No Laughing, Are You Kidding Me???

He was not.

Kidding me in the least, that is.

When I was last at CTCA my surgeon told me with a perfectly straight face (after having just spent the last half-hour applying tourniquet-like pressure to my wound after having removed the rod shoved up my hepatic artery half-way through Start-Pre-Treatment-At-4:30am-Then-Insert-Painful-Device-And-Chemotherapies-And-Make-Bridget-Lie-Flat-On-Her-Back-For-Fourteen-Hours Torture Day) that I would not be allowed to laugh for at least the next seven hours.

I can take a lot (obviously), but NOT LAUGHING?

And he knew, in his evil little surgeon brain, how hard this was going to be because, as I mentioned above, HE HAD JUST SPENT THE LAST HALF HOUR WITH ME. He knew just how hard not laughing for the next seven hours would be. Someone who giggles through thirty minutes of tourniquet-like pressure on a wound (ouch!) just isn’t going to make it.

Then he explained why I wasn’t supposed to laugh.

He began to seem less evil and more like maybe he was Doing the Right Thing with his inconceivable suggestion.

Surgeon Reasoning:

1) laughing tightens your tummy muscles.

2) tightening your tummy muscles while trying to heal your hepatic artery is bad.

3) bad because it an cause bruising (surgeons have no appreciation for living art).

4) worse because, and this is exactly how he put it, the pressure from the tightening tummy muscles can push blood through the artery and make the seal he’d just made with the tourniquet-like pressure POP OPEN like the cork of a champagne bottle.

5) no one wants arteries to pop open.

I still couldn’t do it.

We had to resort to some laugh-free sleepy drugs. Plus, I banned myself from watching All Kittens All the Time tv, and instead watched a movie I saw with Laini earlier this year and, from what I remembered, had no laughs whatsoever.

And I made it. Huzzah! No hepatic artery explosions, no ginormous bruise, and all was well.

Until next time (which due to unavoidable scheduling conflicts is on Barrett’s Birthday. Poor guy).

Love to you all,

Bridget

P.S. I am posting this before my web designer has a chance to see it to save you all from the rather interesting blood exploding graphic he wanted to insert. You can thank me later.