As part of my reconstructive plans in 2014, surgery beckons. I need to close the enormous hole in my neck, and the dead bone and the brass fitting around the bone in my mouth need to be removed. Dead bone does nothing but attract infection--I hardly need more of that.
My recent discussions with the Indy surgeons who think I'm about 3/4 dead did reveal that they want to split up the procedures--and I don't mind. Well, I don't mind if no pain is still involved.
The first procedure looks like it's coming up on the horizon--this one, which they think might even be on an outpatient basis--is to remove the bone and brass from my aching mouth. This might alleviate some of the need I've had for opiates--a low dose patch, a bit of morphine sulfate, some liquid lortab and acetominophen. These things dull me a bit, though they occasionally make sleep much easier to achieve. On a tiny jolt of morphine, Daddy don't sit up all night....
All fine and dandy--but what you're not thinking of is the fact with nothing holding the jaw up, the jaw is going to slide downward--and yes, I'll look even a bit more hot freakish than I do now. The sliding skin will crush my voice box, which will be inexorably removed eventually--so any dream I've had of speaking again will officially be gone--along with eating. A crushed larynx doesn't accomodate a half pounder with or without the blessings of cheese.
There's no way for me to tell you how I feel about this because my feelings are all over the map--true, I don't want to look more freakish. True, I don't want to give up speaking and eating. Yet I do want some of the pain to go away, I want the infections to subside if they can, I want to get underway with phase 2. I want to deal with what I have to deal with--so I made a couple of bargains today with my future as methods of coping.
First, I went back to the well of coping which for me involves shoes. Don't ask why, I can't answer. I've asserted in this blog before that purchasing shoes is like purchasing the future--making a claim on being here, for the long term, for the life of a well loved piece of leather and a fetchingly masculine sole. That's as close as I can get to an explanation.
The shoes that are clogging my self pity machine are a pair I've had a lust affair with for several months. They appear on Gilt.com, from a Gilt company, Wingtip Clothiers. They are, as you suspect, wingtips--they come in cognace, navy (which looks pretty dark on my computer) and grey. I've looked at these so longingly so many times. I've talked myself out of them. I don't leave the house! What the hell would I need those for! Jesus those wingtips are beautiful!
I've waited so long that of course they don't have my size in all the colors--but they do in grey, and I've never had grey wingtips--and these babies have wood heal layers capped by a rubber bottom that just says--yeah, bitch, stomp in me. Live in me. Do it. And I will.
And, though I won't be speaking, I've decided to learn some Danish along with my French brush ups for kicks--think that sounds fun? Mange tak! or Mange tausind tak--many thanks or many thousands of thanks--from Lesson 1. Hopefully at some point, my speech app on the tablet will have a Danish voice to buy (there's a Swedish one on there, Erick, and that might be close enough to allow for decent pronounciation, but I don't know). So I'll learn not to speak Danish as much as I'll learn some vocabulary and spelling of Danish.
I've never actually been to Denmark, but I did change planes at Kastrup Airport once on a flight to Amsterdam--it was my 40th birthday, and I'd always wanted to go to Amsterdam, being a fan of smoking cafes, good coffee, the Dutch Golden Age, and pea soup. I had a couple of hours in the airport at Copenhagen, which featured smoking everywhere you went, wooden floors, and the Cafe Karen Blixen, where I had some of the finest coffee I have ever had, anywhere.
On every best place to live in the world list, you'll find Copenhagen somewhere--so why not figure out how to tell the Danes, respectfully in their own language, that I think they rock ass all over the place? Why not learn to speak a language when the last thing you can do is speak it?
Surgery--never fun. Fate--frequently not fair. But I'm walking toward it in shoes that are seriously hot and I'm kicking ass with the tips of those wingtips. And I might even type a few choice words in Danish to express just how much I refuse to let this shit get the best of me.
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