It has been four days since Francis was removed. He left a gross scar and thousands of dollars in doctor bills in his wake.

My talent for comedic delivery during stressful times is being challenged. I cannot be comical today. I am too tired. Mom wanted to wash my sheets this morning but I didn’t want to get out of bed, so she ripped them off like she did when I was a kid and wouldn’t get up to go to school. As soon as the sheets came off, mom stared at me for a moment, then started crying. She said she’d never seen me look so small.

At that moment, it occurred to me… it truly must be the most difficult thing in the world to watch your children suffer.

Ten days of being Francis-free. He never did pop out of my neck and speak to me like Quatto did to Arnold Swarzeneggar in Total Recall, and now he will never have that opportunity. At least those nightmares have subsided (only to be replaced by new ones of being revisited by that awful, humongous nurse at the hospital, the one who had a hairy mole on her chin and who would never give me drugs when I asked for them).

They said I wouldn’t be able to speak for about a month after my surgery, and that was if I were lucky.

Today, however, a miracle happened. And I owe it all to my mother.

The story goes like this: So I was sitting in the doc’s office for my post-op visit. Mom had an appointment with her breast cancer doctor the same time as mine (we were both in the cancer center). She finished early, so she moseyed on over to my side of the cancer center to hang out with me.

So we’re in the office. Me, my mom, and Dr. Foster. He was feeling around on my neck, as usual, examining my surgery site and asking a lot of questions (which I couldn’t answer because I still wasn’t speaking). It was during one of those lulls in conversation, a brief moment when no one was saying anything (especially me). Then it happened.

My mom farted.

It was accidental, naturally, but it was one of those long, drawn-out farts that sounded vaguely like a door creaking. Mom can’t really help it… she had some colon tumors a few years ago and dinner time hasn’t been the same since.

Right after it happened and I realized it wasn’t a door creaking, I started laughing. It was more of a guffaw, really. I laughed so hard I thought my stitches were going to pop off. I tried to control it because it hurt to laugh, but everyone knows when you try to stop laughing it only makes you laugh harder. And all my old coworkers and long-time friends know that when I really get tickled about something, it takes an act of God to get me to stop.

My mother was mortified. She tried to apologize to the doctor, but he was more interested in the fact that my voice was actually working. He looked at me, stunned, and said, "Wow, your vocal chords are actually working! I can hear your voice coming through! Can you say something for us?"

I stopped laughing as all the eyes were on me –mom’s, Dr. Foster’s, and the nurse’s, who had just entered the room. They were putting me on the spot to talk. Could I do it? Could I actually get some real words out? Would it sound anything like my former self? This was the moment.

"I see dead people," I said.

The nurse laughed, getting the reference, Dr. Foster lit up with excitement, and mom shrieked because she’s never seen The Sixth Sense and thought I was really seeing dead people.

"Oh my God!" Dr. Foster said. "Your vocal chords are working! This is remarkable."

So the Karaoke Queen of Kobe, Japan is making a comeback, albeit slowly. I sound like Marge Simpson’s mother after smoking a pack of Camels, but at least I have a voice. Dad says, "You sound like Willie Nelson looks," whatever that means.

So, on this fine afternoon in mid-October, I have learned that Francis did not take away my voice for good. And I owe it all to my flatulent mother.

P.S. Thank God she does not read this website. And for those of you who do (DAD…) you better not tell her about this entry. She would kill me.

Post-Francis progress: EXCELLENT.

I have upgraded my voice from Marge Simpson’s mother to Marge Simpson. Dad now says I sound like Willie Nelson looks after a shower and a shave. Progress is being made.

I am astounded at all the e-mails, cards, flowers, casseroles, and other kind acts of sympathy and concern from my friends and the general community. If you are one of those people, thank you from the bottom of my heart. And if you aren’t, I probably didn’t want your damn nasty casserole anyway.

Which brings me to my next item on the progress agenda, the fact that I can eat solid food. I no longer have to go around quoting Grandpa Simpson, when someone says something about him eating solid food, and he says, "Hey, I can still eat corn on the cob… if someone cuts it off the cob and mushes it up into a fine paste." No more paste for me! I can eat real corn now!

I am having sort of an informal contest among my friends. I am trying to determine who’s my favorite. There’s Hot Neighbor, who brings me McDonald’s Happy Meals and soothes my eyes by being so stinking hot. Then there’s Kristen the computer whiz who has been printing out all my e-mails for me since I can’t very easily make it to a computer with Internet service. She also paid her roommate to bake me a squash casserole. Then there’s Ashley, who brought me a bottle of tequila a few days after my surgery because the pain medication they gave me sucked. Aw… such great friends.

Kristen, Ashley, and Hot Neighbor: I’ll let y’all know who the winner is by next week. Just keep the food and liquor comin’.

Part II of… Tales from the Doctor’s Office!

OK, so Part I was when my mom farted. That was classic. Today was pretty good too, though.

So I’m sitting in Dr. Foster’s office, and he says he has to look at my vocal chords up close. I know what this is all about, having done this many times before. He sprays some nasty crap up my nose and down my throat, then sticks this wiry spaghetti-like light down there. And as much as they say that spray is supposed to numb things, it still feels like he’s sticking a pitchfork up there, like that scene in Total Recall when Arnold Swarzeneggar puts that thing up there to grab that red ball, which he then has to pull out of this nose. I imagine my level of discomfort to be about the same as Arnold’s.

