UPDATED BELOW…
So, this is a weird post and you should skip it if you’re easily grossed out.
Still here? Awesome. You are my kind of people. The kind that can’t look away from grossness. Let’s go watch horror movies together. But not today because I think I might be dying.
I’m probably not dying, but that’s where my mind goes first because I’m me. Here’s the deal: A year ago my belly button was quiet and unassuming and frankly I did not appreciate it because the best belly buttons are the ones that just don’t really exist. They less the exist, the better the are. Unless you’re missing one altogether. That’s weird. Not that I’m judging. Anymore. Mostly because my belly button just got weird too.
Last year I had my gallbladder removed through my belly button and it went back to normal except for a small scar, but then a few months ago it started to turn into an outie, which I didn’t mind but it seemed odd because my belly button had always been cavernously internal even when I was enormously pregnant. Then I started getting sharp stomach pains off and on and I thought it was appendicitis but it kept going away so I ignored it, but last night I had my hand on my stomach in bed and I laughed because someone on tv hurt themselves in a funny way and then I noticed that my belly button popped out an inch like a tiny, angry alien. Then it went back to being normal but every time I laugh or cough it pops out like a Jack-in-the-Box made of flesh.
I made a video but I don’t think I want that floating around the internet. It’s like having a sex tape, but grosser and less lucrative. Then people would always associate me with having a gross belly button, or even worse, someone else would claim that it’s their belly button and it would go viral and then Victor would yell at me for not watermarking a video of my belly button volcano. But I’ll show you pictures because that’s what the internet is for.
It might be a good party trick if everyone was drunk enough because after it pops out it looks a little like a Who down in Whoville.
So now I don’t know if I’m dying or if I just have a really talented belly button. Like maybe I just got double-jointed, IN MY BELLY BUTTON. Or it’s a tumor. I prefer to just have faith in the talent of my belly button but Victor says I have to go to the doctor because I think he’s jealous his belly button can’t do that.
According to WebMD I’m probably somewhere between “fine” or “already dead”, but most likely it’s a hernia. My mom had one when she was my age but then when the surgeon went in he found and removed a (non-cancerous) tumor the size of a cantaloupe, and the upside to that is that it’s like getting a tummy tuck and people feel sorry for you at the same time. So this is why I’m finally calling the doctor this morning. It’s also why I don’t eat a lot of cantaloupe.
I’m writing this because if I write it out then things will be fine. Who ever writes that they have to get their talented belly button checked out and then later finds out they have belly button cancer? My guess is that the numbers are small. I’m not even sure belly button cancer is a real thing, but now that I consider it, that’s totally the sort of dumb-ass thing I’d end up getting.
Also, I’d like to apologize for this whole post. Blogging is already incredibly narcissist, but I just realized that I spent this whole post literally navel-gazing. And asking you to gaze at my navel. Wow. I think I might need help and not just for the tiny alien living in my belly button.
Going to the doctor now. Wish me luck.
UPDATE: You guys are not going to believe this, but I have a hernia. (Hat-tip to the 8,000 of you who guessed this immediately.) Apparently my body is trying to forcibly flee from my own body, which is sort of insulting. I guess my intestines saw how easy it was for my gallbladder to escape through my belly button and then they were like, “WE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THAT WAS AN OPTION” and now they’re trying to tunnel out like angry inmates. I don’t blame them though. This body is a sinking ship.
My doctor looked at my stomach and said it was probably a hernia but to be sure she asked me to do a sit-up and that brought The-Who-Down-in-Whoville to the surface and she yelled, “Oh my God. DON’T DO ANYMORE SIT-UPS” and I was like, “I want that on a doctor’s note right now.” Then I can just pin the note to my chest whenever I have to sit next to really thin people who I always assume are judging me. I asked if the hernia was super bad but she said that if I’m careful it should be fine until they can get me in for surgery, but that if it gets worse my intestines could become “incarcerated,” and that “incarceration greatly increases the risk of strangulation,” and I agreed but I don’t think we were talking about the same thing.
Then my sister texted me: “Sooo, belly button cancer. That’s a new one, but if it’s going to happen to someone it would be you” and I explained that it was a belly button hernia and she texted back : “There was a kid at daycare with a belly button hernia. His parents taped a quarter over it and they were certain it would work. It was like they were paying his intestines to stay inside.” Then I asked Victor for a quarter and he said he only had two dimes and I was like “That’s not enough to keep my intestines in” and then he made me stop taking anecdotal medical advice from my sister.
Honestly, it’s like he’s just begging for strangulation.