Thursday, April 3, 2008

Just when you think you know yourself, you find out you're missing half of your stomach lining

I have a weak stomach. And every once and a while I'm struck with pretty bad stomach ache. What am I, 10?

I even had one doozie last year that landed me in a Baltimore hospital. Complete dysfunction. And as I sit here now I'm trying to ignore the nagging pain in the pit of my stomach.

In a conversation with my mom today, I mentioned that I had another stomach ache, and was wondering what I could have eaten that would have triggered the pain.

Our conversation went something like this:

Me: Maybe it was the pickle. Could have been the pickle.
Mom: Maybe.
Me: I have such a sensitive stomach.
Mom: I know, that's because you don't have an omentum.
Me: A What?
Mom: An omentum. The doctors removed it during your surgery. An omentum lines the peritoneal cavity where all your abdominal organs are.
Me: Oh. So like my stomach lining?
Mom: Yeah, you don't have much of one.

Squeeze me? Don't I need that?

Apparently not. And today my mom just happened to mention that during my surgery 16 years ago (long story short, I had some kind of rare sarcoma in my abdomen when I was a little kid) the doctors removed it.

Clearly it's not essential to daily life, as I've lived on for the past 16 years completely oblivious to that fact that I was missing mine. And completely oblivious that there was any residual effects of a surgery I had when I was seven.

And this is just another reason why I will forever admire my mother's gift of tact. She is a woman who lives to drop bombs of information as if she were reminding you to pick up milk on the way home.

Don't forget to pick up your the milk. And by the way, you're adopted.

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