My room unfortunately smells great
I miss when my room smelled bad. That’s gross to say but it’s true. My room used to smell bad because I would have stinky, sweaty workout clothes from the week in my laundry hamper. But as of not this past Sunday, but the Sunday before this one at 6 pm, I don’t get to have a smelly room, and not by choice.
I don’t love working out, but I love how I feel right after I workout- warm, allowed to eat anything I want, kind of skinnier than I felt before I worked out, and definitely I feel strong. And I love going to Dixon on campus. It’s my hour of the day where I get to see guys in cut off tanks or “skins” playing basketball (especially when my roommates and I coincidentally go during a certain frat’s basketball class during a certain hour) and they get to watch me pretend to be a strong athlete girl- (ugly, sweaty, panting, and their class’s stalker athlete girl, but still. And no that’s not weird, it’s my strategy for inspiration to run faster) while running miles on the track. Okay actually only one mile but that’s eleven laps so they probably lose track. And I get to watch Dr. Oz or read my Cosmo on the elliptical and stair stepper so I learn useful facts to help my life like showing me a new blush to want or read about a celebrity to be jealous of without having to feel guilty that I’m not reading a textbook. Because you CAN’T read textbooks while you workout, only magazines. Yep.
Another benefit to being a steady gym- go-er is that since I workout when I am on campus after my classes, I get to dress in exercise gear- comfortable running shoes, light tank tops, hoodies, and running shorts, with my hair thrown up in a bun and pushed back with a headband stretchy, no makeup, and no pre-class prep time that takes more than five minutes. I go to basically all my classes with this outfit on, and I feel like it makes me appear to be put together. People think, “Oh, she’s on her way to an intense work out session and she sweats too hard wear makeup to the gym.“ Rather than taking five minutes to get dressed for class in an outfit like sweats and have my classmates think, “Wow that girl never puts on makeup for class. She is lazy and does not look very good.“ I’m tricky. But I’m going to have to start setting aside some time to get ready for class for the next couple weeks.
I won’t be rocking my put together workout style for another two to three weeks because my body’s ovarian cyst decided to start flipping out on me (literally) torquing and twisting. That one Sunday night I had to be taken to the Emergency room feeling waves of pain throughout my right abdomen, back, pelvis, and leg, and vomiting. Once there, I was loaded up with pain killers so I could stop yelling and being in the fetal position, which they gave me only after they did a CAT scan, ultrasound, and uralysis that I almost passed out during. But waiting was necessary apparently because they didn’t want to release my pain enough for me to not be able to describe for them what the pain was originating from. Not fun and I got a little snappy at this “no-Kim-we- aren’t- giving-you-more-IV- painkillers” thing which I later felt bad for and apologized. After all these tests they concluded my ovarian cyst was the cause of the problem. They sent me home at 2 AM, temporarily very pain free and with something injected into me that made me fall asleep before I could even take my shoes off when I got home and sleep all the way through the next day.
Prior to that emergency room night I had had a livable relationship with the cyst. My doctors found it this past summer when I had to have my appendix removed, a fist- sized balloon shape that was the color of bubblegum that I was given a picture of when I was opened up for the appendectomy. Random times it would throb a little bit, but it was benign so I was told not to worry.
But that night after I was released from the hospital with a pain killer prescription and an appointment to see a gynecologist the next day, my livable cyst relationship was over. I was told that I would be in surgery the following Thursday morning to remove the cyst and possibly the ovary it was latched onto by the gynecologist, a small, really nice woman. (How can someone not be a good person if they bring little precious babies into the world for a living!)
Surgery went fine. My body actually hurt less after I woke up from surgery than how I was feeling going in. Minus the fact that they scratched my eye during surgery- literally it hurt so bad and they had to prescribe me eye drops, so I was snappy again at that but again apologized later. I get a little snappy on pain meds, I need to apologize to my roommates for the time that this has all been happening. I woke up in the recovery room and first thing asked if I could still have kids, which I was pretty worried about for the future, and she said I could, so I drifted back to sleep. It turns out they did not have to remove my ovary, yay, but the cyst, which went from bubblegum pink to black/purple, was twisted around my Fallopian tube, cutting off circulation, in turn requiring them to have to remove it along with the little black/purple devil. (A picture of the little devil is included at the end of this post. You’ll see why it looks evil.) I left the hospital the same day as my surgery, sleeping the whole 1.5 hour drive from Corvallis Samaritan Hospital back home to Forest Grove.
The next couple of days I took back my conclusion that I hurt less than before the surgery once the medicine wore off from the hospital- I couldn’t sit up to get out of bed, bend over, laugh, cough, clear my throat, or speak loudly without it hurting. So I was stuck in bed and also immobile due to not being able to drive on narcotics AKA percocet. It was nice to be at home though, so that is one positive aspect if I have to find one. Which I do because I don’t like to end paragraphs negatively. 
As I write this it’s Wednesday, so my surgery was 6 days ago and I can cough now and sit up instead of rolling out of bed. I went to my classes this morning for the first time since that Sunday 10 days ago. I have lots of catching up to do in my classes but I have nice professors who totally have given me enough time to heal, even moving some midterms back. Don’t schedule a cystectomy during week 5 of the term if you can help it. Another thing I’ve found is that it’s awkward to tell people why I was gone for so long, just because it was an OVARY cyst by FALLOPIAN TUBES instead of something less feminine body parts oriented like a liver cyst. Do those exist? Not sure.
Anyways I’m healing now. It still it hurts to lay on my stomach, which I hope goes away soon because I miss doing that weirdly, it’s a cozy position I tend to want to do now more than I remember yearning for the past almost 21 years my life so don’t take laying on your stomach for granted. ”You don’t know what you got til it’s gone” I guess.
One very recent setback has occurred though. I haven’t had the biggest appetite since all this has been going on naturally. But I was feeling good yesterday and went hard on a Chile Colorado burrito and some chips and salsa at my favorite Corvallis restaurant, El Presidente. I guess I became a little bloated since really this was my first big meal in over a week. About an hour after the meal my stitch ripped from my belly button, draining out and causing me to go back to the hospital after class today for some patch up work. I’m all put back together now, but I definitely won’t be back at the gym to go run during basketball classes at Dixon for the next few weeks at least. I guess I could go to watch from down on the bench, sitting down instead of running around the track above them, but that would just be creepy. I still actually might pretend I can exercise and wear gym clothes to class to save time. But I can’t actually work out, so they won’t be stinking. So for now my room smells good, like lavender actually, because of the Bath and Body Works scent diffuser I got for the bad smell that used to linger a little. Ugh. Feel bad for me, it smells really good in here.
The big dark red and purple organ is the cyst. The white healthy organ by the surgical tools is an ovary.
