Unitarian dancing and an emergency room visit

I will never forget my mother's birthday again!

For several years, my mother has been wanting me to be the DJ for a dance that she wanted to put on at her Unitarian church. I love being a DJ and do a pretty good job at it, but I would rather crawl naked through an iodine coated cactus field than do this for my mom.

Now, I love my mother and enjoy spending time with her. But when she takes on a project, like a dance, she gets unrealistic grandiose ideas of how to do it. I knew that she would try to put on eight different kinds of parties at once. I also knew that she would email or call me about the dance every three seconds. Therefore, I have always refused.

To make a long story boring, I forgot her birthday last October. I was in a play and in the hospital and I just missed it. I know, bad Drew! :(

To make up for missing the big day, I told her I would DJ the dance.

All of my fears were confirmed. It was like hell, but without all of the good parts. She wanted a sock hop, swing, fox trot, waltz, tango, polka dance with music from the 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, and 70's. The song list she put together was too long and had song that you couldn't dance to. 'Hey Jude' and 'American Pie' are not dance tunes!

It took weeks, but I finally convinced her to limit it to a swing/sock hop dance with tunes from the 40's, 50's, and 60's.

I was looking forward to Saturday. The torment would be over.

But it appears that I had done something to really p*ss God off. Thursday, I got an abscess on my rear end. My left cheek was causing me great pain. (I know you all are going to have a great time making 'Pain in the *ss' jokes in the comments for this post.) By Saturday, I knew I was going to have to get the boil lanced. (On a side note, doesn't 'Lance the Boil' sound like the name of one of King Arthur's knights?) With emergency room times being unpredictable, I decided to wait till after the dance.

The dance went well. You could say that I did a 'Stand up job' as DJ.

So after the dance, I go to the emergency room.

It's really a bad sign when the doctor who is going to be cutting on you tells you he is very busy and in a hurry.

He injects the 'area' with numbing agent and says 'Sometimes it doesn't work on inflamed tissue."

NO F*CKING KIDDING!!!!!!

With basically no pain killer, he starts to cut. Apparently he went out to the parking lot and ripped a rusty hunk of metal from the front quarter panel of a 1974 Pinto to use as a scalpel. And, just to show off, he did the whole thing blindfolded.

After about three and a half years of slicing away at my hind parts, he tells me he has opened up all the puss pockets. (I think I saw 'Puss Pockets' in the frozen food section last time I went to the store.) Now all he has to do is insert a drainage probe. I have no idea where he found one the size of a horse's leg. He jabbed it in with all the tenderness of a NHL full body check.

Patti, that howling you heard early Sunday morning was not coyotes on the west Texas plains. It was was me,up here in Seattle, expressing my displeasure at the discomfort I was experiencing.

Having caused me as much pain as they could, the emergency room staff went to work on my dignity. In order to get the wound dressing to adhere to my back side, the nurse needed to shave part of my butt. Seeing that I had some small shreds of self respect remaining, she then informed me that the area had to be able to breathe. I couldn't wear my pants! I had to drive home in hospital PJ bottoms.

The good news is that I went back today to have the dressing removed and it looks like everything is going to heal up quickly. Thank goodness for small favors.

Thought for the day -

"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"