The doctor calls to see how turning it on went. I admit to being a chicken. In fact, I'm reveling in my chicken status, totally happy to be ignorant of this experience. I'll take chicken over
chicken any day.
My kids, always wanting what's in my best interest (aka - always wanting to
help me to make a fool out of myself as often as possible -
as if I can't manage that totally on my own), keep begging me to turn it on. After several rounds of my polite declining, the oldest tells me that if I don't turn it on myself, he'll just wait til I'm asleep...and turn it on for me. This threat actually scared me. Petrified me. Why? Because there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that, not only would he actually do it, but he would really enjoy it.
Oldest 'beast
Me
So I mustered up my courage (unlike JD, who mustered up her cat), stood up next to my bed, made a stack of pillows to hold on to, and told the oldest 'beast to go ahead and turn it on.
I braced myself, knowing the swelling had gone down significantly since they had programmed the unit. I listened intently for him to turn it on, almost having a coronary when the unit began making a high pitched beeping noise. I had forgotten it did this in order to signal it's on and searching for a signal. After pulling my heart out of my mouth, I relaxed - because I felt nothing. Nadda. Ahhh! The unit was on - and I didn't die of electrocution. My overly-exposed nerves could stop freaking out...and I could stop producing buckets of adrenaline! Phew!
I stopped holding onto the pillows and stood upright. The high pitched beeping stopped, and I was still conscious. I had been chicken for nothing! What was the big deal, anyway? I turned around to tell the oldest 'beast I had been chicken for nothing - that I was totally fine...
Too bad I wasn't real familiar with the unit - or the fact that the beeping only signaled the power and correct placement of the unit. I had forgotten that the user still had to push another button to actually get the stimulation going...
So as I turned to tell him I wasn't going to die, he hit the "right" button. The gal who programmed the stimulator had left the stimulation level on "high"...
More than the reaction of JD's (now permanently nervous) cat, have you ever seen a fish out of water? How they flop around tirelessly, trying to find water? Imagine a 5'11" woman doing that. Just as uncontrollably as the fish. Body jerking this way and that, after going from a fully standing position - to
flat-on-the-ground-flopping, in less than one second. The power to this thing was crazy. Crazy intense. It caused my body to immediately, intensely SEIZE. But it also caused another issue...
As I'm flopping around on the floor, flopping
uncontrollably, I realize I can't take this amount of stimulation. It's painful. V-v-very p-p-painful. So I begin laughing. Hysterically. Like pee-in-my-pants laughing. And altho the stimulation is intense - and it hurts like *ell, I can't tell him. I'm being obnoxiously tickled to death in the most painful way possible. Thoughts of ripping open my incision are interrupted only with thoughts of trying not to literally wet my pants.