Keeping the Goal Alive…?

My goal for 2015 was to stay out of the Oper­at­ing Room.

Well. I made it to March 23^rd?

2 months and 23 days, baby! WOOOOO!!!

(Sar­casm)

BUT.

I’ve decid­ed this surgery doesn’t count as break­ing my goal.

And I make the rules, so ya know, yea…totally doesn’t count.

Reason #1: This was a test, not a repair.

On Mon­day I had a mus­cle biop­sy of my left bicep. This test has come up for 4 con­sec­u­tive years, but the med­ical com­mu­ni­ty has nev­er been sure enough to war­rant the pro­ce­dure. A mus­cle biop­sy is done to diag­nose neu­ro­mus­cu­lar dis­or­ders (specif­i­cal­ly, in my case, mito­chon­dr­i­al dis­or­ders), infec­tions that affect the mus­cle, and oth­er abnor­mal­i­ties in the mus­cle tis­sue. After it came up for the fourth year in a row, by the 23049820398^th med­ical provider, my internist decid­ed it was time to check it off my med­ical buck­et list.

So see…it was a test, not a repair. Total­ly doesn’t count.

Reason #2: I didn’t go under general anesthesia

And let me just say, rolling out of the hos­pi­tal 45 min­utes after the surgery end­ed is fair­ly glo­ri­ous. In fact, I even made it the full hour and a half home from Hop­kins before the numb­ing med­ica­tion wore off. Booyea/OW.

On the oth­er hand, I wouldn’t have turned down an option to maybe, ya know, NOT remem­ber the feel­ing of chunks of my bicep being removed from my arm. A lit­tle colonoscopy twi­light, anyone?

Just say­ing.

(No real­ly)

Reason #3: What was removed will, in theory, grow back

After the four spec­i­mens of my “bulging bicep” were passed over my sur­gi­cal­ly-draped body to the pathol­o­gist, he asked me if I want­ed to see them.

Obvi­ous­ly I said yes.

Moments lat­er I found it extra­or­di­nar­i­ly cru­cial to turn to my sur­geon, who was sewing up my arm, and ask if our bod­ies work like worms.

To which she paused, laughed, and said, “Clear­ly you were an ele­men­tary school teacher. And yes, the mus­cle will regenerate.”

And for that I will send an extra hearty grat­i­tude to the pow­er of the human body, because let me just say (with respect to those of you with a weak stom­ach), the spec­i­mens were not small.

No real­ly. It’s a won­der my entire upper arm is not missing.

Although, now that I think about it, my upper arm is still under a giant pres­sure ban­dage and hid­den in a sling….

Gulp…

In oth­er news, I’m pret­ty good at this arm-in-a-sling sit­u­a­tion. In fact, this entire blog post was typed with my right hand, while my left hand is cel­e­brat­ing Hal­loween a bit ear­ly by dress­ing up as a puffer­fish. I also got dressed all by myself today! It’s almost like I just had surgery a few months ago, or something.

Weird.

So…see?
I told you this surgery did­n’t break my goal of stay­ing out of the Oper­at­ing Room.
As you can clear­ly see from Rea­sons #1–3, the goal is still alive.

Obvi­ous­ly.

What­ev­er peo­ple, I make the rules.