Old Faithful

TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2012 7:43 PM, EST

Old Faithful

It was a standard hot Summer in Alabama in 1995. I was fit to be tied when I found out that Nannie was taking us on a "field trip" during the last week of Summer before my Junior year in high school. I mean, what self-respecting 11th grader wants to spend the last week of Summer with her sisters and cousins on an 8-day trip?

We called them field trips for years. We were in a fortunate position in which our grandmother took us on these fabulous trips across the United States, mostly to historical places. We went to Nachez, Mississippi once and toured Antebellum homes. We rode on a train from Alabama to Washington, DC, which was amazing! We visited the Cheeha Mountains, the Cabbage Patch Hospital, Disney World. As children, we were jet-setters. It was kind of a private joke between the 3 of us that Nannie was taking us on yet another field trip. So imaging our surprise when the week prior to our trip, we were each handed two red, screen-printed t-shirts that read in white, "Tatum's Taterbugs Big Horn Country Field Trip." I looked at Tiffany and thought, "You have got to be kidding me." I remember seeing Nannie's look of disappointment when we didn't show up in the airport in our field trip t-shirts, and I thought, "This is going to be the longest 8 days of my life." 

The trip was a blast. We went to Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, the rodeo in Cody, Wyoming, and Yellowstone National Park. If memory serves me correctly, Nannie told us that she and Grandaddy honeymooned there in a cabin. At one point during the drive through Yellowstone, Nannie rolled her window down to call a donkey (yes, it was a donkey, though I'm not quite sure why it was roaming around Yellowstone) over to the van with Tiffany, Jayme, myself, and our cousins Joshua and Amber. Nannie was driving, and the donkey came over more quickly than she anticipated. She rolled the window up, but not fast enough. Its lips were reaching further and further into the van, and we were of course belting in laughter. We must have said a million times during that trip, in our deepest, silliest of voices, "Give me a kiss, Nannie!" Jayme and I still crack up over that moment. 

Another memory from that trip was watching Old Faithful. There is something terribly interesting about what's going on under the surface of the earth. And that over thousands of years, something can be so predictable as this geyser that more or less erupts on cue. It is fascinating, and under-rated. I'm sure that Nannie was disappointed in our reactions to the trip at the time. She probably thought that the only memory we'd have of that trip would be going to see the movie "Clueless" in the movie theater. I came back with many new favorite phrases like, "What? I totally paused!" when I ran a stop sign. Or using the word "sporadic" over and over again. Cher never would have appreciated that trip, and neither did my eleventh grade mind. But looking back, it was one of the most significant trips of my life, and of course, applicable to what is going on now.  

I went to the Filling Station Friday for my routine 2 week fill. My right expander was oddly half the size of the right. Dr. Quintero's face told me that this was not going to amount to good news. He looked perplexed. It was a similar look that Dr. Hargis gave me when he told me I had an "old lady tumor." So Dr. Quintero doubled the contents of the right expander. When he pulled the needle, I could feel the saline solution dripping down my rib cage on the right side...he removed the gauze pad, and there it was - Old Faithful, right on cue. The damn thing was leaking at the port site...likely a manufacturer defect. I knew this wasn't good. I asked Dr. Quintero if we could just place the implants, to which he said no. My right skin isn't stretched enough to get the implant in, and placing the implant now may pull too much on the incision. And so we take a different route...Plan B.

Plan B starts tomorrow. I go in at 8am for what I like to call an "additional" surgery. Dr. Quintero will replace my faulty expander with a working one. The surgery is quick, only about an hour. Then the recovery should be pretty easy. It's after recovery that gets me. This lengthens the expander process (which has been just so much fun!). Dr. Q can only fill me about halfway on the right until my incision heals. In about 2 weeks, we will continue the expansion process until the right catches up with the left in volume. Until then, I will giggle about being lopsided. They say that one breast is generally a little bigger than the other...I don't think this counts!

Nannie has taught me many things...things she probably doesn't even know about. She taught me to love other places, and to learn about them before I visit. I love to travel. Some day Nathan, the boys and I will travel again. And we will appreciate it more when we do. Nannie taught me to love fine things. I have a great love of shoes and other accessories that stems from my Nannie. And Nannie taught me that you have to be nice...that's the legacy you want to leave. Until then, I was just totally clueless.