My mind is so youthful and silly but my body is decrepit, my long dark brown hair now has shimmers of silver threading through it, the smile lines near my eyes are growing deeper and each morning as I slide off the bed to stomp towards the bathroom I hear my joints crackle and creak.
I remember distinctly something my mom did every morning she woke up and sat upright in the bed and then she belched soundly before heading off to start mom duties.
This really cracked me up, thinking what a piggy she is and why would she burp after sleeping because she didn't have anything to eat during the night.
Now I know from first hand experience, it's sort of a bugle to announce the new day. Sort of "Reveille" to the morning!
The compression you create from sitting upright and all of the trapped gas erupts from your mouth. You really don't have much control over it and it rather surprises me every time it happens.
I suppose that it's better than the alternative that every guy I know seems to do, which is to fart with such abandon you'd guess they have nearly sharted the bed!
My husband sometimes gives me those looks of disapproval when I'm ripping some gaseous emanations from my pie-hole but more often than not finds himself rating me. If he had index cards handy I bet he'd be numerically scoring me such as they do in the Olympics. He also has another rating system in which he measures the belch by "inches".
I might have a gut wrenching thunderous explosion that lasts more than a moment and he'll say,"oh that's a 4 incher". The longer I can stretch it out, the more hollow and reverberating the better the rating.
One burp I don't care to experience however, is the tomato sauce based burp. Over the years, as I've gotten more bling-shine in my hair, I have figured out that I have a strong sensitivity to nightshades (this is the family of food that includes Potatoes, tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, eggplant, tomatillos, tamarios, pepinos, pimentos, paprika, cayenne, and Tabasco sauce are classified as nightshade foods).
Let me inform you that this pretty well SUCKS DONKEY BALLS. Some of my favorite foods have these ingredients, if not a majority in a single recipe!
I'm from the Midwest where you have meat and potatoes in the winter and BLTs in the summer. These days I live in central Texas and guess what, everything down here is peppers, peppers, cayenne and BOY do I love Tabasco on everything else.
A few years ago there was a morning that I woke up with gastrointestinal stress (yeah, I said it - I was farting and burping), in addition to that I was experiencing stomach cramping that rode very high in the gut. All day long I found myself in discomfort and every hour I stayed awake the worse it seemed to be.
After the first couple of hours of pain I decided to start eating Tums, I'd already taken a heartburn remedy but no relief was in sight.
Whenever I applied pressure to my mushy tummy there was a little bit of alleviation ...but the pain sort of traveled to my low back. It started to feel like I'd been kicked in the kidneys and the kicker decided to lay right across me and jam their knuckles in as deeply as possible.
All day long I'm in agony but refuse to go to the doctor. You ALL know how I feel about going to a physician and this just seemed stupid because of a tummy-ache. Seriously it couldn't be much more than a little stomach flu but I couldn't bring myself to lay down and rest because the symptoms escalated to the most dreaded, puking.
There is nothing worse than barfing your guts out iif you ask me, give me a fever or you can even give me the shits but don't have me upchucking.
The day turned into night and I'm pacing the floors and leaning into furniture to get as much pressure into my stomach to ease the pain, the pain was moving then into my chest and my heart was racing and I was sweating.
During all of this I'm being told what a hard-headed ass I am and finally at the usual bedtime my husband says to me, wake me up when you are ready to go to the E.R because I'm done telling you to go.
A couple of more hours passed, I'm weeping in pain and have now begun crawling on my hands and knees because the very effort of standing was too much for me.
Retching and heaving, the sweat pouring off of my brow I finally give in and weakly call up the stairs ...."help"
my voice is tiny and it sounds so very far away from that I don't even recognize it.
There's no answer from up above, the bedroom door is shut and the husband has on his 'white noise' to drown out the rest of the world. He's cozy in his cocoon of sleep while I am certain that Death is visiting my living room.
I cry out again, "help" this time a little bit louder but again there is no response so I begin my ascent. I climb, hand over hand, knees roughly hitting the hard wood steps and I can see small dust bunnies made from cat hair blow away from my palms. The lights are out except for a small nightlight at the top of the landing and the warm golden glow from the lamp left on downstairs.
It felt like eternity creeping up those stairs, each palm stomp and knee thump just added more pain to my stomach but I finally found myself at the door where I reached up and eased the door open.
I cry out "HELP" and instantly he's awake as I scuttle up onto the mattress. The lights are still out, the gentle hum of the ceiling fan as it spins the only sounds besides his breathing and my huffing and puffing.
My head collapses onto his forearm, hot and wet from the exertion and I tell him to please take me to the E.R. There's something wrong and I can't avoid the truth any longer.
He helps me back down the stairs and starts the car ready for our drive to the hospital, which I should mention we have NO IDEA WHERE IT IS! We have only lived in this location for a short time and never needed to visit the place in the past therefore we don't really know the true whereabouts other than the direction.
The nausea is building up and burbling out of me, hot rank burps that burn my throat. I've got the seat reclining all the way but I'm doubled over clutching myself in a tight hug, wishing that we were there already and wondering why I'm such an idiot.
He's racing along the highway going far and above the speed limit, our headlights piercing the dark night. Beacons to assist us on the journey to heal me.
Exiting the ramp where there is the familiar "H" for hospital the husband turns and starts heading ...in the wrong direction. After about a mile and a half I snap at him, you are going the wrong way..HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT TURN AROUND.
He continues for another mile and agrees at last, he makes a sharp and unexpected turn (unexpected to me) and I'm smashed into the door and again snap at him to get me there all the while I have the windows rolled down to try and capture cool air, gulping back the vomit that's rising up my esophagus and threatening to spill over onto my lap, the floor to splatter the interior of the auto.
We finally arrive and I burst out of my door like a bottle rocket, scramble through the doors which open to me with that swooshing sound- so inviting and promising of healing. I doubt the car had come to a complete stop before my feet hit the pavement, he had pulled right under the canopy where the ambulances park and I say.."park, come in..help."
When I get inside the smell of the industrial cleaners assault my sense of smell and I can feel another burst of barf about to expel but I choke it back and tap, loudly, on the window of the check-in window.
Oh so grateful am I to be immediately welcomed and pulled around the corner to have my vitals taken. No nonsense and fantastic service they rush me back and immediately put me on an IV of medication to stop the vomiting.
My gratitude cannot be expressed and soon the doctor is in with me behind the curtain to explain what is wrong. I'm on my side curled into a fetal ball, the IV lines tangled from my inner arm under my shoulder, around my back because I've tossed and turned on the gurney to find some comfort.
The verdict is in, my gallbladder. They want to get me in for an ultrasound and see how bad it is...Oh it's bad alright. I have a number of little stones floating around inside (too bad they weren't diamonds that could be dug out) and my gallbladder showing signs of illness.
The technician doing my ultrasound states to me that she isn't supposed to say anything and it's for the doctor to report but guarantee that my morning would be spent in surgery.
Sweet pain killers administered..I'm whisked off to have my belly to be filleted and I hear someone telling me to count backwards from 100...99...98...97..ZzzZzzzZ
I hate barfing and every time I do I'm reminded of the misery of that day - when the doctor came to report to me about the procedure he asked how long I'd been having problems such as heartburn. My answer was and still is, I didn't have very bad heartburn at all just once in a while after a rich meal.
He says to me, " I can't understand anyone tolerating as much pain as you had because you could have died tonight, your gallbladder had gangrene and was on the verge of bursting"
ya know something, I'm an idiot.
