Eight Days to Amish: August 2017

Friday, August 18, 2017

When pull-my-finger is health care

I’ve for years been asking people to pull my finger strictly for comedic purposes. For those of us of juvenile bents, it’s always uproarious.

The key is to time a really loud, monstrous fart to the finger tug, leading the innocent finger puller to conclude there’s an obvious cause and effect. It’s something my wife and daughters find utterly hilarious.

At least they once did.

But I never realized until Buck’s return the pull-my-finger request could fulfill therapeutic purposes.

Buck has since 1980 owned the Tin Lizzy and has thus been my office landlord since 2015.

He stops up here on the third floor at least once a day for philosophical banter and to, I guess, fulfill a daily need to say something disparaging about my shirt, my hair or what he perceives as my neglectful care for my office plant.

So when he told me he’d be gone for a month, I knew I’d miss him. He left in July for a month in Wyoming, a state where the fish outnumber humans by about 5,000-to-1.

I didn’t realize just how much I’d miss him until the doctor said my thyroid might be cancerous and needed to come out. They asked if I had any questions. I did.

Can this wait, I asked, until Buck gets back?

“Who,” he asked, “is Buck?”

He owns the Tin Lizzy.

“You mean you’d delay potentially life-saving surgery to get the medical opinion of some guy who owns a bar?”

“In fact,” I said, “it’s three bars — and they’re all really great bars.”

I wound up going with the professional’s advice. Not because I was more impressed with all his fancy pants degrees from la-de-dah medical schools but because I knew Buck was fishing and he might not return until Wyoming ran out of trout.

He’d read about the surgery on Facebook and being considerate asked how it went. I told him everything was fine, but I might never be able to sing like I used to.

“Then,” he declared, “the operation was a success.”

It was then I noticed the splint on the pinkie of his casting hand.

And let us in these divisive times take a moment to celebrate the pinkie, the unifying feature that no matter what our skin color — ebony, yellow, olive or white — is known to even Latin-spewing physicians as “the pinkie.”

All hail the pinkie! May you lead the way to a truly colorblind society!

Turns out my friend suffered a rare fishing injury. He’d slipped on some rocks and landed with all his weight on the dainty appendage. He’s still wincing from the pain.

“I thought I’d dislocated it and tried to pull it so it’d settle back in.”

That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do with a dislocated joint or digit. Give it a brisk yank and snap it back into the proper socket. Happens all the time on football fields. I remember once seeing Steeler great Jack Lambert awkwardly tackle an opposing ball carrier, shudder in pain and then approach the Steeler sideline.

The announcer said, “Oh, man, he just had a teammate pull his dislocated finger back into place and he’s returning to the huddle. There’s tough and then there’s Jack Lambert tough.”

And that there is the only time you’ll ever see championship football compared to trout fishing and Buck to Jack Lambert.

Still in terrific pain, he said he continued walking to meet his pals and encountering friendly on-stream strangers.

“I kept asking them to pull my finger,” he said. “A few of them looked at me like I was nuts, but pulled it anyway. I was already in a lot of pain and figured it couldn’t hurt any worse.”

He did find one really big guy who said he’d be happy to pull Buck’s finger and gave it a hell of a tug. It only increased the pain.

Turns out Buck’s self-diagnosis was all wrong. His pinkie wasn’t dislocated after all. It was badly fractured. Emergency room docs inserted scores of tiny pinkie pins.We can only speculate how much additional trauma all that unnecessary finger pulling caused.

He’s still in a lot of pain and is for purely medicinal reasons seeking an increase in his daily martini allotment.

Me, I’m belatedly relieved Buck wasn’t around to consult on my thyroid surgery.

Now anytime I hear mention of Wyoming, I’m likely to think it’s a state full of friendly men who are more than happy to pull a stranger’s finger.

And I’ll wonder how Wyoming women might react if a needy stranger came up complaining of a dislocated penis.

Of chicken fingers, breasts and nipples

Boning up on lost limbs

Surgery today! Kissing my thyroid goodbye

I pranked the trash man today

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Update: What if I suddenly become high energy?

(668 words)

The first thing I did upon awakening after last week’s partial thyroid extraction was text our 16-year-old daughter a good/bad news equation.

“The good news is I’m going to be fine. The bad news is I was going to give you my car.”

This was funny because my jalopy is in tragic condition, way worse than even me. It has 181,750 miles on it, has electrical short issues and is beginning to rely on multiple duct tape applications to hold it all together.

I don’t know anything about cars, but I sense it could probably use a new thyroid.

But I can’t afford needed improvements so until my liberal congressional friends come up with an automotive equivalent to Obamacare we’re both screwed.

So how am I feeling?

Pretty good, considering eight days ago they’d sliced a 3-inch gash in my throat.

I had a very pleasant time in the Latrobe hospital.

I like to point out that hospital is from the root word hospitality. I’ve said for the sake of accuracy, hospitals should be called docitals or discomfitals, but the Latrobe hospital was very hospitable.

I slept great.

I always try and get eight hours of sleep. It took spending a night in the hospital for me to realize the best way to get eight hours of sleep is to devote a full 24-hours to the process; three hours here, two hours there …

I learned the key to perfect peace and relaxation rests in upholding a vow to never leave the bed. It helps, too, if you have a squad of caring strangers who’ll bring you ice cream and ask you how you’re feeling.

It was all so splendid I began game planning how long I’d need to remain before one of the nurses favored me with a hospital sponge bath, the lazy man’s Xanadu.

I calculated I would have needed to stay another 12 hours. I’d have done it, too, but 12 hours would have put me smack in the middle of Burt’s night shift.

