Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

by Jenny Lawson

  No one’s falling for it, Barnaby Jones.

  AND THAT’S THE END of the “stabbed by chicken” story. Unless I’m at a party. Then you can’t get me to stop telling that story, because it never gets old. Unless you’re Victor, who says he would prefer that I never mention it again. Probably because he knows he looks like an accomplice. Plus, I think he’s embarrassed when I mention all of those grapes I discovered under the fridge, so for his sake I changed them to “marbles” in this book. You’re welcome, Victor.

  Aaaanyway, right now you’re probably asking yourself, “Just how many finger-injury stories can this girl possibly have?” and the answer is, “Lots.” But the only one I’m telling you (aside from the “stabbed by chicken” story) is the one I started with way back at the beginning of this chapter, because I’m saving the rest for book two. But these are totally the best of all my finger stories, so just be forewarned that when book two comes out, Publishers Weekly is going to be all, “If you are expecting more of the same masterful retelling of brilliant finger-damage stories from overnight-sensation and long-suffering saint Jenny Lawson, then think again, because this book is all thumbs.” Or they might say something about how it has “two left feet.” It’s hard to tell with Publishers Weekly. Honestly, they write just horrible reviews. In fact, I bet they’re writing a terrible one about this book even as we speak, but probably just because I totally called them out, and I just used the review they wanted to be able to use, and now they’re all, “What the hell are we going to say now? She took all the good lines. I mean, ‘All thumbs’? That’s gold, you guys.” And I’m sorry about that, Publishers Weekly, but I’m a writer. That’s what I do. (Editor’s note: I quit.)

  So. As we discussed earlier, I’m at the doctor’s office, alone with my finger cancer, wondering whether I should have just gone straight to an oncologist instead, but I bravely hold out my swollen finger and the doctor looks at me condescendingly and says, “Oh. You got a boo-boo, huh?” Then I kicked him right in his junk. But only in my head, because doctors are quick to file assault charges, because they can make up their own medical damages. Like, a doctor could claim I gave him “popped ball,” and no jury in the land would question him, but if I insist that I have finger cancer, people stare at me like I’m crazy (in, coincidentally, exactly the same way that the doctor was looking at me right then. Like I’m the crazy one). Keep in mind that he just sued me for something called “popped ball.” Except that that only happened in my head too. On second thought, don’t keep that in mind. This whole paragraph isn’t really doing me any favors.

  The doctor quickly dismissed my claims of cancer, but I insisted that he research digital cancer first, because I was pretty sure I was dying of it.

  “What’s that? You think you have cancer caused by digital exposure?” Dr. Roland asked me over the rims of his glasses.

  “No,” I replied testily. “I’m pretty sure ‘digital’ is Latin for ‘fingeral,’ so finger cancer equals digital cancer. This is all basic anatomy, Dr. Roland.” Then Dr. Roland told me that he thought I was overreacting, and that “fingeral” wasn’t even a real word. Then I told him that I thought he was underreacting, probably because he’s embarrassed that he doesn’t know how Latin works. Then he claimed that “underreacting” isn’t a word either. The man has a terrible bedside manner.

  Dr. Roland sort of harrumphed at me, and I pointed my enormous E.T. finger at him, demanding, “This doesn’t look cancerous to you?!” He assured me it wasn’t cancer and was simply a spider bite. A savage, noxious spider that injects the eggs of her young with her venomous bite so that they can fester and feed on the finger flesh of an unsuspecting young writer who probably also has one hell of a malpractice case on her (probably cancerous) hands. The doctor didn’t actually tell me any of that last part, but I could see it there in his eyes.

  When I got home Victor asked what the doctor had said, and I explained, “He sent me home to die.”

  “He did what?”

  “I mean, he sent me home with ointment.” It was all very anticlimactic.

  Turns out, though, that Dr. Roland was very wrong, and after a lot of blood work (and a new doctor), I discovered that I didn’t have finger cancer or finger spiders, and that instead I had arthritis.

