Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: The Tumor Speaks

For months she’s been going on about me, and, finally, I get my say. It’s about freakin' time. Ever been the victim of online character assassination? Well that’s what’s been happening on this blog and I’m pissed off. But then, you’d be pissed off, too, if you had spent years curled up against a kidney. You know what they talk about, back and forth, the pair of them? Urine. Absofreakinlutely boring. All pissing and moaning and urea. Guess it could have been worse. I might have been curled up with the lower intestines. There’s absolute crap conversation, if you get my drift.

I’m not some lump. I’m a spindle cell schwannoma -- a spin-off of a special type of neuron. That’s right, I have a brain. Or I am a brain. I’m the one who got the math genes. That’s right, Lin, you coulda breezed through algebra in high school if you had bothered to say hi, how are you, how do I factor this second-order polynomial. But no, never even the time of day. Slighted. Not that I expect anyone reading this blog to get it, ‘cause you’ve all bought in to crap that’s being slung like hash at a diner around here.

Let’s recap what I’ve been called over the last few months. An alien evil twin. A stealthy little “mass” bastard. Fatter than Jabba the Hut. Great, I get called names by some freaking Star Wars geek. Ever think that they kicked the wrong one of us out? She didn’t like my weight? Maybe she should have cut out snacking. Call me a freakin’ Cheeto? I’m surprised she weren’t screaming for Dr. Chin to pull out his light f-ing saber. "Remove it before Thanksgiving we cannot. Arrangements around people with real problems like FREAKING LIVER FAILURE we must make.”

Anyway, like any of this is really news to the ex-landlord. Don’t let her fool you -- she knew I was down here even back when she was a teenager. Always could feel something, only now it’s, "Eeek! There’s a thing down there! Get it out! GET IT OUT!!" Like Brad Pitt wanting to forget his TV debut as a guest on Growing Pains. Or David Hasselhoff trying to get past playing a character called Boner in the 70's soft-core comedy porn Revenge of the Cheerleaders. (Though in Hasselhoff’s case, you could argue that things never did get much better.) The point is, you can’t walk away from your past, or erase it, even if you do have a zipper installed fore to aft and try yanking it out.

Well, chick, I’m gone and you got your wish, though soon you’re gonna wish you hadn’t, 'cause now all your parts are bouncing around, not knowing what to do. Who do you think kept them in line all these years? Your spleen and stomach? Constantly going at it. Constantly. It was like having that middle-aged couple next door to your apartment screaming and yelling and breaking things, then getting pissed off at you when you called the cops. I’m the one who kept them from tearing each other apart. You thought I was on an extended vaca down there? I was working on keeping your digestive and excretory systems from getting on your ass. Literally. Think it’s easy being squashed this way and that? Think you know what it’s like to be uncomfortable? Try having the whole mass of you sitting on your head. It’s no picnic.

And your surgical triumph? Pictures with Dr. Chin, acting like a QVC presenter, holding me up like I’m an object on display with the phone lines manned for the flood of orders. (Oh, and Doc, what’s with the cold hands? Jeez, get your circulation checked, OK?) At least Linnnnnn -- I lose track of how many goddamned n’s to add -- got her privates and the "girls," including the vaunted party boob, left politely out of site on the blog. Me? Everything hanging out. The frickin' nurse who took the picture didn’t even get my good side!

I’m done. I’m so done. Gone. Outta there and not going back. Play the parts referee yourself, girl. These days I’m a lot happier, in a jar, floating around -- got a view, finally, even if it is from a lab shelf. Yeah, the formaldehyde smells, but let me tell you, sitting by the kidneys was no bed of roses, if you get my meaning. This is like perfume in comparison. Hmm, think I’m ready for lunch. Where do I call for room service?

Krispy Kreme Donut, Stargate, Lady Parts and Gort

The CAT scan is going to have to buy me dinner before our next date.   When we locked eyes yesterday in the radiology wing, I was taken by his smooth rounded dimensions.  Soft and enticing yet technical and commanding - a nice combination in a piece of nuclear machinery.  Never mind that he looks a lot like the progeny of some sordid one-night stand between a giant glossy tanned Krispy Kreme donut and Stargate, it was his serene solidarity and his sliding table that captivated me.  Staring at the ceiling, his one Gort-like laser eye caught me in its glance and told to me to take a deep breath and hold it.  

I was prone on his platform in no time.  We moved as one...

He sees right through me, though, and is holding out with just banana (barium chalk) flavored cocktails and a little (hypodermic) needling before our relationship fully develops...

Gag!  That's enough florid prose.  Fabio, that's a wrap! I am even icking my own self out!

CAT scan saw my inter-intestinal  interloper clear as a bell and even clearer when they pushed the plunger down on the "contrast" dye from a remote glassed-in booth location.  (Don't even think about the implications of that visual...Disconcerted even me with all my hail-fellow-well-met defense mechanism bravado and sick sense of humor.)  Did you know that you can feel contrast dye as is travels from your arm to your extremities?  It went right down, I kid you not, to my "lady parts" and gave me a little provocative nudge!  I honestly thought if had gotten any warmer down there, I was going to embarrass myself with a little vocalization.  But I controlled the urge.  No yodeling in Radiology.  Or cell phones. Says so on the wall.  Radiation. Wonder if my credit cards are all stripped now....hmmmmm.

