Yes: Turning Medical Frowns Upside Down, Part One

One thing I like to do is take a medical experience and find the humor in it.  I've done this a lot. In 2012, I had some wacky spinal adventures and wrote about it.  Briefest of brief background: I had intermittent pain in my side for a decade, went on a bunch of CT scan and MRI rides that discovered hidden treasures. I next had a particulary unfun diagnosistic test called a myelogram which could be an essay it itself.  At present, doc says things are stable and may stay that way forever.  Forever, as Prince says, is a mighty long time and that's what I'm going with.

On that myelogram: I probably never will write an essay about that as involved a "lumber puncture," which is basically a spinal tap, It was as fuck-awful as you've heard. So you should probably not get meningitis as this could merit one of those and trust me, you'd just rather not.

Anyway, I wrote the below directly after my first visit with my own brand new personal neurosurgeon.  (Is it a little fucked up that I'm kind of proud that I can say "MY neurosurgeon?" Probably.) At this point, (MY) neurosurgeon had pretty much diagnosed me but there were still a lot of unknowns.

Anyway, have at it:

***

Click this: meningocele  Ain't that a ration of shit?

Here's a funny thing: no one, especially an adult, is supposed to have a secret meningocele. From what I've gleaned, if you were a meningocele, you would pretty much make your presence known as quickly as possible, as in the case of spina bifida.  

When I grow a deformity, I don't mess around. Bet you didn't know that about me. 

How I grew this thing is still all very mysterious. I could give you some of the doc's hypothesis but that sort of theoretical mumbo jumbo doesn't interest me.  For now, let's just say, I was born this way.

Here's another funny thing: when you say "meningocele," no one knows what the hell you're talking about.  In fact, when I say "meningocele," I can't.  Phonetically it's pronounced "men-nin-go-seal." I've said "menin-joe-sell" and "menin-go-selly" and "parasitic twin."

I find it's easier to stick with that last one.  One, it's much easier to say.  Two, everyone knows about parasitic twins. True, they're gross and freaky but hey: built-in friend!  But the best reason why I like to call my meningocele a parasitic twin is because it shares a similar trait: it's eating me.

Here's what MeningoTwin looks like:

Now would be a good time for me to pull out my CT Scan and MRI reports and type exactly the crazy-med speak transcribed there but I'd rather do it this way:

You know how the spine is labeled by cervical, thoracic and lumbar parts and with all those numbers, C1, T4, L3  and so on?  It's like a crazy anatomical Bingo game, isn't it?  When they called "Protruding sac at T11 and  T12," I yelled "BINGO!" I was pretty excited too -- first the nutty MeningoTwin and now this!

Then I had a visit with my neurosurgeon, who I shall call Dr. S. He told me to settle down.

"It ain't all good," said Dr. S.  "There's spinal fluid in MeningoTwin."

Dr. S began waxing analogous: "Think how river water flows over a rock. As years go by, that water will erode the rock.  And that, my friend, is what's happened to your vertebrae at  T11 and T12. The bone has eroded."

I couldn't fully process that at first.

When I was young, my father had a piece of petrified wood in his top dresser drawer.  The wood had turned to rock.  Even though Dr. S. was talking about eroded rock, for some reason I kept picturing that piece of petrified wood in my mind.  Which, you know, would have been okay: if my spine was turning from wood to rock, I'd be kind of like Pinocchio, wouldn't I? A real boy!

But also, I was a little starstruck. For the first time in my life, I was in the presence of a bonafide neurosurgeon: the only person I've ever knowingly met in my life who could answer "Um, yeah it is!" when told "Hurry up, it's not brain surgery."

Eventually my Disneyland fangirl cloud passed and I asked him what that meant.

"It means that your spine could collapse," he said.

"What does that mean," I asked.

"It means you'd be paralyzed," he replied.

Well, that just about took the cake.  I've been many parathings in my time: a paralegal, a paraprofessional, a Paregoric swallower, and most recently, right, the a parasitic twin. But never paralyzed.  Unless you count right then, when I was "paralyzed" by fear to ask anymore questions, ho ho!

