So after a lot of back-and-forth discussion between my physician and my physicians' assistant regarding the ct scan results, I was referred to my mother's surgeon, and had a consultation appointment set for Tuesday-last...the first of August, the month of both our birthdays. By Tuesday, I was in so much pain, the percocets weren't even touching it...and I woke that morning with a chapped face and a tear-dampened pillow.

Nick took the morning off from work to deliver me to my 10-AM consultation. Sitting had become impossible by that point, and my tush was so bruised, swollen, and fevered over my tailbone, or where the tailbone is supposed to be. Nick had taken to driving a passenger sprawled on her belly on a reclined seat.

So almost as soon as Dr. Weber sees me, she tells me that she's going to admit me to the hospital...if nothing else for pain control. The surreal moment was walking into the examination room before she arrived there, and seeing my mother's oncologist with a team of other doctors studying my x-rays...I gather they were mine from the bits of conversation Nick overheard.

That's pretty much my last really vivid memory from last week. I remember the IV drugs not working...not the morphine, not the next step higher with the clickie-pain dispenser thing, and I vaguely remember being told that I had an operating room date at 8:30 the next morning.

So a week of very poor hygiene and a red blanket of pain is what I remember...that, and a lot of visits from Nick. When I left on Friday, I learned that I had a major infection that's probably been building for awhile...in fact, they drained a liter and a half (!) of fluid from my butt, and I have a wound that requires gauze packing and unpacking two times every day...for which Nick has offered his services. I'm so grateful.

Oh, and I truly do not have a tailbone. I just didn't grow the thing...as Nick says, I'm just higher on the evolutionary ladder, seeing as humans don't so much need tails and therefore, the corresponding bones. When Sarah and Jason visited, Jason coupled that with the fact that I only have one wisdom tooth trying to muck up my mouth, and we humans don't really need those either. I find it all very funny as one of my last days at work, we were joking that me and my fellow short co-worker both could raise one eyebrow in quizzical pose. It was hypothesized that we were the next wave of evolution—small with muscular eyebrows.

The disturbing part, obviously, is I've always felt a bump where my tailbone should have been...I've invited many over the past years to feel my "tailbone" because it just didn't feel right. It hurt me often, and I am very ginger with it. Disturbing yet, is that there was no smoking gun to be found in the operating room. What caused the infection is unknown, meaning it could happen again. So, I'm to heal from this leg of the journey and then we do more scans, more tests, and consider surgery to look for the monster living in my body. The sample they sent off came back benign by way of Cancer...so I'm going to consider myself Cancer-free for now, and hope that the ugly inside of me can be vanquished before it can strike again.

They say I have to be off from work for a month-plus...I'm hoping it will be shorter than that...I'm going to go crazy otherwise, and I want to be a responsible, employed, card-carrying member of adulthood. For now, I'll end here, I just wanted to give you an update. I'm doing much better, and Nick is the best caregiver I could have asked for...

...Even so, I'm heavy-hearted with thoughts of my mother. Thoughts of being sick as a youngster...her constructing a makeshift bed on the sun-drenched couch and making me a Bisquick pancake, cutting it in squares because I prefer my Bisquick pancakes plain, and eaten as finger food...which few knew but her. I remember her resting cool, damp cloths over my forehead and smoothing the hair from my brow. I remember her making fresh-squeezed, pulpy orange juice for me because she knew how much I loved an orange juice that nearly required teeth to consume. Most of all, I remember feeling rotten, but hearing her voice and knowing all would be ok.