When things go decently with a surgery, I seem to find it therapeutic to post a humorous (to me, at least) aspect of the experience. Here goes:
So I just had another TAE this morning, this time for a rectal polyp. Odds are good it’s benign, since very small, not indurated or ulcerated, nothing showed on scans, my fabulous, super-experienced CRC surgeon thinks it’s benign, biopsies were negative. But as an old televangelist used to say “We’ll see, won’t we?” (Bet nobody guesses that one!)
Anyway, I had the following conversation with my wife a little while ago because these TAEs tend to cause a decent amount of bleeding at first:
Me (waits until teen sons are upstairs and deep in video games (these do in fact have a purpose other than destroying curiosity, creativity, and productivity!)):
“Um, hey honey. . . you don’t happen to have any of those, you know, um . . . panty liner thingies?”
Wife: “Yeah, I do, but I don’t think they’ll work for you.
Me: “Why not?”
Wife: “Your underwear is pointy.”
Me: (trying to work this out) “Huh?”
Wife: “Mine have a gusset in them.”
At this point I realized I was way out of my depth in this conversation, having never even heard the word “gusset” before. But I snuck upstairs anyway and retrieved the, ahh . . . product, jury rigged it (in nearly every other conversation jury rigging anything is in my view pretty manly, but here this seems in doubt . . .) and for those still reading, it seems to be functioning as intended despite my apparent anatomical shortcomings. As above, we’ll see…
P.S. For Father’s Day, I added to my previous advice to my sons (“Don’t get cancer.”). New maxim is: “Don’t have operations on your butt.”