***

This is where I ended writing about this particular medical experience, as shortly after came the aforementioned myelogram and a whole lotta grim.  I think I shall write about that after all because ya'll need to be in the know about some crazy things.  For starters, do you know what fixes a leaky hole in the spinal cord after a stupid needle goes barreling where it shouldn't be barreling? I bet you don't. The answer? Your own blood!  Too, do you know what can happen if you leak all kinds of spinal fluid for over a week?  What can happen is, your brain can start falling out of your head!

But more on that later. perchance.  Recall, I am just FINE so no need to worry about me. I have a built-in friend, recall.  Still, in case anyone is left feeling funny about this post, here's a nice picture of Florpy the Corn Gurner:

Yes: Oswald's World

One place I would really to live would be in Oswald's world.

Look at that picture above. There is not one bad thing happening there.  It looks like the snowman is about to plop himself into that trash can, but that's just the trippy 2D imaging.  He's not going into that trash. Because that would be sort of bad and nothing truly bad ever happens in Oswald's world.

Oswald was a show on Nick Jr that aired from 2001 to 2004 and starred a big blue octopus named Oswald.  During this time, my son was young and as such, I was exposed to a whole bunch of kid's shows.

There sure are a lot of shows out there now for kids. When I was young, it was Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and The Electric Company.  I sat through the latter two but really only liked Sesame Street.  No kid actually likes Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood -- that show is more of an hipster adult jam, really. The Electric Company sucked.  At least that's how I remember it. Probably because I often watched these shows back-to-back when I was sick. By the time The Electric Company came on, late afternoon and when fevers tend to peak, I was delirious and miserable.  Plus, I think it was packed with bad 70's stuff like trippy fonts and crappy clothing. I don't like that stuff at all.

Oswald, by contrast, is blissfully narcotic.  His albeit crazy-ass world somehow manages to feel very uncrazy (and crazy can be bad, recall) but instead, soothing.  Next time you have a bout of insomnia or are feeling stressed, cue up an episode or two of Oswald on YouTube.  Could be you just saved yourself a month of co-pays for therapy and a Xanax prescription.

Enough to buy yourself, say, a tiny hat:

Here's more reasons why I would like to live in Oswald's world:

• Anthropomorphia.  Any time you can put a face and legs on something inanimate and make it talk, I say do it! In Oswald's world, there are talking flowers, talking trees, a pumpkin-headed guy who isn't scary at all and best, a set of identical twin eggs.  Twin eggs! 

• Soothing surrealism.  I like Salvador Dali as much as the next gal, but sometimes his images can be sort of jarring, can't they?  Oswald's world is packed with surreal images but all of the soothing variety.  In Oswald's world, a wiener dog can absolutely look like an actual hot dog. A baseball can be a house, a lemon can be a taxi and paper airplanes fly all day long. It's super great and never jarring.  And nobody cuts themselves all up and rolls around in the sand in an effort to impress their fiancee as Dali reportedly did.

• Ice cream.  Lots of it.  Everyone eats ice cream in this place. And there's no worrying about noxious farts from lactose intolerance or fat thighs packed into too-small jeans, ever.

• Coexisting.  In the episode "The Tomato Garden." snails eat Oswald's tomato plants. Do you think he sprays them dead with nasty chemicals?  Nope. He shares by giving the snails their very own plants while keeping some for himself.  He makes a tomato restaurant for the snails! You can "Coexist" with your bumper stickers of crosses, moons and stars all you like.  In Oswald's world, nobody needs that lofty shit.  

• Right: tiny hats. Bonus: jauntily placed!  

• The music:

That opening theme is like a narcotic drip all by itself.    

Too, you know when you watch Oswald that no one is gonna yell "HEY YOU GUYS!" at you just as your fever peaks and you lean over to puke into the Tupperware bowl that your mom placed next to you, just in case.