I liked Burt. We bonded over Bucco baseball. But when I close my eyes and dream of getting my first hospital sponge bath the face I see isn’t Burt’s.

To me, the most interesting aspect of this whole affair is what happens next.

See, besides removing the potato-sized lump in my throat and half my thyroid, the purpose of this treatment is to boost my thyroid production with synthetic doses (synthroid) of the stuff.

The doctor said I have low thyroid, i.e. low energy.

Huh?

I’ve never once felt low energy.

Sure, I’m reluctant to do things like mow the lawn or other common household chores, but the rationale behind those dodges are philosophical, not physical.

I believe the whole idea behind “the pursuit of happiness” is flawed. Find a comfy enough chair and happiness'll find you.

So what if I suddenly become high energy? What if I become enamored of manual labor, forever landscaping our now-disheveled yard like a green-thumbed maniac?

Maybe I could expend some of my new surplus energy on learning how to repair crappy cars.

I could start taking more civic-minded actions, fetching cats stuck up in high trees, helping widows cross dangerous streets, maybe becoming an industrious and relentlessly positive force for good in the community.

But, geez, I can’t stand those people.

I like emphasizing the leisure aspects of life, indulging in time to read, enjoy movies and spending long hours reveling with family and friends.

If I lose any of that I’ll have lost so much more than a tiny chunk of my thyroid.

So if you see me behaving a tad too energetically, I invite you to crack me over the head with handy 2-by-4 or some other blunt instrument — and by blunt instrument I’m including things like tubas.

Your inhospitality will likely lead to a splendid stay in a hospitable place.

I wonder if Burt’ll still be on the night shift.

Fainting again at my routine physical

Doc pays $500,000 for colonoscopy banter

My facial procedure & aversion to big ass needles

Results from my 1st physical in 18 years …

Tick bit where no man wants to be tick bit

Update: Me 1, tick 0

Grinnin’ at mammogram confusion

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Surgery today! Kissing my thyroid goodbye

(781 words)

It was with impeccably bad timing I decided June 6 to reduce my blog output from four or five times a week to once every week or so. My life’s been nothing but interesting ever since.

• My darling Mom died.

• I signed a contract to do a book about Arnold Palmer and why this man who could have been pampered in palaces around the planet never left Latrobe.

• I wrote 25,000 words out of a projected 60,000 words on my next novel. It’s about overcoming the struggles of a long distance romance with a twist. By long distance, I mean she’s in heaven and he’s in hell. Their names are Evan and Elle.

• I finished a deluxe version of “Use All The Crayons!” with 1,001 items — double the original — so I’ll be able to charge indecent prices to groups who are already overpaying me to speak to them.

• And in four hours doctors at Latrobe Hospital will be removing my thyroid and a potato-sized lump in my throat they suspect may be cancer.

Do I have your attention?

I have such an over-inflated sense of self-esteem I’m having trouble believing there’s anything at all bad in my body. It would make more sense if they said they were going to cut me open to remove something stupid.

It seems like such a blatant betrayal by a body I’ve always pampered. I let it sleep in, eat and drink whatever it pleases and God knows I’ve never made it work too hard.

When it comes to my body, I’ve always had its back.

And now it’s doing this to me?

This goes back to a routine March exam (link below) when the doctor found a node on my throat. Subsequent exams resulted in what one doc described as a tennis ball-sized lump. I describe it as potato-sized because I refuse to let the medical community dictate my colorful descriptions.

They said the problem was my thyroid.

I remember hearing that and feeling so relieved. The genius of redundant design meant, surely, I had four or five thyroids in the on-deck circle.

Wrong.

There’s only one. It’s the butterfly-shaped gland below the Adam’s apple that regulates growth, metabolism, body temperature, etc. Removing it meant I’d need to embrace pharmaceutical solutions I’ve long disdained.

I have no symptoms. I feel fine.

I asked what would happen if I did nothing. The doctor said whatever’s in there could spread. He said there’s a 20 to 30 percent chance that it’s cancer and they won’t know until they remove and have a look at it.

Who knew cancer came with a handy label?

He asked if I had any questions. I asked if he was joking.

He said with mirthless eyes, “I never joke.”

I told him all I do is joke.

I didn’t say this next observation out loud, but it occurred to me that while what he does save lives what I do is make lives worth living.

He was looking at me like he wanted to cut my throat. He wasn’t angry. Cutting throats is just how throat surgeons pay the bills. It’s what they do.

The hard part was summoning the girls to the porch Sunday to tell them why I was going to spend the night in the hospital.

I told them it could be nothing or it could be cancer. I told them it could have already spread, it could be dire and that there’s even a chance something could go drastically wrong and I could expire right there on the operating table.

“Or,” I said, “I could get run over by a bus crossing the street on my way to the hospital.”

This last part seemed to cheer everyone up

I’m not ashamed to admit, I was close to falling to pieces when I told my three darlings this meant my life portion could be relatively brief. We have a small family of four, but it’s a very sweet dynamic. So we’re kind of like the Beatles only with one less functioning thyroid.

I asked Josie later what she thought I was going to say when I called them to the porch.

“I thought you were going to say something funny.”

I will again. I promise.

The doctor said voice change is a possibility so reading The Gettysburg Address while sounding like Sylvester J. Pussycat would probably be funny.

Confronting one’s own mortality is never easy. Gives you a lump in the throat.

By noon today, that emotional lump’ll have a little more room to stretch out.

(Update: Half the thyroid was removed and tests on the lump proved to be free of cancer. I'm very relieved. I'm fine and prospects are bright. Of course, I haven't even had breakfast yet so it's all up for grabs. Thank you one and all for your good wishes. Your evident empathy graces the world.)