Vanity can save your life

Vanity gets a bad rap most of the time. Not around here, where it's all lipstick, all the time--but amongst other, less frivolous people. But vanity has its good points. For one thing, it can save your life.

You may remember that I spent last November blathering away about working out and dieting. I mentioned heading to the gym enough to have fully cemented my reputation as a fitness freak, or at least, a dedicated wannabe.

So along comes December, and in addition to the usual holiday travel and craziness, I'm trying to continue to work out. But I notice that after prolonged periods of standing, such as washing dishes or attending cocktail parties (or decorating the Christmas tree all by myself because my family is a bunch of heathen Grinches,) I was experiencing some pain in the lower left side of my abdomen. Sitting down made it feel better, but then I'd go to the gym, and it would start up again.

I tend to have a "shut up and quit whining" attitude about physical problems, but my husband does a lot of weight lifting, and he thought it might be a hernia. So I made an appointment with my doctor to have it checked out. He didn't notice anything conclusive, so he advised me to get a CT scan. What with Christmas traveling and the facility being pretty booked up, the first appointment I could get was two weeks away. And during those two weeks of traveling and not going to the gym, the pain disappeared. Naturally, I dithered around, and debated canceling the CT scan. Because I hate going to the doctor. But my husband and son told me to go in and have it done.

Have you ever had a CT scan? It's not fun. And after drinking iodine-flavored water for a few hours and having more injected into my arm and lying on a table passing through a pale green doughnut, I was determined never to complain about anything ever again.

And of course, it turns out that I don't have a hernia.

On the other hand, they discovered a small mass on my right kidney. (Which was not where I was feeling pain, and so was completely unrelated to what brought me to the doctor's office in the first place.) So I went to a urologist who advised me to have it out. Apparently, even if they're benign, these things just keep growing and eventually, it's a problem. And of course, if it isn't benign, it needs to come out pronto. (And chances are it's not benign. But it's very treatable with an excellent cure rate! Really.)

Apparently, the vast majority of kidney tumors are discovered while they're looking for something else. In fact, according to Wikipedia, medical professionals call them "accidentalomas." 

So anyway, tomorrow I'll be at the hospital under general anesthesia (YIKES!) having a robot-assisted (COOL!) partial nephrectomy.

Which is really kind of astonishing, when you realize that if I hadn't been trying to fit into size 12 jeans, I'd be happily asymptomatic ... until I wouldn't be.

Which just goes to show you--to appropriate from that slimeball Gordon Gecko, "Vanity is good!"

So anyway, that's why I haven't been blogging. It's just hard to get excited about lipstick and such when you have surgery scheduled.

Not that I won't be bringing a ton of products to the hospital. Because of course I will.