My Tumor Is Prettier Than Yours

For a while a had a big bump sticking out of the side of my thigh. I ignored it for a good month or more until finally realizing it wasn’t going away. Got an MRI, bla bla bla. My doctor called on my birthday last Friday to tell me it was in fact a tumor. Who gets a tumor in their leg? It appears, I do. Happy frickin’ birthday to me!

After crying about it and freaking out, I decided to have a sense of humor, since my doctors at Cleveland Clinic seem very puzzled by the nature of this thing inside me that is about the size of a worn down bar of Dove soap. So, I decided either I could charge people a $1.00 to poke my tumor as a circus side show act (suggested by my friend and a good way to pay medical bills), or, have a “Bedazzle and Decorate Arabella’s Tumor” happy hour fun-time party. I went with the bedazzling.

Yesterday I had my biopsy done so the bandage actually worked to our advantage as far as gluing things on my leg. First we looked at the beast on the MRI scans, which when I saw it, it totally looked like Gloop and Gleep from the cartoon The Herculoids…

Except mine is a perfect oval, like, crazy perfect in shape. Also, my ass and thighs look really hot in MRI pictures, so I guess doing those lunges are paying off. So then I got taken to a room where they had me lounge like the dying buddha…

and proceeded to make with the biopsy after feeling me up a lot, and squeezing, and poking, and prodding my tumor. I thought it was a quick needle and then I’d be on my merry way, but hurts a lot more than you expect it would, so take the option where you get put to sleep! I feel awful for women who need it done for breast lumps! It is like a body builder took his thumb and pushed all of his weight onto you — the pressure it the worst. Anyways, after my doctors deduced rightly that I’m a bit weird after telling them what I had planned later in the evening, I was off to get drunk on some Wild Turkey and beers.

My friend Elle got started. She had some devious plans for this thing. She is a make-up artiste after all!

Mallorie brought not only Alice in Wonderland stickers, but an actual sign from the Progressive Art Collection (because it appears their employees like to touch art they shouldn’t be touching!)

Now we’re getting somewhere. Shannon had other ideas, like getting a third eye…

Pretty tumor and biopsy bandage!

Just keep the tacky glue away from the tacos when they arrive. I wonder if this could serve as inspiration for a challenge on the show “Work Of Art”, hmm?

Later we went to a new Gastro Pub, or whatever, and they had bubbles on the bar! So Gina blew some bubbles to add to the ambiance of pretty-princess-sparkle-tumor-land.

It also appears that my husband took me to The Beer Engine for a late night hot dog and beer. I actually had no recollection of this even happening until I saw the photo this morning (hey it’s ‘Beer Bob’ in the background!). Wild Turkey will do that to you I guess, as it also appears I kept sticking this thing in people’s faces, and asked if they wanted to add to it — they probably looked at me like what Ben is doing in this photo.

And that, was the “happy frickin’ birthday” re-do evening. The rhinestones and stickers are still in tact, I may keep the bandage for a while just to look cute.