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 