Some days you love your life, other days you hope that shooting pain in your pelvis is your appendix exploding and not just a super poo blocking your bowls so you can spend the whole day in bed.

 

Some days getting up out of bed and putting on clothes which haven’t been sourced from Peter Alexander seems impossible, and an emergency surgery seems like a far better option. Some days the idea of having to spend eight hours pretending you are a functioning person is exhausting. There are times when you feel like you can’t face people. When appearing cheerful seems painful. When using your brain seems daunting. Sometimes the weight is so heavy you can’t even move to peel your bed socks off. There are days you just need one more day to yourself. These days are usually Mondays.    These are the days you start thinking of what miracles might happen to give you that extra time. You find yourself in some pretty odd places that might concern hospital staff, and you start doing some weird bargaining in your head. You can live without your appendix, so getting a few days off to have it hacked out of your body seems a reasonable trade-off. So on the days when you’re laying in bed and you feel a quick shooting pain to the right of your abdomen, you think today could be your lucky day.

 

Your sister lost a heap of weight when she had her appendix out and they do keyhole surgeries now so the scarring would not even be that severe. Plus, you’re guaranteed at least one bunch of flowers, free magazines and the occasional comforting hand on those forehead bumps you usually keep out of sight with a curtain of hair. An added bonus: all the action is going on downstairs, meaning upstairs is an all-you-can-eat zone after they yank the little sucker out of you. This could be a real win. A second dull pain hits your side again and your spirits are buoyed.

 

You get up out of bed and waddle slowly to the bathroom, considering whether you should text your boss now or wait until you get into the office and dramatically collapse in the middle of everyone writhing on the floor in pain. The sympathy. The spectacle. The attention. You can feel it coming your way.

 

Unfortunately/fortunately (depending on what sort of mood you’re in) the only thing coming is the shit of the century; brown water spraying your porcelain bowl with a range you thought only possible for industrial-grade irrigation pumps.

 

It turns out imaginary appendicitis and raging diarrhoea feel the same before they reach the point of explosion. You wipe away a tear as you flush away your week of leave, and angrily slam the toilet lid down (while we’re on the topic, shut your bloody toilet lids people. I don’t care if you pee standing up, sitting down or in a reverse cowgirl style. Open, exposed toilet water is filthy and your displaying of it is yucky. We’ve got opposable thumbs for fuck’s sake and you still think it’s ok to have open passages to the sewer system in your home?! Are you a wild animal?!) You’ve had enough of this bullshit. What does your an appendix really do for you anyway? You’ve kept it alive for more than two decades now. The least it could do in return is to become inflamed and volatile when you needed a break. You just know the little prick will hold out until you’re in a remote jungle to explode and will probably kill you. Typical.

 

Fortunately for you, your body is still intact, reasonably healthy (unless you’ve swallowed a pipe bomb without realising, as far as you know you’re in pretty good shape) and you make it to work. And it’s not all bad.

 

Sure, you have to deal with ten zillion emails, make actual meaningful contributions to meetings and do three times the work you were expecting on that day. But then you might be sent out to an alpaca farm or a CWA event with unlimited scones. There’s generally something that happens that makes things that little bit less awful. Some rogue co-worker may act on a whim and bring out some toasted bagels complete with smear. You may have to take a photo of a puppy or interview a man about the ins and outs of honey and be told that neglecting bees is illegal. Heck, you might get retweeted by someone!

 

Sure, you’re much busier than you would be if you were home on the couch. You’re also wearing shoes. And doing work takes a lot more work than laying down. But it’s not all bad. Because going to work is much like remembering you forgot to brush your teeth after you’ve got all comfortable in bed – except you don’t get paid for brushing your teeth, and you can brush your teeth in just your knickers. It seems like a big deal. You feel like your body is a wax strip, and separating yourself from the mattress will be a painful affair. And so the whole ordeal is incredibly daunting. But the truth is, getting up out of the cocoon of your body heat and self-loathing is the biggest battle. Once you’re up and brushing, you realise it’s not that bad. Before you know it, you’re done.

 

At the end of the day, you’ve made it to the end of the day and before you know it you’re back in your seven-year-old Best and Less pyjama pants watching the home renovation channel. And you and your appendix are friends again.

 

Until next Monday.