Yeowch.

Hello, O The Internet! It's time for another one of Platypus's Intermittent Blog Posts. I've been doing insane amounts of knitting lately, which is part of the reason I have completely neglected to update the blog. Also, not much of interest had been happening.

Things got very interesting on Monday morning, however. I woke up with absolutely excruciating abdominal pain, so Mr. Platypus and I trundled off to the emergency room. The docs poked and prodded and did an ultrasound, and then informed me that the ultrasound images looked rather...not good. My peritoneal cavity was filled with fluid, and there appeared to be a fairly large mass on each ovary. The "cancer" word was tossed about as a possible diagnosis. As I'm sure you can imagine, I just about shat bricks at the thought of having ovarian cancer. SCARY STUFF.

Anyway, the good doctors did a CT scan of my abdomen and discovered that no, I did not actually have a mass on each ovary and that the fluid in my peritoneal cavity was blood. (Apparently, in situations like this, seeing blood in the peritoneal cavity is an indication of fixable things rather than being an indication of cancer.) Turns out that I'd had a hemorrhagic cyst on my left ovary that went "pop" just like a giant zit of painful doom. At that point, they booked me for an emergency laparoscopic surgery to cauterize it and clear the blood out of my abdomen. Everything went well during surgery, and I am healing up nicely.

It was a frightening experience, though. I'd never had surgery before, and I felt a little bit spooked when the anesthesiologist came by to give me the speech about the risks of anesthesia and surgery in general. I think I was still reeling from the hour or so I'd spent telling myself "you don't have cancer, but if you do, here's what we're gonna do about it". The doctors and nurses were all absolutely wonderful about explaining everything to me, answering my questions, and holding both mine and Mr. Platypus's hands when we needed it. I had to laugh when the doctor heading up my case came by my hospital room day before yesterday to confirm that all my labs were normal and that I appeared to be doing really well...she did a little happy dance and everything. (She is seriously made of Teh Awesome.) They sent me home Tuesday afternoon, and I have since been alternating rest with carefully planned bouts of walking about to encourage my body to go back to its normal routines.

Plus, I have TEH GOOD DRUGS. Yaaay! The nurses told me that I should take one of the Percocet at the first sign of pain, since people heal more slowly if they're hurting than they do when they feel good. I've been saving those for when I really really hurt, though...if good ol' Naproxen will do the trick, that's what I'll take.

In other news, I picked up a copy of Morgan Llewellyn's book Red Branch at our local library yesterday...Red Branch had been one of my absolute favorite books when I lent my copy to a then-boyfriend years ago. (The lousy bastard absconded with my book. I KEEL HEEM!) It was wonderful to stumble across an old friend on the shelves, especially right now when I'm still feeling a bit of a need to stay well within my comfort zone. If you're into Irish mythology or sword-and-sorcery-type tales, go buy this book. It's a wonderful re-imagining of the Cuchulainn myths, and I'm absolutely positive you'll love it.

Today's planned adventures include a visit to the optometrist so's I can get new
eyeballs glasses and picking a headshrinker from the list of psychiatrists in my health insurance coverage plan book. Having health insurance again after so long without it is really weird! It's a relief, though...I shudder to think of how far my little ovarian escapade on Monday would have put us into the financial hole (that we're already in) without the insurance. Anyway, I will also probably finish the first sock in the pair of socks I'm knitting for myself, and then I will bake a layer cake (vanilla cake with strawberry preserves spread between the layers, then iced in chocolate) to take to my knitting group meeting tonight. I also plan to spend a good portion of my day giving affection and cuddlin's to Mr. Platypus.

So, Internet O My Internet, what mischief are you up to today?

Gummy bear vitamins give me super powers!

...or something, 'cause I have been feeling mad crazy awesome for the past two days and it looks like that's going to continue today.

Who knew that daily exercise and eating healthy stuff could make me feel all happy and hyper? Srsly! I did my upper-body workout yesterday (mostly at work), as well as doing my core exercises. Did three sets of push-ups! WOO. I hate push-ups with the burning passion of a thousand fiery suns. Have I mentioned that? Unfortunately, they are a necessary part of my plan to make myself all HAWTNESS by the time May rolls around.

By the way, I am managing to turn into a Bridezilla despite the utter lack of necessity for doing so. I am about to smack myself in the head with something large and heavy to see if that keeps this whole wedding madness shit from eating my brain completely. Exercising seems to distract me from the whole thing very well, so that's a bonus. I should also get back to that whole doing-algebra-every-day thing.

I had more to babble about, but then I saw something shiny and forgot it.

boingy boingy boingy!

