As much as I like to boast that I can eat anything; the truth is that I’m no longer 20, I no longer work several physically demanding jobs, and I have just enough GERD to make me think twice about scarfing down a cheeseburger and fries lest I spend the rest of my evening writhing in agony while my guts try to force their way back up my esophagus.    So, late-night sojourns to Village Inn for a Santa Fe skillet are a distant memory to me (as are my size 6 pants and sort-of toned abdomen. . .)

However, every now and then, the grease and fat of good ol’ American bar food can be a soothing tonic to a worried mind.

First, let me state for the record that I do not intend to curry pity, or sympathy, or any kind of worrying from any of my beloved friends who may feel the need to send well wishes – I’m not sick, nor am I even remotely in any kind of danger.  I just have a little procedure scheduled for tomorrow that has me only a weensy bit concerned.   Even though I know it’s very common and very simple.

Briefly: because I was grotesquely limber as a child, and enjoyed freaking people out by wrapping my feet under my chin or putting the soles of my feet on top of my head (yeah, that’s what I said), I inevitably damaged some bits of my skeletal structure.  The immediate issue is that all of the disks in my cervical spinal area are now bulging and causing constant discomfort punctuated by searing and immobilizing pain every once in a while.  Loss of strength, mobility, increased headaches, yada yada yada – whatever, I’ve been screwing with this since last year (see older post “The World will Go On without You“) and it’s now time to have some epidural injections along my spinal cord.  Yeah, I thought that by not having kids I’d never have to deal with an epidural – I guess I was pre-ordained to be stabbed in the spinal cord with a gigantic needle . . .

In addition to the stabbing-in-the-spinal-cord part, there’s the sedation part.  My husband spent a summer working as an EMT and totally horrified me with stories of people losing control over their bladders and bowels because they ate or drank prior to being sedated.  The night before my bunion surgery, I went so far as to hide my water bottle so I wouldn’t forget and take a big swig of water in the middle of the night and then wet myself on the operating table in front of my ridiculously handsome foot surgeon.   I could have cared less about having my toe bones sawed apart and then pinned back together – it was the imminent humiliation I knew I was going to suffer in front of “Dr. Hunky.”  It didn’t happen, but I worried about that all night long.

So back to today; hubby had received a gift certificate to Chili’s for being a presenter at a recent Town Hall meeting, so we decided that tonight would be a good time to use it.  We aren’t big Chili’s fans – in fact, the last time I ate at one, I was a second-assistant manager at a Famous Footwear  at the Arborland Mall outside of Ypsilanti, Michigan.  Yeah, back then, I thought Chili’s was the shit. . . but I digress.

So off we go to Chili’s.  We peruse the menu while sipping on large margaritas and I briefly look at the salads – not a bad offering. . . but not really what I want.  See, in the back of my mind, there’s a little goblin who keeps whispering to me that, regardless of how common this procedure is, the doctor is still going to be stabbing a gigantic needle into my spinal cord – while watching where he’s going with the assistance of an x-ray. . .  uhhhhhhh, doesn’t sound very exact.  Know what I mean?   X-rays can be very fuzzy, and how the hell do you tell the difference between one fuzzy, amorphous blob and another?  Who’s to say that he actually can tell where the “drop zone” is versus where my spinal cord is?  What if he sneezes?  What if he’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown because he’s having an affair with the receptionist, who just threatened to tell the medical board that he’s been addicted to Klonopin since the early 80s and he’s recently started selling ephedrin to the meth-heads in the apartment complex across from the hospital?  What if he really despises 40-something blondes?  What if he’s just having a bad day?

What if?  What if.  What if.  What if they shoot me up with whatever sleepy drug they’re going to give me and I wake up an hour later, sore, but miraculously healed?  

Well, what if the sky falls is much more interesting to dwell on than what if the sun comes up like normal tomorrow.  And what if the sky is falling allows one to make much more questionable decisions in terms of immediate gratification.  After all, I could be dead or paralyzed tomorrow, so I’d better enjoy WHAT MIGHT BE MY LAST NIGHT ON EARTH! 

Yeah, I know, that’s a little much – even for me.

In any event, the dinner selection was rather easily settled on:  chips and salsa, cheese fries (with bacon bits, thank you very much), hot wings and two margaritas.  Oh, and half a box of Red Vines at the movie (“Monsters v. Aliens”  Perfect!).

I enjoyed every last fry, every swab of salsa and every nibble on the blue cheese-coated chicken wings knowing that I was going to pay for it (internally) in a few hours, but one only gets to have their LAST SUPPER ON EARTH once in a while.  OK, I need to stop that.

Amazingly, here I sit, several hours later, only a little full and not at all crampy, GERD-y or uncomfortable in any intestinal way.  I’m also a lot more placid about tomorrow.  I really think that all my worrying and all the grease must have fought a battle for domination and, unlike the good-guys-finish-first ending in “M v A,” they cancelled each other out.  The grease neutralized the worry and then dissipated with the effort.   I couldn’t ask for a better way to sign off for the evening.

Now, if I can just remember not to drink anything after 3 am. . .