What? and, ew.

Many people have asked me since C got his appendix out: "Was it a planned surgery?" I got confused about how much planning they meant. We did, after all, plan to have the surgery after he got diagnosed that morning and then spent eleven hours sitting in a hallway. No, they clarify. "Had it been getting bad for a while?" Um, no. Appendectomies aren't really like that, to my knowledge. They're emergency-only, like an evolutionary Plan B. The first time someone asked me I was sure of that; after the fifth or sixth person asked me that, I started to question what I knew. I must thank Aramis again for setting me straight!

Nothing compares to this week's comment, though. Someone who was a little late to the medical-news party heard about the bad appendix and asked, "How bad was it? Did you see it?" Um, no. And for anyone else who might be curious: we never did lay eyes on the rogue digestive organ. So we're kind of taking the surgeon's word that it's actually gone.

In a similar vein (har), I had a conversation with the inside of someone's purse today, when I called her cell phone and it answered itself. I began shouting loudly at the person I was calling, because I could hear her saying something about laser eye surgery. I caught the phrases "dicing and cauterizing" and "right next to his contact lens". Then I paused, and she paused, and she said clearly enough as if she were talking to me: "So, how are YOUR eyeballs?" I get majorly squicked out by eyes. I said her name once more, to be sure that she hadn't picked up the phone to draw me into the conversation, and when I didn't get a reply my eyeballs and I hung up. We need neither dicing nor cauterizing, thankyouverymuch.