s worth, so brain, RELAX NOW.”

“I like her toenail polish color.”

“There is a weird amount of cymbals in this music.”

“Relax, relax, relax, relax.”

“Ack! My nose is dripping.”

“I wonder if I should dye my hair brown…”

“SHUT UP BRAIN! “

“OUCH! Her strength to size ratio is much higher than expected.”

“Huh. I wonder why boys are made of puppy dog tails. That sounds graphic and violent.”

“Shhhhhhhh… reeeellllaaaaaax.”

My stream of thought went along like that for a while, until she got to my right leg - everything went crashingly silent in my skull when she uncovered it.

I have a 14 inch scar that runs from mid-calf, across the back of my knee, to mid-thigh. When I was 18 I had a large chunk of my calf muscle taken out, and was left with a scar that makes me look like I was filleted open by Hannibal. I’m not necessarily embarrassed by my scar, but I REALLY hate people touching it. I have no feeling on the back of my calf, because the surgery destroyed all my nerve endings in that area. It makes my skin crawl to think about someone touching me and me not being able to tell.

While I was mildly panicking about her touching my leg, I started to think about the strange things she must see in her line of work. She daily has people lying on the table in front of her, completely vulnerable. Their scars, tattoos, bruises, stretch marks, and every other imperfection are laid bare in front of her. She took it in stride, my “disfigured” leg. Well, at least I think she did. My face was crammed into that doughnut shaped torture device, so who knows what her actual response was.  

I’m working on becoming a counselor, and I realized, I am asking the same of my clients. We all have scars. They might be from trauma, loss, heartbreak, or any other number of sources. We might feel funny about people seeing them, or we might be paralyzed at the thought of anyone knowing about them. Some are deep, and some are shallow, but they can hurt, embarrass, and cause discomfort regardless.

I was struck by how brave someone is to seek out counseling, to lay there naked with all of their skin exposed. I can only pray that God will use me to help people heal and adjust, and that I will always take what I hear in stride and never make a person feel alarming or too damaged for help.

So, my hat is off to those who are struggling with their scars and taking the brave steps to heal them.

Some Insight into My Scary Brain.

A little background and/or context.

I was not raised in the United States, and all joking aside, I really didn’t have a weight problem before we moved back here.

“But Anna, how can you blame an entire country (and/or region depending on how you use the term ‘America’) for your weight problem?”

Well. Let me tell you why.

Many moons ago this was me:

I know. Adorable. I mean, you can practically hear me thinking, “pssh. Yeah. I know I’m the shiznit.”

Now here’s me in the context of my childhood:

One of these is not like the others. And another one of these is going to play in the WNBA – I mean for reals, look at the girl in the yellow hat. She’s got hops.

Anyway, I stuck out like a sore thumb. And apparently never understood field day, but that’s not the point. In the town we lived in when I was a little itty bit, I stood out so much that I could get in a taxi cab and say, “take me home.” And they would. When we went to the market people would flock around me and give me free gifts like flowers and candy. People would take my picture, pet my head, and fawn all over me. Seriously.

Now, keep in mind, I had no concept of the fact that I was white, or blonde, or different in any way. So in my mind all of these interactions affirmed a truth that I lived my life by: “I’m adorable! Look how they love me! The whole world must center around my awesomeness!”

Needless to say, I’m prone to grandiose thinking, which often leads to dramatic statements. So, it’s much more my style to say something like “America made me fat,” vs, “a new culture full of a variety of unhealthy foods that are easily accessible, puberty, poor lifestyle choices, and reality made me fat.”