  Whenever I tell people I have arthritis they usually say, “But you seem so young,” which is sort of a backhanded compliment that I never get tired of hating. I will probably only hate the phrase even more when I get to the age when people stop saying it, and suddenly begin saying, “Oh, arthritis. Of course you have it.” Then I plan to run over them with my wheelchair. I always explain that it’s rheumatoid arthritis (a.k.a. RA), which can strike even children, and I’m not even sure why it’s labeled as arthritis at all, since it’s only vaguely related to the osteoarthritis that your great-grandmother complains about. I’ve considered lobbying the medical field to rename rheumatoid arthritis something sexier, younger, and more exotic. Something like “The Midnight Death,” or “Impending Vampirism.” Or perhaps to name it after someone famous. Like “Lou Gehrig’s disease, part two: THE RECKONING.” After all, rheumatoid arthritis is painful enough without the added embarrassment of sounding like something your nana had, so it seems only fair that we should be able to tell people that we had to miss their party because of an unexpected flare-up of “Impending Vampirism.”

  My new RA doc was very kind, and reassured me that an RA diagnosis was not the death sentence it had once been, and then I found myself hyperventilating a bit because a doctor had just said “death sentence” to me, and he got his nurse to help me put my head between my knees and breathe deeply. Then he said that although there was no cure, there were a lot of experimental treatments that we could “try.” Then I passed out, but probably less from the news that I had an incurable disease and more because I tend to pass out whenever I see people in doctors’ coats. I have passed out on school field trips to clinics, at the optometrists’, during gynecological visits, and once even at the veterinarian’s, when I fainted unexpectedly and fell on my cat. (The last one was the most disconcerting, because I came to in the lobby with a lot of dogs and strangers leaning over me as I realized my shirt was completely unbuttoned as a team of paramedics checked my heart and my cat cowered under a chair while glaring at me accusingly.) When I came to in the RA office, my doctor had me lie down as he explained that it was nothing to panic about, and that although no one knew what caused the disease they suspected it was congenital. I’d been only half listening because I was too busy trying not to throw up, and so I looked at the doctor with wide eyes and said, “I’m sorry. Genital?”

  “Uh . . . what?” the doctor asked.

  “Did you say my arthritis is genital?”

  “No.” He chuckled. “Congenital. Or possibly hereditary.” I sighed in relief, finding at least a little solace in his answer, and I found myself wondering what an arthritic vagina would even look like. He assured me that my genitals would be just fine, but honestly he looked a tiny bit alarmed. Probably because he’d never thought to research arthritis of the vagina. But they should. So far I’ve had arthritis in all fingers, my neck, arms, legs, feet, and in one ear. I can only assume vaginal arthritis is lurking right around the corner, waiting to strike when you least suspect it. Which is always, really. No one ever expects vaginal arthritis.1

  My doctor explained that I had a rare form of the disease called polyarthritis, which meant that instead of staying in a single place, the arthritis jumps around from body part to body part on an almost daily basis. One day I’ll wake up with an ankle so swollen it looks like I’m wearing a single nude leg warmer stuffed with apples. The next day my ankle will be fine, but I won’t be able to move my left shoulder without wanting to stab a kitten. The best way I can describe it is that every night I go to bed knowing that Freddy Krueger will be waiting to beat the shit out of me with a baseball bat, and that I’ll wake up with whatever horrific injuries he’s inflicted. Except that this isn’t a movie
about Elm Street and it’s my life. Plus, Johnny Depp isn’t there. So it sucks in a myriad of ways.

  The doctor was right about there being a lot of treatment options, but I was disappointed to find that none of them included medically prescribed Segways, or personal monkey butlers to help you open pickle jars. Instead I was given a drug that starts with “meth-” and ends with “your-hair-will-fall-out-and-you-will-never-stop-vomiting-if-you-don’t-take-a-daily-antidote,” because apparently it’s also a chemo drug. Interestingly enough, one of the many side effects of the drug is that even though it’s a drug designed to battle cancer, IT FUCKING CAUSES CANCER. The doctor explained that the drug-induced cancer happened only in rare cases, but considering that I was just diagnosed with one of the rarest forms of a rare disease to begin with, it seemed like this was exactly the kind of lottery I should be avoiding. He convinced me it was worth the risks, but cautioned me not to panic when the warning label on the medicine would scare the shit out of me. He was right. It said, “Holy shit, MOTHERFUCKER. YOU ARE GOING TO FUCKING DIE.”2 I’m just paraphrasing, but that’s the gist. Also, in my head it sounded exactly like Samuel L. Jackson, so I was scared, but still entertained.

