Blame it on the propofol

Yesterday morning, I had my tubes tied.  Well, I had them snipped and cauterized, which is apparently what they do now. 

I get to the day surgery ward, where I get changed into my sexy gown and housecoat.  You know, the one where your ass hangs out the back like Jack Nicholson.  The nurse comes and takes my history again, then I have to do some labwork. One poke, one vial, that's it. Oh, and a pregnancy test, because DAMN wouldn't that be terrible!  Get cut open and Oops!  There's a baby in that there uterus.  Hmmm.   Of course, being a diligent patient, I had already had the idea to take a pee test the night before, which was negative, so I knew I was good to go.

Then a nurse and man with beautiful long Fabio hair tied in a ponytail come in to my little curtain-space.  He says he's going to give me an IV.  As I stare down his scrubs at his chest hair and admire his long mane of hair, I ask if he's a nursing student.  "No, I'm a medical student.  Third year. We don't get to do IVs much so I take all the practice I can get."  I must have had a lustful look on my face that he mistook for aprehension, because he then reassured me: "Don't worry, it's not my first time."  All I'm thinking is "Dude...your hair is so PRETTY!"

He gets out a needle for an IV, and the nurse tells him he needs a bigger needle.  That's always fun to hear.  When he asks why, she tells him for surgeries, always opt for a larger needle because if you have to give the patient something fast, they want it to get into the blood FAST.  Makes sense to me.
So he grabs a LARGE needle and tells me "Ok, small poke."

And then OH MY GOD.  THIS IS THE MOST PAINFUL IV INSERTION EVER! I THINK I MAY BLEED OUT RIGHT NOW.  GAH!  THIS GUY'S GOING TO BE A DOCTOR?  HOLY CRAP! Oh boy...I'm getting woozy...and nauseated...and oh, that's what colour my eyelids are on the inside?  Coolio.

Another nurse comes in and says that the IV blew, but she wants to try to salvage it so that I don't have to be poked again.  Huzzah!  She does salvage it and within about 10 minutes, I feel like a moderately sexy humanoid again.  Only moderately because of the robe. Otherwise I would definitely rank as a sexy beast.

When it's time to go to the OR, they wheel me there and I walk into the room.  They start putting leads on me and the doctor giving me the anaesthetic asks if I have ever had problems being put under or whatnot.  I say no, but could someone get me a warm blanket because it's EFFING cold in here!  I left out the effing part, as my lips were trembling from the cold.  A nurse brings me a warm blanket (or three) and I warm up a bit.  A nurse looks at me and says "Have a good sleep" and I hear the doctor say "Propofol" and then I black out.

I wake up, shaking my head from left to right, from right to left, over and over.  I cannot get a good breath.  There's a damn oxygen mask on my face and it feels like it's suffocating me.  There are about 3 or 4 people with me, and I hear someone say "She bradded on us.  Watch that she doesn't go below 40."  Having had a NICU baby, I know what brad means: bradycardia (heartrate dangerously slow). I instantly start thinking "Michael Jackson died from propofol! Michael Jackson died from propofol! Michael Jackson died from propofol!" I think I may have muttered it, too, but they couldn't understand what I was saying under that mask.  I tried to lift my hands to pull the mask off, but I was still paralyzed.  Finally, I realize that I am not the King of Pop and that I am not going to die of a propofol overdose, and I give up trying to tell them about MJ.  I managed to tell them that I couldn't breathe and that I was cold.  And hungry.  Fabio-doctor asked if I wanted something from Tim Horton's.  I tried to laugh, but I am pretty sure I said "No Michael Jackson." Whatever.

I went back to sleep for a bit, then I felt like I had to go to the bathroom.  I went, and since getting up and going to the bathroom is the main criteria for discharge, they told me I could go home as soon as my ride showed up. 

Thrilled that I was not, in fact, dead like Michael Jackson, I called my step-dad to see if he could swing by to pick me up on his way home for lunch.  I was totally groggy and not totally coherent in my thoughts, but hey, I could pee. And fart a little.  Homeward bound!

Tony had been taking care of the kids and making cinnamon buns while I was gone.  I get home to see these beauties proofing in their final stage.  When he leaves to pick up Sashimi from school fro his swimming lesson, the buns are almost ready to go into the oven.  I put them in the oven for 20 minutes, set the timer, and then lay down. 

BAD MOVE.  The propofol got to me, and I passed right out.  Did not hear the timer.  Woke up 2.5 hours later to the smell of burned sugar.  OH SHIT!  I take the buns out of the oven.  They are as burned brown as a big piece of dog crap on your lawn.  No smoke in the house, no fire.  That's a bonus.  But no cinnamon buns either, which is a total anti-bonus.  Propofol killed Michael Jackson AND Tony's cinnamon buns.  Tony was not very impressed with me, but really, it's not my fault that MJ died.  And it's not my fault his buns died.  Blame it on the propofol.
I do.
And a little on his doctor.

The Happy Valentine Sing-a-long

Happy Valentine's,  Tony

That's a cold sore you see 

It hurts like the bitches

So no blow job from me

Even using a thermal camera, it's just not sexy.

*To the tune of Happy Birthday.  Everybody join along!

Dr. Sashimi's Office Rules

Rules of Dr. Sashimi's office (as dictated to me by Dr. Sashimi himself):
1. Don't pick your nose.
2. Don't act like the doctor if you're NOT the doctor.
3. Knock before entering the examination room and don't wake the doctor up if he's sleeping.

