Post-operative

It’s Wednesday. I worked from home today, unusual (though not unheard-of) for a Wednesday. I have far too much work to do right now, and the panic helped me to focus and direct my energies. I got quite a lot accomplished today, enough that I have some breathing room. Enough, in fact, that I can stop working now and write about having too much to do, instead of just doing it.

Yes, I know.

I finished Not that Kind of Girl, and now I’m reading Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck. I like Nora Ephron, God rest her soul, though I sometimes find her intimidating. She was a very successful journalist and writer and cultural observer and influencer, who probably accomplished more in a day than I do in a month. I don’t think I could have kept up with her in real life.

I Feel Bad About My Neck is good, though not nearly as good as Wallflower at the Orgy. It reads as a little lazy and scattershot, a little fast and loose. It was published in 2006, when she was NORA EPHRON, Nora Fucking Ephron, and so people were willing to read anything she wrote. I’m still willing to read anything she wrote, but I know the difference between really good Nora Ephron and phoning-it-in Nora Ephron.

I don’t feel bad about my neck just yet. But I don’t feel good about it either. I’m aware of it. I suppose that’s the first step, the beginning of the slippery slope. Once you start to notice your neck, a completely utilitarian body part that you used to be able to ignore, you’re on the downward spiral from middle-aged to old. And I hate turtlenecks.

*****
What is middle age anyway? What does it mean to be middle aged? I have heard comedians and others suggest that it's absurdly optimistic to call 50 middle aged because it assumes that a person should expect to live to be 100. Not an unreasonable argument, I suppose. But if you remove childhood from the equation and count only the phases of adulthood, then 50 or so is right in the middle of middle age.

Let's establish the ranges right now:

• Young adulthood, 21 - 39
• Middle age, 40 - 64
• Old age, 65 and beyond 

That's my final word. If you're 40 or 65, don't @ me to argue about your placement. It is what it is.

By these final and incontrovertible rules, my husband (almost 50) and I (over 50) are both middle-aged. Because we have been middle-aged for a while, it's long past time for at least one of us to accept that there are certain things that middle aged people shouldn't do. Like playing softball.

By now, you're thinking "this is going somewhere, isn't it?" And it is. We're at Montgomery Medstar Medical Center right now, waiting for an anesthesiologist to put my husband under so that a surgeon can fix his mangled hand. Softball. Ridiculous.

We're in the pre-surgery waiting area, in a semi private little curtained-off cubicle, with just a tiny hospital bed, a visitor's chair, and a hand-painted ceiling tile that I suppose is there to relax the patient. It's a nice, thoughtful touch.

Don't worry about the guy with the scalpel.
Just look at the ceiling. 

My husband is uncharacteristically nervous. He's wearing a hospital gown and hospital-issued fuzzy socks and he has an IV for fluids. He can't eat or drink anything and he can't sleep because of the IV. The surgeon, a very energetic, wiry Asian man with close-cropped gray hair and an unnaturally unwrinkled face, just stopped by to check on my husband. He seems like a nice man and he comes very highly recommended, but I'm not sure I trust a man who has what appears to be quite a bit of Botox. And his neck is very very tight. Nora Ephron would be envious.

I don't know about your neck, Doctor.
You're suspect. 

*****
This is the second time this year that I've been here at this hospital, waiting for someone else to endure the attentions of medical professionals. Last time I was only in the waiting room, feeling sorry for the obviously sick people who had to sit in a public place, visible to all, when they were at their most vulnerable. Today I'm in the pre-surgery waiting area and even here, the patients are exposed to the prying eyes of every passer-by. I feel intrusive and unfairly advantaged, with my street clothes and my shoes and my car keys that allow me to walk out of here and drive away if I want to.

*****
My husband’s surgery went well. He spent Thursday afternoon in bed, napping and watching sports and recovering. He returned to work on Friday, at least three days before he should have, but there’s no stopping him. I hope that everyone else who had surgery last week is doing as well.