Ahh!! Dr. Neville I presume…?
So I had myself another “ADVENTURE” yesterday afternoon… The Princess insisted that she take the entire day off so she could drive me to the Dr’s. office for my first post op check up. Let me repeat that : THE ENTIRE DAY OFF!!
Somehow, I have a feeling she does not trust me. I mean, I realize I am an idiot (unlike my oldest son who never fails to rise to the proverbial top of his own hit parade [2500 weeks at #1 and still climbing!!!!] ) and I just try to make the best of it.
I often say things like ” Honey I am going to Harbor Freight for some glue brushes…”
“How much are they?”
“10 bucks a gross.”
” Do you need them now?”
“No, Dear, of course, once again your incisive decision-making skills have caught me with my pants down [mmmmmmm]!!! On second thought, I’ll just use your toothbrush…”
And then, as usual, I hear a whistling noise followed by a rapid loss of conscienceness… And on rare occasions, I hear, as from a great distance, her sweet voice whispering “Oooooo!!! THAT’S gonna leave a mark…”
Maybe that is why she likes calling me “lumpy”.
Sometimes as I fall asleep in the bedroom with The Military Channel explaining the effectiveness of the Mk-84 as carried by the A-4 Skyhawk: “The MK-84 is a free-fall, non-guided GP 2000-pound bomb…” I imagine her leaning against the door looking at my sorry ass and talking to her best friend Ellen “No, I have no idea why I love him and put up with him. I guess it’s the same thing with puppies and kittens: They are adorable until they grow up. I just wonder when and IF this one will ever grow up.”
Anyway, so off the Princess bundles me to the Dr.’s office like it is a journey to the far side of the moon. She actually has a clipboard with an attached checklist of stuff to be checked.
“Glasses?”
Check
“Wallet?”
Check
“Medical forms?”
Huh?
“The Medical Forms for your insurance, US Labor Board Family Leave Act, Disability Insurance, Socially Secure forms etc etc etc??? You know, the ones that Kim Loafman handed you 7 sets of begging and pleading with you not to lose them, figuring EVEN YOU could not lose seven sets…”
“What do they look like???”
The Fire Department is remarkably efficient around here… They used to think we had illegal fireworks that we liked to set off at all hours, but now they realise that it’s just The Princess blowing her main, secondary and emergency back-up gaskets. I guess from a distance it is a rather spectacular sight…
Anyway, after the Fire Department finished putting out the hot spots and thanked the US Forrest Service for loaning the use of it’s entire fleet of Aerial Tankers (again), we set off for my appointment. Because she drove we arrived more or less in one piece with all the appendages God gave us still attached. I must say, this was mostly due to her lightening quick reflexes as we traversed Sun City, which even the US Air Force refuses to fly over, considering it a suicide mission. I checked in with the receptionist who took one look at me and handed all the required forms to The Princess and handed me a coloring book with a box of crayons.
After a short wait, the Dr. called me in and started his inspection of his handiwork. After all the standard questions (Fever? Pain? All the stuff that should be inside still inside? How are you planning to pay me? Did your mother have any children that lived? How are Fred and Lou doing? I haven’t seen them since they bought that island in the Carribean…) out of the way, he proceeded to berate me for putting the repairs off for off so long.
He then decided to tell me how much skin he had to excise to give me back a belly button. “Uh, doc, what is with the scalpel and round nose scissors?”
“Well there is a lot of dead ‘stuff’ here and I need to get rid of it”
“Hey, uh, doc? The operation was around my belly button. Why are you sawing at my neck?”
“As I said, just getting rid of the dead tissue…”
“As much as I realise I may be brain dead, I would really like to keep my head and neck somewhat attached to my shoulders. Personally, I think it makes the corpse look better…”
He looked rather disappointed as he turned he attention back to the hernia incision and started pulling, yanking and otherwise man handling the dead skin that had it’s circulation cut off from the surgery. I was okay with that right up to the point where he said something I really never ever want to hear from a pretty well respected surgeon who actually interned at Yale Medical School: “Sorry, but these scissors are not the sharpest things in the world…” (I swear to God he actually said that!!!!) as he sang softly to himself “Snip snip here. Snip snip there and a couple of tra la las!! That’s how we cut the skin away in the wonderful land of OZ!!!”
He finished his handiwork and then proceeded to apply a gauze dressing with enough tape to completely encase a Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carrier!!! He then wrote a prescription for antibiotics and told me change the dressing 3 times a day because “you are leaking and will be doing so for a couple weeks. Sometimes I put in drains to help with this. But in your case I figured why bother? Meh. Drink lots of water and you should be ok…” Turning to The Princess he handed her a prescription and said “Your vet can fill this for you when you take him in for his rabies booster, heart worm and distemper shots…”
So off we went with The Princess driving like she was “Snake” Plissken, leaving golf carts overturned and burning in her wake. She looks really good with her eyepatch, although it does bode ill for the pedestrians in the crosswalk when she happens to make right turns and she has recieved mucho kudos for making a drive-through at the local Walmart…
Anyway, I have been released to go back into “The World” in 3 1/2 weeks… Time enough to finish the first level in Half Life 2, I hope….