Sometimes It Seems Like Everybody I Talk To Has Been Playing A Game Of Telephone

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is having a bit of surgery Tuesday morning. Nothing really major, more like diagnostic, but nothing exactly minor, because general anesthesia will be involved. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is no fan of general anesthesia. She wakes up very slowly. But at least she wakes up! So far.

My favorite gambling aunt called me earlier this week. She heard it through the grapevine. It took me by surprise, I must say. Wondering how she knew. Seems that her son, my cousin, who works for Farmer H, told her that he took me to the hospital Monday for surgery. Silly cousin. It was pre-surgery certification! Can nobody get a story right in Hillmomba? No. As you soon shall see.

Anyhoo, we shot the bull for a while, but Auntie Gambler kept bringing the subject back to the one subject I really don't want to think about. No. I don't mean the start of school. That will be the subject I don't want to think about after Tuesday.

"I told Sonny, 'Not Hillbilly Mom! She won't be happy about that at all. She'll go crazy! She does NOT like to have surgery!'" Said Auntie Gambler, who has surgery about twice a month.

"Yes. It's true. Don't be telling people. I'm not really discussing it."

"Is your sister okay? She's on the prayer list at church. Is she sick?"

"WHAT? I haven't heard anything like that. My mom would have told me."

"Oh. I just heard she was on the prayer list."

Let the record show that my mom and sister go to the same church, but Auntie Gambler goes to a totally different denomination. Funny that somebody in her church would put my sister on their prayer list. I guess. I don't really know the proper etiquette for prayer lists. But you would think one would start with her own church and fellow parishioners, rather than horn in on somebody else's list. (So I asked my mom today if Sis was sick, because she was on the prayer list, and Mom said, "Well, she burned her little finger by dipping it in a pot of something boiling that she was cooking, and she didn't know if to peel off the blister because she didn't want to get an infection. But other than that, she's fine, I think, and she's not on OUR prayer list.")

Then Auntie Gambler turned the subject back to my surgery. "Oh, you'll be fine. It's amazing what they can do now with anesthesia."

"Well, in 2010, it wasn't so amazing, because I really had a lot of trouble when I had my thyroid out. But they say this time there won't be an intubation, only a mask over my face."

"Oh, I had that when I had a colonoscopy! You'll LOVE it! It's the stuff they gave Michael Jackson."

"Um. You are NOT making me feel any better about this. Michael Jackson. And where is HE now?"

"Oh, they'll control it. It's the best sleep you'll ever have."

"Well...if I wake up."

I swear. I don't know why people have to tell me stuff like that. Why can't they just find a pregnant woman and tell her about their 72-hour labor?