How to Get Through an Oral Skin Graft
Who would have thought it? You can get through a skin graft in your mouth and hardly notice the pain. Here's how:
1. Start coughing the day your surgery is scheduled. This will be a bit of a problem during the surgery itself, as the doctor will have to stop periodically while you have a coughing fit and at least once will say urgently "No! Not now! Now's not a good time!" when you start to cough. But do not skip this step, as it is critical for the success of step #4.
2. Get drugs. Good drugs.
3. Wake up the morning after the surgery with the worst migraine of the year, the kind that leaves you whimpering in the dark with a black cloth over your head. Take more drugs, lots of them, for the migraine.
4. The second day after surgery, run a fever of 102.8. Go to doctor and be diagnosed with bronchitis (see why you needed that cough?). Get a prescription for cough medicine--with codeine.
5. Start your period. While this will not result in yet more excellent medication, it will serve as a pleasant distraction from pain.
6. Continue to cough. In fact, cough hard enough to dislocate ribs. That way, you can return to the doctor for a pneumonia diagnosis, a codeine refill and a New! and Improved! antibiotic. Which will work marvelously, killing every single nasty bug in your system...
7. Of course, it will also kill the good bugs, leaving you with diarrhea and a delightful yeast infection.
8. Killer diarrhea, given a day or two, will lead to what my grandmother called "Piles" (and no, I will not explain--I won't use that "H" word in this diary!).
9. About the time you begin feeling better (read: can remain vertical for one hour without shaking), send your husband away for a week.
If you simply follow these nine steps, you too can cheerily say, to anyone who asks how the skin graft experience was, "Oh, it was nothing! I hardly felt it."
1. Start coughing the day your surgery is scheduled. This will be a bit of a problem during the surgery itself, as the doctor will have to stop periodically while you have a coughing fit and at least once will say urgently "No! Not now! Now's not a good time!" when you start to cough. But do not skip this step, as it is critical for the success of step #4.
2. Get drugs. Good drugs.
3. Wake up the morning after the surgery with the worst migraine of the year, the kind that leaves you whimpering in the dark with a black cloth over your head. Take more drugs, lots of them, for the migraine.
4. The second day after surgery, run a fever of 102.8. Go to doctor and be diagnosed with bronchitis (see why you needed that cough?). Get a prescription for cough medicine--with codeine.
5. Start your period. While this will not result in yet more excellent medication, it will serve as a pleasant distraction from pain.
6. Continue to cough. In fact, cough hard enough to dislocate ribs. That way, you can return to the doctor for a pneumonia diagnosis, a codeine refill and a New! and Improved! antibiotic. Which will work marvelously, killing every single nasty bug in your system...
7. Of course, it will also kill the good bugs, leaving you with diarrhea and a delightful yeast infection.
8. Killer diarrhea, given a day or two, will lead to what my grandmother called "Piles" (and no, I will not explain--I won't use that "H" word in this diary!).
9. About the time you begin feeling better (read: can remain vertical for one hour without shaking), send your husband away for a week.
If you simply follow these nine steps, you too can cheerily say, to anyone who asks how the skin graft experience was, "Oh, it was nothing! I hardly felt it."