Lady Parts and Jowls. No, this is not a BBC Detective Series.

This sadly true story was inspired by my beautiful friend, S Lynn Knight who wrote about the dubiously polite custom of referring to women of a certain age as "ma'am" and the entire issue of aging, which fascinates and bedevils me.

This morning at 4am (and if you know me, you will know that I would rather have my teeth cleaned and a cavity filled than arise before 10) I was driven 2 hours to the hospital. For a procedure to determine where the abnormal cells in my lady parts are coming from and if they're cancer or not. And have a chunk of one of my lady parts removed. And biopsied. I was knocked out, cut and stitched. I could barely speak or swallow from the breathing tube that was, I can only imagine, shoved unceremoniously down my throat as soon as I was unconscious. We then drove 2 hours back.

And do you know what I thought about the entire ride home? MY FUCKING JOWLS THAT WERE STARING BACK AT ME IN THE SIDE-VIEW MIRROR!

Once I caught sight of them I could not stop looking at them. I became obsessed. I began pulling my cheeks back, ever so inconspicuously so as not to arouse my husband's attention. I considered blurting out, "Jesus Christ, how can you love me with these jowls that I swear to God are bigger than the Cowardly Lion's?!" but realized that this was not a facial feature I wanted to point out to him.

For the first time in my life I actually thought about having a nip and a tuck, and perhaps because of the anesthesia still in my system, it did not seem unreasonable.

So go ahead. You can all me "ma'am" all you like. But for God's sake, in the name of all that is holy, can you please do something about these fucking jowls?

This first appeared in "The Coffeelicious" on Medium.com