So, yeah, Platypus the Genius managed to forget that today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I got up early so I could call the health insurance place and didn't realize what was going on until I got the automated voice saying "(Office) is closed for the holiday". Of course this did not happen until I'd had about half my first cup of coffee, and so I am now far too hyped up to go back to sleep. Ergo, I harass and befuddle you, O Internetz!

I know you've missed me, right? I've been really locked up in my own head for the past (few) months, which makes it hard to think of anything to babble nonsensically about to the world in general. However, I seem to have managed to wade through whatever mental jello it was slowing me down...now I am back to my old spastic, verbose, easily-entertained self. Woohoo!

Anyway, Big Doings in the World of the Platypus have included setting a date for that whole gettin' married thing (May 19th, if you're curious); listening to Eve 6 and Barenaked Ladies semi-obsessively (not that this is anything new); increasing my daily amount of exercise (because I want to be all sexalicious with my bad self on my weddin' day, natch); and writing stupidly long sentences (yes, I do this in my pen-and-paper journal too). Mr. Platypus had a job interview with Big Important Research Hospital a week ago, and now we're frantically hoping that they'll call him back. (Would have been nice if they'd done so like, four days ago, but so it goes.) That whole Mr.-Platypus's-Job-Search thing is kind of on a mental back burner for me right now, so I think that's all I'll say on that subject.

I just know you're all eagerly awaiting the details on the Wedding Plans of Scary Doom, so I shall fill you in. We are having a very small (one might almost say microscopic) ceremony in a park that has a gazebo. Hopefully, my friend/coworker who happens to be an ordained minister will be able to officiate for us; that will both save me some money and make the ceremony more meaningful. My best friend will be there to take pictures and sign as a witness. That's gonna be it as far as attendees, unless a random raccoon or other small animal happens to be sitting in the gazebo whilst we're exchanging vows. Afterwards, we are going to go out for lunch or for dinner together; I just have to figure out what restaurant we're going to choose. It'll probably be an afternoon ceremony, 'cause none of the four of us are really morning people. As far as dress, rings, and all that sort of thing, I've got that pretty much sorted. I've had the dress for about two years now; it's a lime green cotton halter-top sundress that looks all pretty. (I just have to dye it a slightly darker shade of green so it's not translucent, although people being able to clearly see my undies while I'm getting hitched would be HAWT.) We're going with simple tungsten carbide rings, and I'm not bothering with flowers.

The tl;dr version of that paragraph is that I'm having an itsy-bitsy inexpensive wedding because I am just awesome like that.

Anyway. No especially entertaining client stories, although at one point during the past few months, I did have a client I found very thought-provoking. This teenager came in for a massage, and at first came across as one of those cocky little asshats who needs a big ol' slap with the Reality Stick. During the massage, they started to open up a little bit...turns out that they're getting ready to go off to Florida for college, that they've only been that far from Massachusetts once (when they were three), and that they're going through a really tough time right now. They come from a hyper-religious family, and they're starting to question all the stuff that's been shoved down their throat as fact for the past 18 years...which is a bitch of a position to be in even when you're not about to take that big scary leap of jumping out of the nest.

I remember how alone I felt when I started questioning the faith in which my parents attempted to raise me...that SUCKED. For serious. Fortunately, a lot of my friends were going through the same general sort of stage at the time, so we kind of leaned on one another and found a "life raft" to cling to in the form of paganism. Kind of replacing one drug with another, I suppose. Anyway, it wasn't until maybe three years ago or so that I started becoming disenchanted with that whole "woo, lookit me, I'm a fancy witch!" schtick...and that opened up a whole other can of worms for me. I'd been kind of dancing around the edges of sitting down and trying to logically think out the whole dilemma, but that was the point where I started realizing that it doesn't really make sense for there to be some sort of god figure out there. Long story short, becoming an atheist was definitely a long, drawn-out process for me with a lot of tangents and dead-ends along the way; that made it a lot easier for me to empathize with Kid Who Turned Out Not To Be Arrogant.

I was able to send them out the door with a short list of books to read that I thought might help them realize that there's a world of options out there as far as belief structures go, as well as the reassurance that they aren't alone. I hope it helped. I've had them on my mind a lot lately, just wondering how they're doing and wishing I could somehow do more to be of assistance. I figure that suggesting The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins for the win!), The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Carl Sagan), and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (I miss you, Douglas Adams) should hopefully have given the kid a bit more of a "toolbox" with which to tackle the issue, so to speak.

Anyway, now it's breakfast time. To the kitchen!

blurgh

So I totally had this brilliant post all figured out while I was at work, and then I got home and had food and now my brainmeatz are teh dead.

Stupid brain.

Anyway...