Lassitude And Nothingness

Yesterday, I called the Surgical Wait List Hotline*, because I have yet to hear of a surgery date for this laparoscopic hysterectomy of mine. When I last saw my gynecologist on the 1st, she told me that the surgery would likely be sometime in July and that I would hear when it was within the next week. That was last week, and now it is Friday of this week, and I am beginning to sour on this whole patience-and-fortitude-cancer-patient-with-a-halo bullshit.

As much as I don't like the idea of having my uterus and cervix excised remotely by tiny instruments and then pulled out of my vagina, I am really not into this whole waiting around for weeks bit. My dreams are flooded with uteri and fruit and my mother organizing my closets and drawers; my waking hours are spent working and drinking and writing and watching television in order to avoid any stray thoughts; eating food is fraught with tension, as it is either healthy, which reminds me that I have more of a reason to be eating healthy now, or it is unhealthy, which reminds me that I am using food to cope with the fact that I have more of a reason to be eating healthy now.

And on top of all the worry and sadness and whatnot, there is a generous dollop of lassitude. This situation has grown seriously boring. It is one great, huge, fat yawn to have the same fecking thing on my mind for weeks and weeks. What was once very dramatic and interesting is now, like, so last season. I feel as though I could fall face first into my yogurt parfait. If you, too, have fallen face first into your keyboard or bowl of cereal or whatever, I completely understand. Webster's has agreed to enter Schmutzie's cervical cancer as an illustrative example under the colloquial definition of lame.

Of course, I am not just bored. I have also been battling fits of deep, nihilistic depression the like of which has not been seen since I was fifteen and found myself internally conflicted after reading both Jean-Paul Sartre and a book about transcendental meditation by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. (Oh why, oh why, did I not just stick with My Friend Flicka and the Sweet Valley High series?) I fall into the trap of negating individual experience and start to wonder why it matters that my body has gone awry when so many die well before my age or are never born at all. What does it matter when death will erase my life from me anyway? When I was in my twenties, I would have spent the weekend blissed out on acid and resolving my despair on another plane, but now I do it by drinking three pints of beer and eating cold pizza. I was thinner in my twenties.

And now you have fallen into a mad crush on me, because my having cancer, being depressed by my having cancer, and then whining about it is hot with a double T and italics and all caps. HOTT. Say "cancer", but do it through your nose so that it resonates gratingly through your nasal passages, and draw out the A. Caaancer. Your heart wants more of me, but your mind says no, Schmutzie is a married, monogamous person. Her tragedy is magnetic, but I must be strong. It is not to be.

If you can keep your hands to yourself, we can still be friends.

* I am going to protest their use of "hotline", because the hotline consists of an electronic voice message, a beep, and some air time in which to give them your information. There is no person on the other end of this hotline. There are no answers for those suffering from attacks of despair. There is only waiting. The bastards.

Comments

[blackbird]

Am sitting here thinking of a way to fuck with their answering machine...
airhorn perhaps?

[palinode]

That's a HOTTline you're calling. What I do when I call is say "Oooh hott!" and then make that sizzling noise.

[Mrs. Dymund]

Since I'm not sure I can keep my hands to myself, it's probably good I can't reach you from here.

Can we still be friends anyway?

[wordgirl]

Keeping my hands to myself. Right here in my lap where everyone can see them. Geez...I need a manicure.

[Teebopop]

Well, dang, I hope they call you before the end of the work day (theirs) so that you don't have to have this on your mind all weekend too! Let us know.

[That blond chick near schmutzi]

Boring? Fear not. I haven't heard the one about the rabbi, the priest and the laparoscopic hysterectomy. So lay it on me anytime.

[palinode]

Okay. I got this one. A rabbi, a priest and a laparoscopic hysterectomy walk into a bar. No wait, they're on a plane. They're on a bar in a plane. This joke takes place in 1961, when plane travel was swankier. They're in the bar when one of the engines suddenly goes out. They don't realize it because they're passengers and they don't know enough about planes. The pilots know. They panic, void their own bowels, collapse into each other's arms in a last minute bid to find human contact. Meanwhile, the hysterectomy orders a vodka martini and lays down a fifty dollar bill. The bartender figures, What the hey, a surgical procedure from the future can't know much about drink prices in the sixties, so he gives him five dollars back in change. The rabbi says, Check out the pine trees speeding by the window. The priest says nothing; his tongue has been removed. Ew.

[savia]

Sigh. That's the oldest joke in the book, Palinode.

[TB]

It seems awfully fucked up that they diagnose your cancer and then make you wait and wait to have it removed. Obviously these doctors have never had to deal with such things themselves.

[Galena Alyson Canada]

And here I always thought it was spelled HAWT. Oh well...

I liked the joke palinode, the second one I mean. The first one was lame.

'Lena