  And what really sucks is that NO ONE EVEN KNOWS WHY THIS DRUG WORKS. They’re guessing it may work because it fucks up your immune system and keeps cells from growing properly, so your body attacks your immune system instead of your joints. Because who needs a working immune system when you have an autoimmune disease that makes you so sick that your best option is to take a drug that can kill you? Basically it’s like being stabbed in the neck to take your mind off your stubbed toe. Still, the drugs seem to help somewhat, so I take them and try not to imagine what it would be like without them.

  I’ve had arthritis for years now, and sometimes it’s gone, and sometimes I’m bedridden, but either way I’m constantly having to go in for blood work and X-rays, and the best news that the doctor can give me is that my blood has not turned toxic and that there are “no obvious deformities yet.” That’s how you know you’re fucked. When a medical professional tries to give you a high five because you’re not as deformed as they expected.

  I muddled through the first few years, always hoping that I’d suddenly find out that I’d been cured.

  “I don’t understand,” I told my doctor. “I’ve been taking various treatments for years and I still hurt.”

  “It’s easy to get discouraged,” he said gently, “but you have to keep in mind that you have a degenerative disease.”

  “Yes, but I thought I’d be better by now.”

  “Ah,” said my doctor. “I think maybe you just don’t understand what ‘degenerative’ means.”

  Awesome. I was not getting cured and my vocabulary skills were being questioned.

  When my latest blood test came back, the doctor said it was no surprise that I was in a lot of pain, since my results showed an arthritis “double positive.” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I suspect it means that my arthritis is an overachiever.

  I started taking herbal supplements and giant fish oil pills every day, and when Victor complained that I was just throwing money away, I pointed out that fish oil is supposed to be good for your joints, because fish are . . . well lubricated, I guess? He stared at me, perplexed at my reasoning.

  “Well, it can’t hurt,” I said. “You almost never see a fish with bad ankles. Or . . . you know . . . limping.”

  “I think someone just sold you a bill of goods. Didn’t they used to sell fish oil back in the eighteen hundreds to suckers?”

  “No,” I answered. “That was snake oil. Although I have always wondered how you get oil from a snake. It seems like a lot of trouble to go through for something that didn’t work anyway. Imagine how many people were getting bitten each day trying to oil snakes.”

  “What are you talking about? You don’t oil snakes.”

  “Yeah, you do. I’m pretty sure ‘oil’ is a verb in this case. You get cow milk by milking a cow, so you get snake oil by oiling a snake. This is all basic commonsense stuff.”

  This was when Victor asked exactly what sort of herbal supplements I was taking, and insisted that I stop taking the ones that weren’t written in English or came in baggies from questionable health stores. He was right, but I was desperate, and it was that fit of desperation that led me to agree to let Victor take me to an acupuncturist.

  I’d never gone to an acupuncturist before, but I’d heard enough about them to think that I knew what I was getting myself into. But it turns out that all the people who told me that acupuncture is awesome and doesn’t hurt at all are complete fucking liars. Or maybe my acupuncturist is just bad, or just really hates white people. Hard to tell.

  Regardless, I think it behooves the world for me to tell you what really happens at an acupuncturist so that you won’t go in as blindly as I did:

  1. The nurse will tell you to take off everything but your underwear. So maybe you should wear underwear. And maybe they should tell you that when you make the appointment.

  2. Special note to people bringing their small children: What the hell is wrong with you? The “dollhouse” on the waiting room floor isn’t a dollhouse. It’s a shrine. If you let your son’s G.I. Joe “conquer it and claim it in the name of the United States,” you are probably going to go to hell. Also, maybe you shouldn’t piss off the guy who’s about to stab needles into you. Just a suggestion, lady.

