Surgery Instructions

            Since the beginning of the year many of my friends and relatives have either undergone surgery, are recovering from surgery, or are looking forward to surgery.  Well, probably not actually looking forward to it as much as hoping and praying for it to be over and done and themselves returned to the happy, healthy creatures they once were.

          And that got me remembering.  I do a lot of that lately.  I think it has something to do with my advancing years.  If you can’t do it anymore, its fun remembering when you could.  But I, as usual digress.

          Back in those good old days, I used to do quite a bit of runway modeling.  Usually I was booked for sportswear or swimsuit parades in stores and occasionally for bigger affairs like Fashion Week today.  Understandably it was pretty much seasonal work but it did bring in a few extra bikkies to top up the family coffers.

          At the beginning of one such season I had begun to experience severe pain under my left should blade.  So much so that the only way to alleviate the pain was to lie flat on my back for several minutes until the pain passed.  I was then good for as long as it took to change into my next swimsuit, do my strut down the runway and get back to the dressing room, at which time I again flung myself onto the floor.

I should explain here that the reason I did runway modeling and not photographic stuff (which incidentally paid a heck of a lot more), was because I was totally unphotogenic.  Still am come to think of it.

You’ve heard the expression ‘the camera loves her?’  Well, it hated me.   My saving grace was that I did move beautifully down a runway and could show off any garment to perfection.

          Anyway, after several weeks of bobbing up and down like a lavatory seat in dressing rooms across the country, and with the pain getting worse with each day I finally consulted a doctor.

          I was diagnosed with a cyst on one of my ovaries.  The fact the pain was nowhere near my ovary was called referred pain and apparently was quite common.  Surgery to remove the cyst was required and I was duly booked into the hospital for the procedure.

          A few days later, lying in my hospital bed an hour before my scheduled surgery, I was going into sleepy glow mode because of the just administered pre-med, when it suddenly hit me.  Where was the surgeon gong to cut me?

          If I didn’t have a photogenic face, the only thing I did have was a photogenic body.  I didn’t want my only asset ruined by a visible scar.

          Half asleep, I fumbled in the bedside table drawer for my make-up bag and extracted a soft black eyeliner pencil.  Raising my nightgown, I wrote – upside down – on my stomach, these immortal words:  ‘Please cut below this line,’ with an arrow pointing down to my bikini line.  I covered myself with the bed sheet and gave way to sleep.

          Afterwards, I vaguely recall giggling nurses poking their heads into my room, pointing at me and whispering behind their hands.  Apparently my message to my surgeon had spread through the hospital.

          And my surgeon, bless his little cotton socks, had acquiesced.  My scar was so low, and incidentally so tiny, that I needed glasses to see it.  I was told later that my encounter with the surgeon’s knife was published in the AMA Journal. 

          But, possibly the lesson in all this is…speak openly to your surgeon before any procedure or, at the very least, have a sharpened, soft black pencil within easy reach.