But Steve just made me laugh really hard and I knew that if I didn't write it down, I wouldn't remember it tomorrow because, yanno, Ambien makes me forget stuff that happens after I take my evening pill. (It also impairs my judgment and lowers my inhibitions, which will have to be considered caveat #2. Ergo, I cannot accept full responsibility for the appropriateness/inappropriateness regarding any of the following and readers should be duly warned thus.)
So, Steve has always had this habit of literally falling asleep in the middle of our conversations. Only… He keeps talking. And sometimes it takes me a minute to figure out the precise point where his consciousness has been compromised. See if you can spot the PPCC (precise point of compromised consciousness) below!
Me [fluffing up my pillows and such, getting ready for bed]: “So, Doogie says I have to have a bone scan done.”
Steve: “And it'll take all day?”
Me: “Yeah. I’ll be at the U hospital. They wanted me to get a CAT scan the same morning, and I heard them on the phone wrangling to get both procedures done in the same hospital so I wouldn’t have to trek up to Huntsman Cancer and I almost yelled out the hallway, ‘Naw! I LIKE Huntsman better! PLEASE send me there!”
Steve: “20 year old hospitals *are* pretty creepy.”
Me: “It’s not just that the U is creepy. They’re *nicer* to you at Huntsman. There are all these soothing fountains and aromatherapy and all of the posters on the wall say things like, ‘You aren’t going to get addicted to pain killers! Please take MORE! And if you still hurt, we can give you STRONGER STUFF!’ Or my personal favorite: ‘Ten ways to sneak extra calories into your diet.’ I liked the one about just randomly adding heavy cream to everything. So tasty.”
Steve: “So, what does the bone scan show?”
Me: “They usually only use it to monitor cancer progressions, etc., but it also has some uses particularly suited to identifying degenerative facets in the vertebrae.”
Steve: “What does the messed up facet look like?”
Me: “Well, the scans show bright spots and dark spots. Dark spots are cancer spots. Bright spots are spots where the bone has been doing an abnormal amount of bone re-generation--like if it’s been really stressed from the slouching and the baby birthing and the getting-whacked-in-the-side-by-a-drunk-driver thing. So, dark spots = bad, bright spots = not so bad. Unless they’re tumors, I guess. Those can be bright too.”
Steve: “So, best case?”
Me: “They find a few messed up facets. They inject a few things into my spine. I feel no pain for two years at which point they inject some more things and life is good. Worst case would be that they find nothing and my back still friggin hurts. No, strike that. I guess worst case would be they find a multiple myeloma. That word has been randomly appearing in my nightmares, remember? So I looked it up. It’s incurable. Median survival rate 50 months. Totally hypochondriachiacally creeptastic, right?”
Steve: “But do people your age even get that cancer? You’re young.”
Me: “Youngish. Young people don’t tend to get colon cancer, either. But that’s what my grandma died of. When she was *thirty six.*”
Steve: “Well, I guess we’re going to have to add that to the list.”
Me: “What list? A list of cancers that are completely unlikely anywhere except in my family?”
Steve: “No, The Cookie list.”
Me: “Cancer cookies?”
Steve: “Yeah, Cancer cookies. We’ll have to make some. Put them in Tupperware.”
Me: "Okay, but only if we can randomly poor cream on them." [laughing because I know Steve is totally asleep now and if I wanted to, I could keep the conversation going for awhile just because it'd be hilarious. I'll have to do that some night when I'm not on Ambien.]
