Salvador Dali Version of Normal

The other night at work the teachers inquired, with some concern, about my 'surgery'. (Which was not surgery but it's too hard qualify all the exceptions that make up my healthcare and it's just easier to go with surgery.) They'd been swapping health information and stories and I got a little too comfortable with them.

"How did your surgery go?"

"They found a growth in my stomach and removed it," I said, shoving salad in my mouth as if I'd calmly noted it was raining outside. No biggie, right?

"Oh, my," said a teacher, hand covering her heart. The other teachers shook their heads.

I looked up and realized everyone was thinking cancer. Whoops. Minus 100 points on my communication skills.

"No, no it's okay. It's unlikely to be cancer. The problem was more that I had some complications."

"What happened?"

Oh shit. Shouldn't have said that. Now what do I say? Of course, I made it worse.

"I had an adrenal crisis the next day, which can be serious. Hard to live without a stress response."

That resulted in gasps of shock along with looks of utter horror and concern. These folks were so nice, they were about to drown me in sympathy. Even though I'm pretty sure they had never heard of adrenal glands.

"Don't worry. This is normal for me," I said, hastening to reassure them as I scraped the last of my food off my plate.

They just gaped at me, forks frozen in mid-air.

I backpeddled trying to fix the mess. "So ummm, how far along are you in menopause again?"

I honestly was surprised (and touched) at their concern, which just highlighted how strange my life is.

I'm so warped I think this medical stuff is normal.

Have you had a Dali moment?

PS: Seem to be finally eating. In very large quantities. Still having flank/back/stomach pain/burning and fatigue, but I packed in some serious calories at least!