Blogging Monday through Friday Means Never Having to Produce Your Best Work

Have you ever noticed how much this guy:

Mark Ruffalo

looks like this guy?

rage comics frankendad is disappoint

I guess that’s why they made him the Hulk. And an excellent hulk indeed.


Anyway, I know this is going up on Wednesday (or Thursday, depending) but last week was brutal. On Wednesday May 23, I went to the largest, most consistently under construction hospital in North America (citation needed), Huntington Memorial in Pasadena to support my grandma as my mother went in for surgery. The intention was to excise a lobe of her lung, test the cancerous cells and know by the time she woke up if the cancer was lung or breast.

Why can’t doctors all get together and agree to stop saying they can do things when they totally can’t do them and people are counting on a certain timeline of events and it’s frustrating and disappointing when it doesn’t turn out that way? Not least of which because you have to call the entire family and several friends and honorary relatives and tell them that all that shit you said before the surgery is actually not what happened at all and instead this other thing is happening, or at least supposed to happen and that doesn’t even happen either. More on that shortly.

While we were waiting for the news, Grandma and I hung out in the hospital cafeteria, where I showed her the wholesome goodness of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

Untitled

She wasn’t impressed. Some of her better commentary:

  • On Twilight Sparkle: “That doesn’t look like a horse to me.”
  • On Fluttershy: “That one’s eyelashes are sticking out real far.”
  • Grandma: “Why is she in this town?” Me: “To make friends” Grandma: “Huh.”
  • Me: “Do you want to watch more ponies?” Grandma: “No.” Me: “But the Internet loved your commentary!” Grandma: “The what?”
  • Yes I live-tweeted my grandma watching MLP:FiM. I did it for the RTs and I’m not sorry.

Trying to keep the RT train going, I then had the Internet ask my grandma random questions, which she answered in her endearingly grumpy way.

  • Me: gay marriage? Grandma: people should be able to marry whoever they want. You should be able to marry your mother if you want.
  • Me: Grandma, pie vs cake? Grandma: what?
  • Me: what is your favorite type of sword? Grandma: I don’t have a favorite sword. That’s like asking what’s your favorite sneeze.
  • Me: Do you want the Internet to ask you more questions? Grandma: No, they ask dumb questions.

So, after annoying my poor grandma and soundly beating her at Gin Rummy, the doctor was ready to tell us the news. Apparently they couldn’t test the cells while my mother is in surgery (they just told us they could for the luls) so instead of taking the lobe, they just took the cancerous bit and left the lobe in there for possible later retrieval. They sent the cells off for testing, and the doc told us the results should be back by Friday. Seven (or eight, depending) days later we still don’t know what’s wrong with her.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Huntington Memorial. If I ever get injured, airlift me to that motherfucker, I don’t care if I’m in Kansas. All doctors do this. Why don’t they just say results will come in a week and be done with it? That way if results do come in sooner, people are happy to know sooner instead of being constantly disappointed while the dates they should have known things on sail by waving.

Whatever, the important thing about this whole ordeal is that I managed to avoid my mom the entire time. I was at the hospital from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. and I didn’t lay eyes on her once. I was a good (if obnoxious) grandchild, I waited with my grandma through the surgery and kept her entertained. I talked to my uncle and my grandma’s bestie Lomie. After surgery, I dropped grandma off at the entrance to the recovery ward with my mom’s friend and left them to find my mother together, and when they called me I came back up and got her.

After the hospital, we went and ate at Shakers, so named because everybody there has a palsy. The median age for this place was about 65, and that’s only because there was a table of 16 year olds in the corner talking about BJs. After a long day of tweeting and card playing and relative wrangling, I was starved and exhausted, which is probably how I was able to choke down their food. The burger tasted faintly of uck. Maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh on what was obviously a family owned operation. I’ll say this for Shakers: it was open. Also their zucchini bread was awesome.

Not to bury the headline, but the update here is that there really is nothing to update. Mom still definitely has cancer, but weather it’s lung or breast is anyone’s guess. Well, not anyone’s. The doctor said he was 70% sure it is stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, which is why he didn’t take the whole lobe, as there would be no point if he was right. Then again, he also said we’d have results by Friday, and before that he said he could test what type of cancer it was while she was in surgery. So who fucking knows.

6 Replies to “Blogging Monday through Friday Means Never Having to Produce Your Best Work

  1. I really, really, REALLY love Mark Ruffalo. That is all.

    Also? This post made me laugh (not your mom having cancer, that part sucks, no matter who she is as a human being), but the part about your grandma and people asking her questions from the interwebs. That part was hysterical.

    Love you gal! You continue to amaze and impress the hell out of me.

    Signed,

    Your biggest fan

  2. Haha that’s the grandma I remember 🙂 tell her I said hi next time ur around fb me mabe we can have lunch

Comments are closed.