The anasthesiologist was the kindest, most attractive man I've seen in a long while. Even my mother thought he was the ultimate and she's typically too old school to admit that about an african american man. If I hadn't passed out ten minutes after meeting him, I'd have liked to find out if he was single.

The other anasthesiologist was a horsey, lecherous looking old gentleman, and I was terrified that his would be the last face I saw before falling asleep. He kept asking me series of ridiculous questions and I wanted to concentrate very hard so I could get the answers right.

The room that the surgery was held in was small, crowded with people, and very cluttered. It didn't seem at all like the one's I'd seen on television, and I worried about how sanitary it was. Fortunately, the drugs kicked in shortly after.

There were several other patients and nursers in the recovery room, and upon waking up from surgery I was very chatty. I couldn't speak very well and I kept fading in and out of consciousness, but I remember feeling hurt that no one would stop and talk with me.

The morphine is what made me so chatty as well as very ill to my stomach whenever I attempted to eat. A few sips of broth and I felt as though I'd spent seven hours on a whirly ride in an amusement park.

The morning after surgery, when they'd taken off my bandages, I realized that they had shaved down my bikini area. I was embarassed for putting them out because I'd trimmed the area down the morning before and had they told me, I could have scraped it clean. Instead they took matters into their own hands, and I was suprisingly upset by the fact that they had nicked! me. I was not upset about the four inch scar crossing my groin.

I left the Cartoon Network on my television all night as I kept waking up every half hour to a strange, empty room. The nurses apologized for waking me up every few hours, but I was secretly grateful for the company.

Surgery was a blast. I took a lot of pictures. The people in hospitals are super nice. There are some great stories I can tell.

Hey Melanie, I'm sorry I lifted up my gown and made you stare at my naked incisions and pee-bag. It's a little embarassing in retrospect, so let's blame it on the morphine.

My medicine makes me so hungry. My lower abdomen is so swollen and hard--it's kind of cute. The surgeons shaved down my bikini area. It was nice of them to save me the work. My friends brought me cute flowers. Do you know how much I loved having a catheter?

( Glad tears of self-administered drugs. )

I was not worried about my surgery. I was excited. I thought about surgery the way I think about a new adventure or a vacation--this is something that I haven't done before and something I can tell great, hideous stories about over too-conservative dinners with strangers. But actually seeing my days off for pre-op appointments on next week's schedule at work swung the situation into reality. While I'm standing behind the cash wrap debating on which days to wear heels to work and which days I'll have time to run errands before and after my shifts, I realize that this is it. Instead of paying bills or seeing "the pants movie!" with my girlfriends, I will be in a doctor's office with a another ultrasound wand wedged between my thighs while I see the progress of Lily's growth and my doctor strategizes on how best to pry her from my ovary. I will pay them $750 that I've set aside between the past few weeks not really thinking about what that money meant. Here is some money, people. I'm giving this to you so that you can cut a hole into me and make me uncomfortable. I will give you more for keeping me incapacitated and in a hospital overnight. Try not to tip my operation table over and spill my organs on the floor as I wasn't able to donate any blood this past month (which I was upset about, you know this. I live to leak.), and have no handy bags to replace my red cells with despite my One Gallon Donor certificate. The tipsy-operation table is high on my list of Feared Likely Scenarios along with the one where someone from my team of cheery doctors singing do-wop hits attempts to throw the scalpel in the air and catch it behind their back. And the scalpel comes careening down toward my prone body, slicing off an invaluable part of me. You laugh because you don't think it's likely, but I've watched tv shows like Scrubs and Grey's Anatomy--I have no faith in the medical profession to do anything but ruin me for a Cause or the punch-line of a joke.



My brother says that when it's over, I should get a RIP LILY tattoo over my scar. I think he might be right.