If you break any of these rules, you'll get a ticket. 
Just to shake things up, I broke one of the rules.  And yes, I got a ticket.  The ticket says:
"Since you can't listen to the doctor's rules, you can't come back for 5 weeks.  If you get hurt and need to see the doctor,  you'll just have to deal with it yourself. Don't come and see me."

Does your doctor's office run this way?

Damn. He's writing me a ticket. Should've been more careful.

Never throw out a pot

My sister called me this morning, telling me that she nearly burned her house down.  She had put some steel-cut oats on to pre-boil last night, then went into her room and unintentionally fell asleep.  Her landlords came and woke her about 45 minutes later because they could smell smoke.  The oats were burned black to the bottom of the pot. "I'll have to throw that pot away," she told me.
"Nah.  It'll come out," I replied.

We had been living in Timmins for about five weeks when Sashimi was born. Timmins was about 3000km from home, and we knew no one.  I had met a few neighbours, and one was nice enough to take me out, show me around, and lend me some baby items, including a mini-electric breastpump. She had told me that she may ask for the pump back, should a friend of hers decide she wanted it, but that I was free to use it until then.That breastpump came in pretty handy when I was ridiculously loaded with boob-juice, and I had to sterilize it often.

One afternoon, while three-week-old Sashimi was sleeping, I placed the pump parts in boiling water on the stove.  It was supposed to boil for 20 minutes to sterilize.  I looked in the pot and thought to myself "There's lots of water, it won't boil dry.  I don't need to set the timer, I won't forget." Yes, these were my exact thoughts.  I have a super memory of this specific event.

I don't know WHAT I was doing in the computer room, since I was not on the facebook at that time, and I did not do the whole myspace thing.  Maybe I was using MSN messenger?  Who the hell knows.  What I was NOT doing, however, was paying attention to my boiling breastpump. Wait, my neighbour's boiling breastpump. 

All of a sudden, the smoke detector started to blare.  I looked into the hallway and it was thick with smoke.  I ran toward the source of the smoke because I was obviously thought I could extinguish a fire with my boob-juice.  I looked at the stove and there was a FIRE. A real flippin FIRE.  With flames.  They were orange and reaching out of the pot, taunting me.  I looked at my boobs and realized there was not enough milk in them to put that fire out, so I grabbed a towel, wrapped it around the pot handle, ran it to the sink and poured water into it.  It sizzled and steamed and stank.  Not like burned milk.  Like the Earth was dying...a slow death by breastpump melting.

I may have just about burned down our new house, but so help me GOD I was not going to let the baby wake up!  Friggin smoke detector, would you SHUT THE EFF UP?!  But, of course, like all good new homes have, the smoke detector was hardwired to the electrical system.  I couldn't just yank the batteries out, I had to find a stupid reset switch on it, but I was too short to reach the detector to look at it/club it with a baseball bat and we did not own a ladder.  At that point, I started feeling a little high from the fumes of incinerated plastic, and worried for my darling sleeping baby.  So, I ran into the room where he slept, wrapped him in thick blankets, and went outside.  There we waited, and waited, and waited, listening to the smoke alarm going off.  Various neighbours came by to make sure we were alright, and I just waved and smiled and said that  we were Fiiiiiiine, and that I just burned something and couldn't get the smoke detector to turn off.  No biggie.  Smile and wave, people.  Smile and wave.

Finally, our nextdoor neighbour (who shared our driveway) came home from work and used his ladder to reach the detector reset switch and turned it off. 

Ok.  So at this point, Sashimi was still sleeping in the thousand blankets I had wrapped him in, and the fumes in the house were probably toxic or something.  Not Britney toxic, just enough that I thought my brain cells were slowly amassing a collection of yellow "For Dummies" manuals. It was too cold outside, though, to stay there much longer.  I opened all the windows in the house and retreated to the basement, where the smell was not as bad.  There we stayed until Tony came home.  I may have called him to tell him about burning something or other.  I can't remember.  What I DO remember, though, is the insane mess of ashes and soot spread throughout our house.  Our vent about the stove was ruined, our cupboards were coated with ashes, the entire front end of the house had to be completely cleaned - a good four-hour job that evening.  It is amazing how much mess a breastpump can make when lit on fire for a prolonged period of time. I also remember Tony forbidding me to EVER use the stove when he was not home.   We ate a lot of sandwiches that month.
And then I remember realizing that I had just melted my neighbour's breastpump into nothingness.  A neighbour I hardly knew.  As much as I like to return things to people, I did not think the crust on the bottom of my pot would suck the milk out of any breast.  So I sucked it up and bought a brand new pump, exactly like the one I had melted, and kept it in mint condition, just to give back to my neighbour.  If she ever asked for it back.

Which she did not.  And I ended up selling it on kijiji about a year ago for $25.


And that breastpump-lending neighbour became one of my best friends in the world.  Although she may rethink that when she reads this post.

The moral of the story: After four months of scraping and soaking, that pot came clean.  A little bronzed, but clean.  And it is the perfect sized pot for one box of Kraft Dinner.  So never throw out a pot, no matter what you burned in it.

Nope, I don't mind at all

Tony doesn't get me flowers for Valentine's Day.  He gets me chocolates.  And although he works at a major discount department store starting with a W and ending with Mart and gets a staff discount, he does not buy my chocolates from there. 
He orders them from a city 500 km away and has them overnighted to me. 

Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy!

No, I don't mind at all.

And I know it's not V-day yet, but these babies are best consumed within 5-7 days since they are made with fresh ingredients and no preservatives. 
It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.  If it has to be me, so be it.