The Vainest Woman on Earth

Because I am the vainest woman on earth, tomorrow I go in for 4 1/2 hours of elective surgery.I don't mind being the V.W.O.E. but I do mind telling about what's going to be done to me, partially because I am nervous and am already smoking imaginary cigarettes being held in imaginary cigarette holders and partly because there are SOME things even I can be private about. I am trying to think funny about this because I have nobody else around here to amuse me and I have a great need to be amused. One thing that amuses me is the body girdle I must wear for six days straight after the deed is done. The body girdle advertises itself by saying, "Like skin. Only better." Yeah, like skin-TIGHT skin, skin that would hold in an elephant gargling water balloons. The surgeon is making me wear this thing and it will be put on me while I am still under anesthesia. I asked if they would please video this part of the event, but they said no, they would not. I can see myself, limp, scarred, red and purple and pink, being flipped and flopped about, being pinched and pushed and pulled into this "Compression and Support Garment" with Anti-Microbial Protection and I........want to die. Maybe I will. Maybe death is better than this part of the procedure. I don't know.

Yesterday I bought every single episode of "Nip and Tuck". I had to. I'm perverse. Last night I watched the first four episodes. Vanity, vanity, more vanity, arrogance on the doctor's part, blood, gore, slicing, dicing, sewing up, hammering on the nose (no, my nose will not be touched, nor anything else on my face or head), a surgeon who mistakenly inserts butt pads and breast pads inside their potential places but upside down, steel things left in, steel things left out, beautiful woman who just won't stop, it goes on and on. I quite liked it. It made me feel like I am a member of The Weirdest Club in the World. But I am a therapist and I actually know about clubs that are way way way weirder than this one. Even so, I realized that I am one of "them".

"You would think at HER age that she wouldn't care about this stuff anymore," said one very nice, very smart woman I know to her friend (about me). I suppose one WOULD think that. But they would be wrong. Very very wrong. At my age, I still DO care about such things. I care about a lot of things women my age are not supposed to care about and I'm not going to list them, either. The nice thing about all of this is it's optional. I can bag it at any moment up till the second I go 'under". Other than that one moment, there is:
Check here: ( ) Yes, I would like to be carved up.
Check here: ( ) No, thank you. I do not wish to take advantage of the carving offer at this time.

It's good to have options. This isn't like having to have a gall bladder or a spleen out. This is like being Michael Jackson (but not the face! Not the face!) for a few hours. Go ahead. Make my day.

Even so, I"m worried. Last time I was in the hospital my blood pressure plummeted all the way to zero. "Her hearts' still beating, she's still with us," I heard one of the nurses say. Eight doctors ran into the room. "You are a VERY lucky lady," said another nurse, later on. Well, okay, goody for me. I've been lucky and I've been unlucky. I'll take lucky. This time I'm drinking more water, no blood pressure pills (nobody can figure out why I was on them in the first, second or third place) and eating something surgery (aw, gee, NO!) for dinner. "Peaches," said the nurse on the phone yesterday. "Canned peaches contain lots and lots of sugar. Eat them with ice cream." So tonight my friend and I will go out to a very nice restaurant and I will order a big dessert for my dinner. No wine. And water. Lots of water.

And now it's time for me to go through my house and set everything up a little higher than it was before. In other words, I am not to lift. I am not to lower. And, at first, I will walk bent over. This, it seems to me, this walking-bent-over part, is the worst of it all. How humiliating. Still, it's an optional humiliating. You choose it, you do it.

I'll keep you posted. You've got to admit, there is a kind of icky-interest part to all this. At least if you're at all like me and who isn't, even if just a teeny weeny bit.