Pulling the Plug

PEOPLE.

Today was sort of epic.

Scratch the “sort of” part.

THIS hap­pened:

You know what’s NOT under that gauze?

A feed­ing tube, that’s what!

(Also, I just bared my midriff on a pub­lic forum…does that make me a real­i­ty tv star now?!?)

Peo­ple. I pulled the plug!

Well…if we are being tech­ni­cal, I didn’t do the actu­al pulling, but work with me here.

It’s a bit con­fus­ing, as med­ical­ly speak­ing, I don’t real­ly have any­thing even remote­ly resem­bling a clean bill of health. That being said, I haven’t used the tube for nour­ish­ment in about a year and a half (woop!), it’s chron­i­cal­ly angry and inflamed, and it pos­es a big infec­tion risk for my upcom­ing surgery (more about that in a sec).

Real­ly the only dif­fer­ence between now and three years ago, is that I have fig­ured out how to nour­ish my body.

I know, I know — it’s shock­ing, real­ly! They told me to eat only broth, Ensure, Car­na­tion instant break­fast and mashed pota­toes, and I plum­met­ed 30 lbs. Can you believe it?!?

(Real­ly Microsoft Word, you need to invent a sar­casm font. I’d use it daily)

My diet now is cer­tain­ly lim­it­ed (under­state­ment of the cen­tu­ry), but it nursed me back from “fail­ure to thrive” land and enabled me to say ciao to my lit­tle friend the feed­ing tube ear­li­er today. So for that, I feel I owe a per­son­al, heart­felt thank you to the indomitable spir­it of the sweet pota­to, and the fero­cious hum of my Bre­ville juicer. Thanks pals.

The only down­side of today’s epi­cal­ly fan­tas­tic plug pulling is the fact that the replace­ment tube that came in the mail a few months ago is…prepare yourself…glow in the dark.

Yep. Glow. In. The. Dark.

They now make feed­ing tubes glow in the dark, “to ease the bur­den of night­time feedings.”

(And yes, don’t think it didn’t cross my mind to change my tubes last night so I could enjoy one night as a glow in the dark 31 year old adult…hellooooo Hal­loween costume!)

Also notable, can we dis­cuss how much more room I’m going to have under my bath­room sink now?!?

In oth­er news, my car­di­ol­o­gist and I are in a fight.

Next Wednes­day I’m hav­ing a lit­tle heart makeover — catheter abla­tion and pace­mak­er surgery.

(Some peo­ple go to the spa for a makeover, oth­ers to the hospital…totally nor­mal. I won­der if I’ll wake up with cucum­bers on my eyes?)

But here is my beef: my car­di­ol­o­gist won’t let me bedaz­zle my pace­mak­er pri­or to surgery.

Um, hel­lo! How amaz­ing would it be to get an X‑ray with a bedaz­zled pacemaker???

Can we say BLING!?

But alas, he stands firm in his denial of said bedaz­zle­ment. Some­thing about hygiene.

Lame.

I also request­ed a laser that would shoot off beams through my skin every time the pace­mak­er fired.

Fire­works all the time! Who doesn’t love the Fourth of July year round!?

No such luck.

On the plus side, the whole “per­ma­nent” nature of a pace­mak­er gives me time to think. In 7–10 years when that lit­tle heart robot needs to be replaced?

Rest assured, friends…I’ll be ready.