The space invader?   It's a beaut!  First impressions are always iffy, and this is no exception.  The tumor is actually anterior, meaning toward my back in  position more near little Miss Kidney and big ol Mr. Vena Cava.  In fact, the thing is encroaching on Vena Cava's space like a stinking lumpy hygiene-challenged homeless person pressing right up next to you in a crowded subway car in the tunnel!   All my other organs are organized just fine.   I knew that!  I am perfect!

There's the phone.  Next step:  (Mystery Science Theater reveal riff - duhn-duhn-DUHN!) 

FINE NEEDLE BIOPSY.   

We're going to stab it guided by CAT scan, yank out some cells, and chart the course from there.  Today.  All quick like and before I can obsess with what's going on.

Knock, knock?  Who's there? Mr. Good Drugs.  Well, howdy-do! Come right on in! Can I get you something?

As my son says, "It's just a big zit Mom.  They'll pop it and it's all great from there!"  Coolio. 

I woke up this morning anxious.  My plan was to shower, drop the kids at school, drive down to the Medical Center and sit outside the surgeon's entrance with a sign: "Have tumor, will amuse you while you slice it out! First come, first served."  I am told by Dr. Norma Popsiclehands, who called me this morning at the butt-crack of dawn, this is not the best strategy.  She's got some others up her sleeve, so I'll curb my renegade  impatience just this once.

Evicting My Alien Evil Twin

I have a stowaway.

I don’t know when the stealthy little "mass" bastard burrowed its way into its current warm, gurgling, whooshing hammock below decks, (With ultra-sound exams you can hear your flippin’ AORTA working! So cool!) but it’s cruising for an undignified eviction by force even if I have to dig it out myself. It’s kind of dark and cozy and moist in there under my rib cage protected by my overhanging right breast. That perky gal is affectionately known as the “party boob,” (because the kids never nursed on it) so this calculating invader played it strategically on the down low, hanging out with that complete loser The Appendix to scam free rent next to one of the funnest body parts ever. Also, the opportunistic little freak has apparently lurked there like a squatter amongst some of the hardest working most under sung digestive organs in my tummy gorging itself by proximity and growing for a long time into a strange, large hard-to-identify object, called a “mass” by Dr. Norma Popsiclehands.

Well, it got greedy, got fatter than Jabba the Hutt, and blew its cover. Fat bastard.

It’s a big ass “mass” about 4 inches long, 3 inches wide and 3 inches thick crowding its neighbors, spleen, liver, gall bladder, intestines and such, to the point they are protesting by sending large amounts of food undigested back up and overboard. Usually projectile style in the car and in front of people. This thug of a “mass,” ok it IS a tumor thank you Governor Arnold, has now messed its nest, has got to go, and I will tolerate no whining about it. I turn deaf ears to “Come on, Christmas is coming…” or “Tough love doesn’t include carving me out at Thanksgiving, you bitch!”

As soon as someone can sharpen a scalpel, drug me up and roll me unconscious, naked and drooling into an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, it’s gone!

Of course, I have pondered deeply what the hell this thing could actually be and to distract myself from some of the more mind-blowingly alarming freakishly terrifying Google fueled possibilities have determined for my personal amusement that it has to be something rare and unique and really gross to the squeamish. Although there will be more, undoubtedly, I have two ideas what it could be –

1. An alien. Only I think I’d have remembered if some crusty barnacle infested Easter egg had spewed forth a multi-jointed egg- laying orifice-invading spider thing on my face, but I don’t. Must’ve been sleeping in my car at the time and those aliens have methods by which to erase unpleasant memories, so it is a possibility that I am harboring an alien life form in my gut. I just hope we can arrange a better way for it to hatch than the movie. Dr. Surgeon Guy better step back when he takes his first slice. I remember teeth and some squealing. Eeew.

2. My Siamese twin. I always knew I had a twin and my parents just gave her away and lied about it or something. Like that cat that “went to a good home out on a farm.” But, no, this tumor could be my, here it comes, reabsorbed twin! No really! They have found “tumors” in people that included rudimentary teeth, rib bones, hair (ick!) and arms and legs! Somehow before birth in attached twins, one twin totally dominates in the womb and can completely digest the other weaker twin who then encapsulates and rides along unbeknownst to its sister host until it starts getting fat like mine, or talks, or bites or styles its hair or something. I can now blame every bad behavior I have ever had on my evil mind-controlling twin who has resided beneath my right rib cage all this time! Eeeew.

Are you squeamed yet?

That said, it now time to go drink my first dose of barium. Mmmmm barium. Banana flavored. At least it’s not up the wazoo. I get a CAT scan tomorrow, with the added bonus of a demon IV drip of “contrast” which makes me puke. Small price to pay. I wouldn’t want to miss this opportunity to dazzle the medical and scientific world with my alien, or my reabsorbed twin.