I turned sixty in June. The very next day I started falling apart. I am not kidding, my internal organs began failing the next day. Well, at least my gallbladder gave out on me.
Who knew planned obsolescence applied to the human body? At 60,000 miles you need a new timing belt, and possibly a brake-job.
Several expensive tests and a trip to urgent care later, it turned out I didn’t have gallstones. My gallbladder simply was failing, or as the doctor put it, dysfunctional. If you only knew my family, you wouldn’t be surprised. I’m sure it’s not the only dysfunctional internal organ in the family.
I felt rather like the 1974 Chevy Vega we once owned, the vehicle with the duct-tape interior. We had proudly bought it new, but at 50,000 miles the armrests fell off, the dashboard began cracking, the seats came apart–the interior was nothing but duct tape; a vast sea of silver. And the car was only three years old.
Duct tape is also known as “hundred-mile-an-hour-tape” in my family. Uncle Jim had a purple 1962 Chrysler station-wagon with both the rear-view mirror and the back bumper duct-taped on and he drove it like that for two years while he worked in the woods, planting trees.
So last Wednesday I had surgery. It was just a bit of internal housecleaning–out with the debris cluttering up the place. Unlike Dr. Frankenstein’s monster I had nothing new to replace it with, but the gallbladder is apparently an internal organ we can do without.
Today I am hanging around the house, waiting for tomorrow when I will get the staples out.
I know! Staples–almost as classy as duct tape! My Father would have been proud!
Life in the Realm of Fantasy 
You were probably a Studebaker in your previous life.
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lol Stephen! You are right!
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I think you need to put a new spin on it! You’ve been remodeled. You’re now the fancy, shiny, new and improved model!! 😉
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@ Johanna – Wow! I like that!
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Ooh nasty! Wondered where you’d gotten to – not the sort of break you really want to take. At least it was a bit you can do without, and I love Johanna’s idea of remodelling – I may have to steal that….
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lol @Deborah – its all good – if i was even 10 years younger I would be outside painting the porch instead of lounging on the sofa trying to work on a tiny little laptop.
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Sounds like a good excuse for some uninterrupted writing to me 😉
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Too funny, Connie; we had a ’72 duct tape Vega. Had a convo with my brother, who just turned 50 and we were tit-for-tatting all the stuff that has begun to ‘malfunction’! Feel better soon. :0)
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Thank you Donna – I am feeling better every day. Just getting the staples out is going to make me SO much happier!
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Myth would have it that gall bladder problems were for those fair, fat, female and forty. I had mine out ten years ago and none of the above applied! If you have problems with the staples use duct tape 🙂
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Thanks J.D. – if all goes as planned today, the staples will come out and duct tape will be applied as needed!
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