I plan on hoodwinking many idiots.

I miss having colds. You know, the kind where you get all miserable for a few days, people say how sorry they are you feel poorly, and you eat lots of soup. Colds are a manageable illness. Almost fun.

Now I have to explain, over and over again, we’re not entirely sure what’s wrong with my body (it’s an auto-immune disorder). And I can’t just take a box of tissue and some tea and go lay in bed.

It’s been two weeks since my total hysterectomy, and eight weeks since they took 13 inches of my colon and my entire gall bladder. It’s been 16 weeks since they first cut me open, poking around and cleaning inflammation and adhesions, trying to figure out why I had been so very ill.

I look like skin and bones, and not the good kind. As my husband says, I don’t look like someone who has lost a lot of weight…I look like someone who has been very ill. And it’s true, I’ve been very ill. Very, very ill.

I’ve penned my funeral wishes. Put on paper what I want for my kids and family after my death. Thought very hard about what should happen if my vital organs were attacked like their non-vital sisters.

It’s not easy to think about these things, but I was calm and they were necessary. In the moment you just … do. I felt I had to at least prepare for the worst so I would have no regrets if it all went South.

Family has flown in and out-of-town. Friends have visited. It’s been 16 weeks of questions and theories, all while I lay on the couch in my pj’s trying so hard to hold in all the emotion flooding my usually bustling body.

We’ve all sort of soldiered on around here, waiting. Waiting to see if there will be four or five surgeries instead of these three. Waiting to see if they find Cancer. Waiting to see if I feel better when I awake from anaesthesia.

We know now there is no Cancer. And we are cautiously optimistic as this last surgery has me feeling better than I have felt in a year. But there always seems to be the other shoe that drops.

Fuck that shoe.

I’m done.

And I will keep that damn shoe in the air by sheer force of will if I have to. I feel stronger. I feel better. I’m eating, I’m walking more than just around the block. And I have every intention of revising those death wishes for many, many years to come.

There is something that happens when you spend your 10th wedding anniversary dancing in your kitchen, instead of a romantic Inn as planned. There is something that happens when your oldest child needs therapy for his mounting anxiety and your youngest re-enacts nothing but sickness and death with her stuffed animals. There is something that happens when you spend too many weeks in pj’s on the couch, petting your new puppy (a gift to help you heal) and wondering how to conquer the world while feeling more like taking a nap.

This body is officially on notice. There will be no other shoe to drop, there will be no more surgeries. There will be no more of this disorder. I’m done. And you’re getting off this couch.

Yes, my dear body, you can #suckit.

In fact, the next time you end up on this couch, it will be because of some measly cold. You will get tissues and maybe some soup, if you’re lucky.

Perhaps I’m being too harsh on this frail frame of now 123lbs. But I don’t care. Tough love baby. Tough love. I have children to raise, a husband to dote on, and Democrats to elect.

…And I refuse to let anything get in the way… even my stubborn self.

Don’t mess with us. Seriously. And while we’re at it…go and check out the original Mamma Grizzlies.

Rock on Emily’s List