1 day 12 hours 35 minutes: last blog & testament

bags are packed, papers are in order. heather and i were going to write a will but somehow the month slipped away from me. my surgery is in less than 48 hours. so since none of ya'll are crazy, not even rory lately, here's the basics of what i want on the off off off chance that something bad happens during surgery.

  • save me if i can be saved. pull the plug if i'm brain dead. 
  • i'm having champagne and strawberry poptarts for dinner tonight. (just thought you should know!)
  • i don't want a funeral but i do want a party. a large party. everyone should get rip-roaring drunk and gorge themselves on amazing food. people should have sex in the swimming pool at this party. (i don't know what swimming pool, you pick the venue). brett, you are in charge of music. under no circumstances can danny be in charge of this. he can make a request but it has to be approved by brett. mara, amanda, please make your breasts available for danny to cry in.
  • donate my body to stanford. i don't think they can take any of my organs because of my treatment but they should be able to use me for med school. heather, when they're done with me, that white dress hanging in my closet, the $34 wedding dress, cremate me in it. let danny see it first.  
  • everyone that loves me needs to love the hell out of my kids. share them. take them to see every fucking corner of the earth. if you are part of my life now, stay a part of their lives.
  • request that you be given ALL of my ashes so that there are plenty to go around. any time anyone goes anywhere have them take some of them so that *i* get to visit every corner of the earth. seriously, leave a piece of me in sicily but also at that target in westgate.  
  • no reason to argue over my stuff: divide it between the kids. heather, you're in charge of this too. i mean, everyone else take something that's special to you but the big stuff (house/car/money) - take care of the kids.
  • keep the business in fourths. 

 

 

2 days 20 hours 48 minutes

the kids and i rode our bikes to the library today (about 4 miles round trip, not bad for a 5 and 8 year old) and stocked up on books and movies for after my surgery. i came home with:
  1. seasons 1, 2 & 3 of united states of tara (com/dram 992 minutes)
  2. cold souls (com/dram 101 minutes)
  3. capote (dram/crime 114 minutes)
  4. an education (drama 100 minutes)
  5. death at a funeral (the original british version comedy 90 minutes)
  6. the other guys (comedy 107 minutes)
  7. margot at the wedding (com/dram 93 minutes)
  8. cyrus (com/dram 91 minutes)
that's roughly 28 hours of mindless vicodin-high tv watching. care to join me?

3 days 23 hours and some minutes

some aspect of my brain fried yesterday. i had coffee with forrest in the morning and then drank an entire bottle of champagne and got *rather* inebriated and sobby.  (mike, amanda, heather shut your respective faces.) the forrest part was uneventful and pleasant-ish. we swirled around the old cancer-y stuff, kids and jobs and avoided anything more personal and reminisce-y.

rory conversation: not.so.much. danny had guys night, no one was around to go out for a drink with me. i came home with a cheap bottle of champagne for me and a very large beer for rory and made him keep me company. we talked for a long time about summer and her family, about danny and his family, about our jobs, about the kids, about normal things that people talk about when they've known each other 16 years and haven't talked in a very long time. and then the fact that i haven't been drinking and had consumed 3/4 of a bottle of cook's brut turned me into a crying confessing raccoon faced mess. we talked about him cheating (though he never sealed the deal with tara until he left) and i took it as the moment to tell him about sleeping with austin before we got married, hoped it stung a bit. i told him that the way he left made me think that danny was leaving at every turn over the past five years. that i've changed. that i'm not that pushy bitch, that i retreat instead into the body of a 1930's housewife at one moment and a liberated whore at the next. he went silent for a few minutes, but in a thinking way. i called him out. he said sorry that he did what he did, how he did it. i thanked him for leaving, leading me ultimately to the messy joy i have now. he said that he told his boss that we've been divorced for years but are 'very good friends.' i cried for being young and dumb when he said something about it sometimes taking 8 years to realize what you don't want. he hugged me. he left. i cried some more, cathartically and drunk dialed brett until danny came home.

four days

i've been making a concerted effort to do things in the past couple of weeks that i'm not going to be able to do like swimming with the kids and soaking in the hot tub. this is almost a nightly thing for us and has been for years. i won't be able to do it for a few weeks until my wounds are healed-ish so i'm trying to have fun playing with the kids in an environment that we are all very fond of. i swear, we are better in the water than we are on dry land, more coordinated in any case.

i've also been riding the shitty bike rory gave me for my birthday. it was his, but he had two and it was the one i used to ride. it has two wheels and some gears and works. riding everywhere these days. freeeeeeee! and involves chest-y muscles. kind of bummed that i'm getting super into it and am gonna have to put it on hold soon. 

totally unrelated, i have found my music soulmate in danny's brother, brett. seriously, there is no music we don't both enjoy and it has made putting together a surgery playlist together very easy. this one is on there. they'll let me wear headphones while i'm under right?

6 days - the nitty gritty

last night i had a dream that i came out of anesthesia and felt completely shocked looking down at my own flat chest and frustrated that i couldn't seen what was under the bandages. so um, there's that. i guess it's better to process in dreams than to scream at customers.

the nurse at dr. bates's office called me this afternoon. she reminded me that i can't eat after midnight on monday, not to wear jewelry or nail polish, and confirmed for me that i will be staying overnight at the hospital. she's calling in antibiotics, anti-nausea medication, and vicodin for me to start taking when i get home on wednesday. (now that i think about it, dr. runi's nurse called in vicodin for me too...) every time the phone rings from their prefix i'm positive they're calling to tell me that my appointment has been cancelled for some reason. but no, all systems 'go' so far.

i called and confirmed with insurance that everything has been approved. the major risk program that i'm in (because i'm too special to have regular person insurance) covers up to $75,000 per year (which to be honest is not very much at all) - 80% after i hit my $500 deductible (done) and 100% after i've paid an additional $2500. i suspect i'll be hitting that $3000 this year. gob help me if i go over the $75k. i have absolutely no idea what a mastectomy and reconstruction costs...