So he’s got this long tube up my nose, which then routes itself down to my vocal chords. First he asks me to hum. So I hum. "See that on screen? That’s what your vocal chords do when you hum." Thrilling.

Next he says, "Now count to ten."

So I say, "Ichi, ni, san, shi, go, rokku…" It is still instinctive even after being back in the States for a couple of months. Plus I had had some tequila this morning so I was feeling a little saucy (pun intended).

Then my vocal chords moved differently, sort of side to side. "See that? That’s what they do when you speak." Wow.

Then he says, "Now sing something." I looked at him like, You must be kidding. "Go on. Sing anything."

So as the nurses perpetually walked by the office, I began to sing. "I… wanna rock and roll all ni-gh-t… and party ev-er-y day…"

The nurses looked at me like I was nuts. "Yeah! Great!" he said. "Keep going!"

"You say you wanna go for a spin/ the party’s just begun, we’ll let you in/ you drive us wild we’ll drive you crazy…" And I did a little air guitar for the onlookers.

"See that? That’s what they look like when you sing." He pointed to the screen, as my vocal chords seemed to be doing a little dance.

"You should see what the rest of me looks like when I sing, especially when Sir Mix-a-lot comes on," I said.

He just looked at me a little funny, so I didn’t explain. But Heather and Jeremy sure as hell know what I’m talking about. (And let me apologize again, Jeremy… I really don’t think I’ll ever do that again..)

Mom’s flatulence and Kiss songs… you just never know what will help you on the road to recovery.

I’ve been up and around now for a while, and since my voice has been upgraded from Marge Simpson to Kathleen Turner with a cold, I decided it was time to really test my vocal abilities.

I went to Ashley’s elementary school class today (the same Ashley who bought me tequila when my pain meds sucked, the same Ashley who drives me to midget rodeos) and read a Halloween story to her class. I had on my sexy witch costume, only this time with a giant scarf to cover my cleavage and my scar. It is a Gryffindor scarf my mom knitted me, an exact replica of Harry Potter’s. I could go on and on about how funny this day was, and all the hilarious stuff the kids said, but in the interest of website space I must stick to my original story. Her eight students spent the entire time trying to figure out if I was a good witch or a bad witch. I didn’t really want to say, for reasons of political correctness, but at the end of the reading Ashley did it for me. She said, "One time Susan made a bad witch really mad. Look at what the bad witch did to her neck."

The kids all looked at me. "I don’t know, Ms. Bendall, I don’t usually show kids what the bad witch did. It’s pretty scary."

But of course they all wanted to see. So I whipped off my scarf and showed them the awful scar that Bad Witch Francis had left. They oohed and ahhed. "What’d you do to make the bad witch so mad?" one brave little girl asked.

"I said some bad words to my parents," I said. And they all became very quiet.

Later on, I told my mom this story. "You know, you really shouldn’t go around showing people that scar. It’s not very ladylike," mom said.

"Shut the hell up. And go get me a damn Coke," I said.

Mom didn’t find that very funny.

Post-Francis progress: A FEW SETBACKS.

To make a long story short, the final pathology report was not that good. It seems Francis is a stubborn little bugger, and is still residing somewhere in the range of where the bad witch got me. It looks as though I am not finished with this treatment, and more zapping will ensue before I can be considered Francis-free.

I am pissed. It is times like these I want to punch the wall or maybe go beat up someone smaller than me. I was at mom’s house today, and we were lamenting about our respective health situations. "You can’t just wish it away," she said. "Cancer stays around for as long as it wants to. You just have to ride out the storm." Ironic that those were her exact words, considering the dream I had a couple of nights before my surgery. "And by the way, your dad tells me you have named your disease ‘Francis.’ I wish you wouldn’t. That’s just another one of your ways to avoid dealing with it."

Was she right? Was I avoiding dealing with this?

"That’s my way of undermining it," I said.

"You can’t undermine it, Susan. You have to face it head on," mom said.

Maybe she has a point. It is one thing to say, "I have Francis." It’s silly. It’s no big deal to have a Francis. It almost sounds like an old pal. Or a mole.

But I am only thirty-one years old. I should not have to tell people I have cancer.

But whatever name I give it, that’s what I have.

I promised her I would work at facing it head on. I guess it’s part of being on that raft alone.

Because of the weight I’ve lost, my brother has been calling me Lollipophead. It’s certainly better than Pukella McBarferson.

Actually, though, that’s the name more befitting. I have returned to an intermittent state of nausea, occurring at the most inconvenient times, like when Hot Neighbor comes over to bring me a Happy Meal from McDonald’s, or when I’ve just taken a pill.

But even in these vomitous times, I still manage to find something funny. I was up the other night praying to the porcelain altar, if you get my meaning, and suddenly my little cat J.J. comes in the bathroom and starts puking beside me. It was the cutest thing. Evidently she had a hairball. But I thought it sweet of her to choose that moment to expel it, when she could’ve gone to another room of the house to do it at any other time. She gave me a Pity Puke!

Sorry, fellas, but I think this week’s award for my favorite friend is: My cat, J.J. Simply because, well, no one’s ever given me a Pity Puke before.