Dena Taylor’s Musings

ME: The doctor says my appendix was gangrenous and ruptured.

DAD: That’s what you get for eating all that organic food.

Maybe he has a point. I’ve always been active and the majority of the time get my servings of fresh fruits and vegetables (buying organic only per Environmental Working Group guidelines), whole grains and all the other healthy crap you’re supposed to eat to avoid the doctor’s office. I even invested in a Breville Juicer–”the Cadillac of all juicers”–to get those effing nutrients in my system faster.  And yet, in a three year span, I’ve had breast cancer and most recently a ruptured appendix, which garnered responses from friends like, “Only you,” “What next?” and the popular “WTF?”

Maybe it’s time to take up smoking, embrace inertia and rediscover the nuances of hydrogenated vegetable oil. Instead of walking to pick up some odds and ends at Whole Foods Market, I think I’ll plant my ass in the car and take a tour of Austin’s fast food drive-thru’s. Bacon cheeseburgers and super nachos might hold the key to longevity. A whole Totino’s pizza (screw you Amy’s organic!) just before bed could be the foundation for my future centenarian status. And washing down potato chips and Devil Squares with Coke Classic during an all night World of Warcraft raid is sure to insulate me from infection and ward off disease. With the money I’ll save I can outfit myself for a less active life. I’ll buy a different Snuggie for every day of the week and a La-Z-Boy with built in cup holder!

I shared my bewilderment and new health regimen with one of my surgeons. “Don’t,” she said. “Because you’ll just end up back here getting lap band surgery and you don’t want that.”

She’s right. I’ll probably get right back to my healthy habits, it’s how I roll. But swapping an organic fruit smoothie for an occasional chocolate milkshake couldn’t hurt.

A couple of Saturdays ago, I woke up feeling like I had rolled on top of a set of steak knives, each one jabbing a different part of my abdomen. I attributed it to the hummus and chips and popcorn I had inhaled the night before and figured it would be gone by bedtime. I spent the day lodged on the couch numbing my brain watching “My Bodyguard,” “Step Up” and “Stomp the Yard” on cable.

By Sunday morning, the pain had shifted focus to my lower right side. The steak knives had been replaced by what felt like a freshly hammered chisel and seemed to get worse by the hour. The point at which I couldn’t stand up straight was when I made the call.

Some eight hours later I was on my back having an emergency appendectomy.

“It was really nasty,” said the doctor, referring to my appendix, which had been gangrenous, ruptured and in a really bad mood.

Having something more sexy like a broken ankle from stumbling on a 7-mile run or heaving chest pain was out of the question. No, I had to have something really poopy, yucky and downright gross. Over the next five days from my hospital bed, I relayed the putrid details over and over to family and friends.

“It was so infected they had to peel it off my intestine!”

“I required 3 liters of saline to flush it all out!”

“It screeched, ‘I’ll see you in Hell!’ just as the doctor severed it from my body!”

It wasn’t until I had to explain my absence to an audibly repulsed client that I realized not everyone needs or really wants to know the gory details. Words like ruptured, burst and perforated were too dramatic. And gangrene leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths. It was time for a new angle.

“After years of being called useless and unnecessary,” I might say, “my appendix was devoid of all self-worth and simply collapsed in despair.”

“It just sort of cracked,” I would explain. “That’s what happens when you don’t do anything but watch intestines churn poo all day. You snap and all Hell breaks loose.”

“It’s like it unfurled,” I’d muse. “It opened itself up to what the world had to offer and the world shit on its head until it died.”

Yeah. Much better.