You May Have Surgery, But First, Write An Essay

After some more pleading with my doctor's office, I finally got put on the waiting list for surgery. I was expecting the queue to be 3-6 months. You don't get to jump the queue unless you have something immediately life-threatening, like your lungs have collapsed, or several of your key organs are hemorrhaging.

I just got the papers from the hospital. My surgery is scheduled for Feb 2. Depressing. Not that I need surgery, that part is terrifying, but apparently necessary. But getting even worse than this? for another seven months? I don't know how I'm going to get to next week, hell, through the next hour most days. Seven months seems ridiculous in its sheer impossibleness.

But, it may give me time for the paperwork. They sent me a wad of stuff it would take me weeks to fill out, if I was healthy, which I'm obviously not. I guess I'm not so far gone that irony is past me: 'yes, we agree you are severely critically ill. Now here, write an essay.'

I wouldn't feel comfortable writing a lone paragraph on Shakespeare, and they want me to churn out endless words on my symptoms, conditions, medications, medical history. Bizarrely, I'm frowning at all these papers, thinking I *have* all the damn symptoms they're worried about. Ergo, you know, if I tell the truth, they'll deny me surgery.

Of course, a simple slip or fib here means I am definitely dead.

No pressure! Just try not to concentrate on your severe pain and muddled thinking and crippling anxiety, and you'll do fine!

And I thought the whole cutting me open and rooting around for all the bad parts to rip out was the scary part.

No wait, that still is...