It’s worth the price of a parrot

In my last post, I mentioned being in the hospital for surgery. That was in December. I feel good but I’m still recovering from it. I had a tumor removed (it was hiding under a facial nerve in the large saliva gland). Long story short, half my face isn’t functioning at full capacity. At first, it looked like I had a stroke. Then it looked like someone had used a mismatched Mr. Potato Head set to assemble my face. My ears were two different sizes–his and hers. One eye didn’t blink for a while and looked larger than the other. The facial nerve that suffered most was the mandible and so my smile is really off and eating and drinking is a strange experience. Once, I had taken a sip of water and tried to keep a cough in. Because I couldn’t form a tight seal with the right side of my mouth the water arched out of it like a water fountain. The arch was impressive and I managed not to cough, if any of that counts.

I was told by the ENT that it’d take at least three months for the upper part of my face to function more normally and at least nine months for the lower half of the face. Maybe never because the nerve was tangled in the tumor, cut, then sewn back together. Early on I decided that since there’s nothing I can really do about all of this, there’s no therapy–only time, I started joking that I had pirate face–arrrgh! Add to my pirate face the fact that for months prior to this I’d been limping because of a torn meniscus and patella fracture with a subsequent knee surgery. There was a short period of overlap where I was limping and had pirate face. Cue all the pirate jokes about me being a peg-legged pirate face. Chief even has this one kiss he gives me that’s kind of “piratey.” 🏴‍☠️ He scrunches half his mouth before kissing me. He’s making things “light” for me before you go clutching your pearls. Our entire family jokes amongst ourselves about ourselves.

I do have a point sharing all this–it’s a long set up for my last eye appointment (as well as all the pirate jokes I’ve been making). I have dry, dry eyes to begin with and now it’s worsened by the surgery because my right eye blinks very, very slowly. When I had to schedule a return visit L, one of the front desk ladies I always joke around with, mentioned how easy-peasy scheduling was. My response? “Well, I don’t have anything to do but go to PT.” I told her I felt like an old lady saying that which lead to a lot of jokes on their end about me and walkers with tennis balls, etc.

I told her “Well, maybe next time me and my pirate face should wear an eye patch, then.”

She told me, “You should wear a parrot on your shoulder, too!”

Of course the jokester in me loved that! I enjoy piratey things, ironic because I’m not really loving the pirate face just the jokes I can make about it. In the back of my mind I’m already digging up an old Halloween pirate “costume” (really bits and bobs that helped “make” the pirate), and it’s the old parrot and eye patch I have in mind.

“I’m totally doing that my next appointment.” My next appointment is in two weeks.

L laughs hysterically, “If you do that, I’m done. I don’t need to see anymore patients because then I’d have seen it all!”

I went home and told Chief this story because a) it entertained me like nobody’s business and b) he was very tired and cranky and I wanted to cheer him up. Dr. Mastores’ office has the best staff and they always joke with me. She’s also an awesome doc if you need an optometrist–all the docs in that practice are.

Chief breaks the bad news to me that we gave away all those costumes and I responded with, “I think I need to order a parrot, then.”

He just looks at me (he’s tired and humoring me because I’m sure that I have that glint in my eye–the “good” eye not the “terminator” eye that’s looking a little larger these days) and says, “Well, it sounds like it’s worth the price of a parrot.”

All this to say, I ordered a parrot on Amazon that repeats the things you say to it. My next appointment, I’m going to carry it in my giant bag like some of these women carry their little dogs along–except I have a bonus eye patch 😂 I’m going to pull it out on L after all the Covid screening. I’ll keep you posted as to her response. #gottoentertainourselvessomehow I’m not sure if she thinks I’ll follow through with this stunt or not. I’m pretty sure I’m breaking out the tall black boots to wear that day…

As for the title of this post? Well, I was hysterically using Marco Polo to tell another friend this story and she texted in the middle of watching it to say, “That’s my new standard: But is it worth the price of a parrot? 😂😂😂”

Yes, it’s worth the price of a parrot. I haven’t even pranked L and it’s worth the price.