Mistakenly Surfing Porn & The Removing of the Stitches

I don’t think I’ve ever shared the story of the time I shot an elephant in my pajamas….

….because it’s personal.

Jesus, where do you get off?

So I’ve been home for a few days now, still sleeping in the Lazyboy, even with my ridiculously panoptic vocabulary, I am unable to find words to convey exactly how distasteful I find sleeping in that chair. It does fold nearly flat but, not completely. You are still in a slight sitting position, you are restricted in your movements, frozen on your back and your arms are held in this awkward elevated position – very nice for watching a movie – hell on earth when going into your 20th day sleeping in it. The couch is out as are the other chairs, they are too deep for me to be able to get out of easily. So when I’m in the living room, I am forced to sit in my bed/chair to watch TV or read. The only respite is walking or sitting in my office chair at the computer, meticulously constructing these little daily gems.

The wound has been scabbing over, with no bleeding – but now I’m cultivating some beautiful Aurora Borealis type bruising all up and down my chest…

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Most of the blood was pooling along the bottom third of the incision. Oh hey, let me tell you about the time Dr. Mengele (the Nazi Angel of Death) removed my stitches. So I was required to go see my GP between a week and 10 days after being home to have the stitches removed… the main incision does not contain stitches but the Toonie sized hole in my gut where the chest tube had been – was closed with stitches. Seems to me I had heard all about these amazing dissolving stitches that did their job, then had the good manners to just go ahead and magically melt away. Well apparently, those stitches are for wussy little skin breaks and were not nearly strong enough to hold the DVD sized hole in my chest closed.

I had seen regular stitches before but I had never had the pleasure of personally being sewn up – even with my limited stitch experience these bad boys looked pretty thick. I was surprised – upon closer examination to see that they had used not regular suture material but instead what appeared to be a Home Depot Garden Hose. The stitches were that thick. I guess they needed that kind of tensile strength to close the manhole sized hole in my chest…..

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I was nervous about the garden hose removal because the entire area was red, raw, tender and painful with a capital Ouchy. Yet for whatever reason, they needed to come out. So I thought I would go on the Internets, and find out what folks were saying about having their stitches removed. After about 35 minutes I realized I wasn’t getting anything but porn, turns out instead of typing “having stitches removed” into Google I had typed, “Naughty Schoolgirls getting the spanking they deserved” – it was a simple typing error, glad I caught it. I finally found several sites that discussed stitches and my friends, this is where the Internets can be both wonderful and horrible. There were plenty of instances where people said it was nothing, came out easy as a summer breeze AND plenty of people with the most horrible experiences possible, flesh and organs getting caught, body meat becoming dislodged etc etc… It did absolutely nothing to allay my fears.

The day came and we made a terrifically painful drive to his office, imagine being gut shot with a rusty sawed off shotgun – but instead of buckshot in the shells, they were filled with angry sea monkeys and once they penetrated your chest, they began to mature and created an angry sea monkey society of their own, in your chest…. very unpleasant. It was my first time in the car since coming home and I was as giddy as a schoolgirl, high on the fresh air. I slowly made my way up to the office. We went through all the formalities, he checked the incision and told me it was looking great, he next got me to lie down, then put some antiseptic gel all up and down the scar, really rubbing it in, I asked him if the massage would be extra and would it be to completion – he didn’t laugh…. now I won’t lie to you – my hind-quarters were puckering up pretty hard, as I laid out on his exam table he donned gloves, big tweezer things, a needle and scissors…. the pucker, became – not just tight, but profoundly tight. Like, in space no one can hear you scream tight….

He had started out being quite gentle, I ever so suavely grabbed hold of the table, as if it were and out of control luge and held on. I saw the tools getting closer to pain central and resisting the temptation to close my eyes, looked away instead… I braced myself for the disembowelment I was sure would follow – then he said Ok all done….HUH…. what….. am I the strongest, bravest man drawing breath on this whole planet – that was nothing… I am woman, hear me roar, wait… what?  You get the rough idea, it went very well and I felt nothing and now I had a garden hose souvenir.

The stitches were out and now it was all up to me. I still had to see Dr Evans, the surgeon, but no one else would be looking after the incision they had taken it as far as they could and now nature would take it’s course. I really played no part in the scar healing, it’s being doing just fine without my help, but I have been working pretty hard on coming up with some creative explanations for why I have a scar in the first place. Lord knows I love taking my shirt off in public, so I’ll need an impressive story about the 14 inch scar running down my chiseled, hairless chest……

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Have a Great Day

PS – I’ve never shot an Elephant in my Pajamas…