  3. The acupuncturist will come in and you’ll try to explain what hurts, and then he’ll shake his head, because he doesn’t speak English. He’ll call in his nurse and you’ll explain about where your rheumatism is, and how long it’s hurt, and what drugs you’re on, and she’ll look at the doctor and yell, “SHE SAYS SHE HURT,” and then walk out of the room. Then the doctor will give you a look like “Why are you wasting my time? Of course you hurt. Why would perfectly normal people come to have needles stuck in them?” Then he’ll make you lie back on the table and start jabbing needles into you.

  4. The needles are small and won’t hurt at all. In fact, they’ll feel good. Ha, ha! Just kidding. They feel like needles. Because they are.

  5. The doctor will stick one needle into your ear and it will start bleeding. You will be bleeding from your ear. I can’t even stress this enough. BLEEDING FROM THE EAR. Then he’ll open an English book about acupuncture and make you read a paragraph about how the ear is the shape of an upside-down fetus and so it’s good to stick needles in it. I desperately hope that paragraph has lost something in translation, because I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to stab needles in fetuses. I make a mental note to ask my gynecologist. Then I make a mental note not to, because even if I can manage to describe this properly, asking my gynecologist whether it’s okay to stick needles in fetuses is just going to make the next Pap smear more awkward.

  6. Forty-four needles later. Several of them are bleeding. The other ones actually start to feel a little tingly. The doctor will leave and you’ll try to look down at yourself, but you can’t because it’s making the needles in your neck stick farther into you. At this point you will pass out from shock. Then the acupuncturist will come back in and smugly claim you fell asleep from all the chi. I agree, if chi is Chinese for “massive blood loss.”

  7. The forty-four needles all come out. You start to leave and the doctor laughs and tells you he’s just begun, and that now he has to do “your butt side.” Then you say, “My butt side?” and he’s all, “No. Your butt side.” Then the nurse yells, “YOUR BACKSIDE,” from out in the hall, and he’s all, “Yes. Your butt side.” Awesome.

  8. Forty-two more needles. All in my butt side. Two hurt like hell and are bleeding a lot. You start to suspect that the acupuncturist is just mad at you. You try to explain that you were not with the woman in the lobby who let her kid’s action figures commandeer his shrine. He totally does not believe you.

  9. Forty-two needles all come out. Then he pours some sort of liquid on you that I’ve decided to call “stink ju
ice.” And he kneads it into your pores, so that you smell like a dirty old sock that someone has been storing patchouli and VapoRub in.

  10. Then you hear the sound of a lighter, and you suspect that you’re about to get your hair set on fire, but then the acupuncturist explains that he’s going to do a little “cupping,” which I think was what my first boyfriend referred to as second base. It sounded totally inappropriate, and I started to protest, but turns out it’s just when a doctor sets fire to the alcohol in a small jar and then places it over the skin so it acts as a vacuum and gives you an enormous hickey. Which, now that I think about it, still sounds kind of inappropriate.

  11. Then the acupuncturist will open up a piece of tissue paper filled with a white powder, and will hand it to you, and look at you in expectation. And you’ll be like, “Do you want me to . . . Do I snort this?” And then he’ll shake his head at your idiocy and make you open your mouth so he can pour what looks like the stuff from the inside of a Ped Egg into your mouth. Then he’ll laugh at your look of horror, and hand you water and make you keep drinking and swishing it in your mouth until it’s all gone. Then he’ll say, “Ginseng tea for detox,” and you’ll be all, “That’s not how you make tea,” and he’ll smile and walk out while you wonder why you just allowed a strange Chinese man to feed you mystery powder wrapped in tissue paper when he doesn’t even know how tea works. You can just stop wondering now, because there is no fucking good answer to this question.

  12. The acupuncturist will leave and you’ll get dressed, feeling mildly assaulted and vaguely confused, and then you’ll realize that you can actually put on your shirt for the first time all week without screaming in pain. And then you go and make another appointment for next week. Except your husband will vow to never drive you again because he claims that now his car smells like “old dirty hippie.”