It would be comic if it weren’t so painful.

About five weeks ago, Dave’s right leg began to give him serious grief. Serious enough for him to go to the doctor, have an MRI and actually take the pain drugs he was prescribed. The pain was relentless, poor soul, but it gradually lessened so that he could go from crutches to cane to own steam. Oddly, though the MRI showed a torn ACL and a torn cartilage, there is no surgery in his future.

About four weeks ago, I woke up with a very painful thumb. Once we got Dave stabilized and relatively pain-free, I went to the doctor myself, figuring I had slept on it wrong, or suffered some kind of X-treme scrapbooking injury. My doctor sent me to an orthopedic doctor for cortisone shots. Yeah, right. I am having surgery tomorrow- for trigger thumb (a tendon problem) and severe carpal tunnel.

I was feeling pretty put out- he’s the one with all the torn stuff and I’m the one going under the knife??!!- until yesterday, when his face swelled up until he looks like a walrus. His mouth is now the source of excruciating pain. Yes, he has an abscess. We took him to the dentist, and she started him on penicillin and pain pills, and Thursday, the tooth is coming out.

Dave was going to take the day off to take care of me after my surgery, but I may have to hire someone to take care of the both of us. Like I said, it would be laughable if we both didn’t hurt so much.

Mama is terribly upset that we aren’t well, but due to the perversity of her make-up, her concern takes the form of demanding constant comforting for herself. Forget that the man is in agony. Mama needs cosseting because she is worried about him. In her own inimitable nurturing way, Mama is doing all she can to make herself perfectly miserable. She really should write a book on the subject. I can already envision some of the chapter headings:

“How to be lonely by leaving the room whenever people come over, and by having two phones and never answering either one of them”.
In this chapter, Mama will explain how to get the maximum mileage out of the complaints “Nobody ever comes to see me” and “Nobody ever calls me.”

“How to be banished from the kitchen for setting fire to the microwave”
In this chapter, Mama will demonstrate how to get out of cooking for oneself by nuking a potato until it catches fire. (Frankly, I didn’t think it could be done, but if anyone can do it, Mama can.) An accident like this can be milked for weeks with endless variants of misery; poor me, I’m gonna starve; poor me, I was so scared; poor me, I can’t even cook anymore; poor me, Dave and Kate are mad at me- and, of course, peppered with the inevitable denials of responsibility-“It’s not my fault. It’s that stupid microwave’s fault.”

“How to turn other people’s misfortunes into laments of your own.”
In this chapter, Mama teaches the art of misery one-upsmanship. Apparently, once you live to be 78 (or 98, as she has been telling people she is here lately), no one can have an ailment you didn't have first and worse. David has a bad tooth? “They pulled out all my teeth when I was 18. It was a mistake. My mother was so mad. One tooth they were supposed to pull, and they pulled them all.” Run time for this story so far- 60 years. I have to have surgery on my hand? “Look at my hands. I had 38 operations and I have arthur-it is, and I am in pain all the time.” Heard it. Heard it. Heard it. Damn, here it comes again.

Right now, she is sitting in front of the TV, finally calm after an inexplicable burst of crying. She would not and will not tell me why she has been crying, but she has made herself miserable somehow.

“How to dwell on every slight, hurt or heartache you have ever endured for fun and profit.”

I don’t put too much weight on her immediate sorrow, since it doesn’t seem to have curbed her appetite at all. When she thinks I am not looking, she is chowing down on the Chex Mix snack I made for her. I just opened a can of Pepsi for her; sadness is thirsty work.

In the meantime, the two people who actually have reasons to be miserable right now are typing a blog with her hand in a splint, and working from home, despite a walrus face and mouth from hell.