Sign up for a free recipe e-book →

Clarissa's Blog

Post-op

Published by

Clarissa

on

I’m back at the hospital for a checkup and the nurse is giving me the guidelines on post-op care.

“No vacuuming, no mopping, you can wash dishes at the sink if you want but don’t bend over to the dishwasher. If you really need to do laundry, do it in small, light loads.”

Given that I wouldn’t do any of this stuff with or without the operation, the conversation reminded me of the joke where a patient asks, “Doctor, will I be able to play the violin after the operation?”

“Well, I don’t see why not,” the doctor says. “This is a simple appendectomy.”

“Oh, that’s a miracle!” the patient exclaims. “I never played the violin before!”

16 responses to “Post-op”

  1. Shakti Avatar
    Shakti

    “No vacuuming, no mopping, you can wash dishes at the sink if you want but don’t bend over to the dishwasher. If you really need to do laundry, do it in small, light loads.”

    This is more a comment on she expects you’re doing all of this housework and N isn’t. I can’t imagine someone telling a dude who just had major abdominal surgery not to do housework or to do it in a certain way.
    “No shoveling snow or using the lawnmower. If you really need to do both use a snowblower or a riding lawnmower or ask someone to do it for you.”

    Months after my cousin’s wife had a c section she was unable to do one sit-up. She’s a very active slim woman who likes hiking.

    Like

    Reply
    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Even if I did mop normally – which I don’t because it’s a skill I never managed to pick up – I’d hardly be so desperate to do it that I’d jump off the operation table and rush straight into mopping.

      People are very strange.

      Like

      Reply
      1. Shakti Avatar
        Shakti

        I’d hardly be so desperate to do it that I’d jump off the operation table and rush straight into mopping.
        …while wearing a twinset and some pearls like Donna Reed. That sounds like the beginning of a commercial for some new mopping product.

        Like

        Reply
        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          N would not be happy if I messed with his mop. He’s very proud of his mopping skills and of his past as an undocumented immigrant janitor. There is no messing with worker pride. 🙂

          Like

          Reply
      2. matt Avatar
        matt

        First, congrats! haven’t said that to you since the birth 🙂

        Second, sort of pedantic question but you consider mopping a skill? I guess norms and expectations are just weird because when i recently helped take care of my cousins for a week they were surprisd i could cook.. its just funny. I am a full blood conservvative, macho capitalist 🙂 But basic things like this are easy for any intelligent person, of which you are certainly one, so figured you were joking with the mopping skill question?

        Like

        Reply
        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          I’m congenitally incapable of doing anything related to cleaning. When I clean, everything ends up so dirty that it’s easier to keep me away from it.

          But my cooking is divine, so it all evens itself out.

          Like

          Reply
      3. The Dark Avenger Avatar
        The Dark Avenger

        After my mother’s hysterectomy, one of the doctors told her not to have sex for the next month or so. This was her second surgery in less than a year, so her response was, “That’s too bad, because I’m hot to trot, Doc.

        I know you believe that Jews lack some manual dexterity, but mopping isn’t exactly skilled labor. Did Noah subcontract the Ark to Sumerian shipwrights?

        Like

        Reply
        1. Dreidel Avatar
          Dreidel

          “mopping isn’t exactly skilled labor.”

          Depending on how clumsy you are, *any” labor is skilled. The mop’s not wet enough, you’re just pushing grime around — too wet, and you’ve turned the dirt on the floor into mud.

          A good capitalist knows where his talents lie, and when to pay others to do the work. (And he’s earned the money to afford it.)

          Like

          Reply
          1. The Dark Avenger Avatar
            The Dark Avenger

            Most people develope the necessary dexterity by the fourth grade or so. If one were to use a standard mop head and squeeze bucket, neither situation that you outline should come to pass.

            Like

            Reply
            1. Dreidel Avatar
              Dreidel

              “Most people develop the necessary dexterity by the fourth grade or so.”

              Sure, but why should they waste they waste their time doing maids’ work, when they can make vastly more money sitting in their asses and using their brains?

              I pay my maid service about $100 an hour to spend 90 minutes every three weeks keeping my house spic and span, while I watch “Law & Order” reruns on TV, or float around in my backyard pool, or check the fruits of my own (now retired) labor by tuning into the stock market report on the Fox Business Channel.

              I’m a good capitalist, spreading my $$ around by employing others. I’d be selfish to keep it all and do the house cleaning myself.

              Like

              Reply
            2. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              You know why monkeys don’t learn to speak? Because they know that if they do, somebody will put them to work. 🙂

              Like

              Reply
              1. cliff arroyo Avatar
                cliff arroyo

                “somebody will put them to work”

                Back in my undergraduate days I knew a young woman who did not want to learn to type because, she reasoned, if she couldn’t type no one could make her type anything.

                Computers kind of ruined that plan. I always say the two single most useful classes I ever tood were typing in high school (so I can touch type at some speed without looking at the keyboard) and public speaking very early on as an undergraduate.

                Like

              2. The Dark Avenger Avatar
                The Dark Avenger

                A good capitalist would’ve smuggled a couple of people in from out f the country to save money and help with the cause of labor mobility.

                If, like Clarissa, you aren’t able to do any significant labor because of your ethnic heritage, that’s a horse of a different color.

                As for monkeys working, well, I guess you could say these primates aren’t kosher:

                “E. W. Gudger has recently called attention in Science to the use of monkeys as coconut pickers. The Malays and Bataks of Sumatra very commonly use monkevs in this way. The current English name for the monkey, Macacus nemestrinus, is ’coconut-monkey.’ The work of picking the nuts is performed in a way essentially the same as that described by Shelford and quoted by Gudger.”

                http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/picks-from-the-past/12455/monkeys-trained-as-harvesters

                Like

  2. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    Forgot to ask you, what’s going to be Klara’s last name? Yours or N’s or a combination of the two?

    Like

    Reply
  3. Dreidel Avatar
    Dreidel

    So you aren’t watching The Two Losers town hall playing live on CNN right now?

    Don’t worry — so far, you haven’t missed anything interesting. 🙂

    Like

    Reply
    1. Dreidel Avatar
      Dreidel

      Bernie is so politically inastute (no surprise there) that he ASKED to appear before Hillary in the town hall, thereby quaranteeing that his much-craftier opponent could follow, and then tailor her answers to specifically counter various things that he had said. Not very bright for a 74-year-old!

      Like

      Reply

Leave a comment

A conservative literary critic and college professor

Recent posts