Lisa Scottoline: Lost and Found

Did you hear the news?

They've discovered a new organ.

All this time, it was in your body.

Not even kidding.

Maybe they were looking outside?

Anyway, an Irish surgeon, J. Calvin Coffey, discovered that we have something in our stomachs called a mesentery.

Before now, the mesentery was a mystery.

Dr. Coffey teaches at the University of Limerick, otherwise well-known for its limericks.

Like, "There once was a mesentery from Nantucket. . . ."

Evidently, the mesentery connects the intestine to the abdomen, and, as Dr. Coffey explained, "it keeps the intestine in a particular shape, so when you stand up, your intestine doesn't fall into your pelvis."

Well, hell. That's a good thing.

It's like Spanks for your colorectal system.

Thanks, mesentery!

Meanwhile, I might be in love with Dr. Coffey. He has a way with words. Also, if he could find a mesentery, he could find my car keys.

But to stay on point, it turns out that for the last century, medical science had thought the mesentery was a group of disjointed parts, but he figured out that it's a connected organ.

Hello!

So now you have an organ you didn't know about.

Like a present you got for the holidays.

And it's just your size.

People don't understand why medical science didn't know about the mesentery before.

Not me. I get it. If I were going to lose something in my body, the most likely place to lose it would be in my stomach.

In the folds.

Above the Bermuda Triangle.

You know what I mean.

All ladies have one, and that's what I call mine. Because any man who goes there is lost forever.

Anyway, if you have stomach folds, you know they're the reason God made loose sweaters.

That's what I wear to hide my folds, or I avoid sitting altogether.

This is my new thing since my last speaking event, when I sat down and my waistband button popped off, and then the zipper went down. I couldn't keep it up. It looked good at the lectern, if you like asymmetrical pants.

Luckily, I had on a jacket, which is a folds-hider for special occasions.

And I have other tips for hiding folds.

For example, if you ever see me on the beach, I am lying down. That's the only way my stomach looks flat. Unfortunately, that's when my breasts also look flat, but at least it's a matching set.

Anyway, the thing about folds is that they hide things in addition to mesenteries.

OK, let's get real.

I happened to look down after a shower the other day, in a rare moment.

It's winter, so the shower is rare.

Also the looking down.

I mean, why? I usually can't see anything over my belly anyway, so who needs that reminder?

Not me.

So when I looked down, my folds smoothed out, and you know what I saw sticking out of my belly button?

Dog hair.

I recognized it because there's dog hair all over my house, and since I have dogs that have yellow, brown, black, and white hair, in every corner is multicolored canine tumbleweed.

But in my belly button?

Who knew?

Yet, there it was, sprouting like a little furry fountain.

I started pulling it out, and the more stuff I pulled out, the more stuff there was, like a magician starts pulling scarves out of a hat.

Not only dog hair, but lint and little shreds of tissue paper.

Who knew what was in there?

Could the Bermuda Triangle be spreading?

Are you horrified yet?

I was. I even got out tweezers to do the job right, extracting every last foreign object like a surgeon.

In fact, like a surgeon finding a mesentery.

Dr. Coffey, call me.

We have so much in common.

Look for Lisa and Francesca's new humor collection, "I've Got Sand in All the Wrong Places" and Lisa's novel "Damaged" in stores now.

Also look for Lisa's new domestic thriller, "One Perfect Lie," coming in April. lisa@scottoline.com.