A Tiny Tale of Onion Rings By Ruth

The Sunday before my bowel surgery, I was sort of bummed out. I have always been pretty thin and fit as an adult. Yeah, I was still wearing little two-piece bathing suits into my late 40's. So what? It pays to advertise... Anyway, the thought of a bigass midline incision meant the end of my two-piece days. And worse still, chemotherapy and the resulting hair loss was not a big plus. I refused to consider death, I just focused on how fucking ugly I would get before I finally hit that casket. I decided a nice belly ring might cheer me up when I looked down at my ravaged body, so I bought one with plans to have my navel pierced.

The umbilical ornament was sort of a moment of comic relief during my surgery. My surgeon agreed to place the device as he was finishing my case and closing the skin. The thing to understand about surgeons and their personalities is the tendency to really believe in their ability to tackle any task involving their hands and manual dexterity.

Sometimes this belief is a bit egotistical. I don't know exactly what happened, but when I asked the assisting surgeon the next morning how the case went, he said, 'Fine'. 'So did you put the belly ring in?' I ventured. I figured they probably forgot. I still had a large surgical dressing covering my belly, so I wasn't too sure. 'Oh yeah,' he began. 'Security almost got called for the fight that broke out, but we got it in. It took 30 minutes to remove the right colon and ovary, and 35 minutes to figure out how to put in the belly ring.'

'What happened?' I asked. 'He couldn't figure out how to dissemble the thing, and then we weren't sure how it was supposed to go in. So we called another nurse into the room. She wasn't exactly sure, so she called another nurse.

That woman tried to explain it, but then he got pissed and just said to send in a woman who actually had a belly ring so he could see how they are supposed to be placed.' He finished. I cracked up but immediately regretted it because of my incision. 'So did you find someone with a belly ring?' I gasped. 'Yup. The third nurse had one.' There is a saying in surgical training programs that goes: See one, do one, teach one. I guess the moral here is that you really must see at least one before you do one.

And lastly, I healed up pretty well and decided to just keep on with the two-piece bathing suits. I am planning a big tattoo over the entire area.

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