Fear, Nonsense & Gaping Body Cavities
There was a time, not long ago, quite recently actually – where children danced and kittens frolicked…
Where babies were swaddled and pixes darted too and fro in the twilight…
There was a blue bird on every shoulder and a Chevrolet in every garage…
And yet, as is the truth of nature, always must there be a reverse. A dark to the light, a heat to the cold, a gentle to the rough…
As the spring hare makes true his bounding leap over the dewey morning clover, plentiful and amber hued as dawn makes its sleepy progress, painting the muted colours with the days vibrance – it occurs to me…
What the hell am I talking about?
Here’s the gist – Medication is a wondrous thing….
Let me try to refocus and get a handle on what I wanted to say. Maybe going back to the beginning will help. It was Wednesday November 16th and the reason I remember that, is because that’s the day I take all the mongoloid, burn-victim orphans to their jazzercise class.
It’s not terribly rewarding, it doesn’t pay well – but oh my god it’s funny watching them…
Anyways, that’s how I remember the day, well that and I got a call from the Heart Centre in response to the email I had sent earlier that week. I hadn’t heard anything for weeks and so thought I’d send a note to see if they had heard anything about my situation and/or the pacemaker implantation. That was Monday, so Wednesday I get the call and they said “Oh, hasn’t anyone contacted you yet?” Ummmm, no.
“Oh well good you got ahold of us then, you go into surgery next week, Thursday morning” Now, if I remember correctly, it was then I developed the violent facial tick. “Really, so I’ve been waiting weeks and weeks for this and no one thought to drop the patient a heads up that they would be going in to surgery in a couple of days?”
“It’s not like we have lives or anything, or we need to prepare loved ones, or family members – not to mention the mental preparation one needs to assuage oneself of, prior to having yet another, brand new gaping cavity opened in their body.”
Certainly there need not be any thought put forth in regards to the patient having not only the cavity opened, but in quite the reverse of most operations, where some offending part is often removed or readjusted, instead you plan on actually inserting a foreign object, – which incidentally – in almost every story ever told is a bad thing, the insertion of a foreign body, into a body…
However, you propose opening another slash across the Northern Front that is my chest, and then fashioning a pocket made of muscle and tissue, Hey while you are in there why not monogram the pocket? Just a thought. Try something rakish, like Duke of Funk or Lil’ Devil… you know have some fun with it…
You know who else makes things out of muscle and tissue, sick ass serial killers that’s who, huh, is that you Doc, some kind of sicko – human centipede, mother hating, daddy issue, small animal killing, arsonist, school shooting rampaging, you got a pretty mouth, duct tape carrying, ball gag using, glove wearing psycho?
He wasn’t.
So the heart centre tells me to expect a call in the next few days from the actual surgeons secretary… IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS… because clearly we have alllllll the time in the world. By all means, take your time…
Flash forward to Friday and finally the secretary calls, we have a chat and she confirms I will be going in, in less than a week, I ask her about some of the particulars because to this point, I know 2 things – I’m getting a pacemaker and I’m going in next week. That’s it, no other info, I like to have info, I want other info, so I question her, then she casually drops this little bon mot into my lap. I’ll be out the next day, in fact some people go home the day of the surgery.
WHAT!?!?!
So basically this is nothing, it’s like getting a haircut? Is that what you’re saying, hey I have an idea, why not do both at the same time, didn’t dentists and barbers used to do surgery anyway? Bring em back into the fold. HEY you know what — I just cured this countries health care problem.
Shortage of Doctors, not anymore – just issue a certificate, from some random continuing education weekend class that allows Dentists and Barbers to perform surgery again, Hospitals, NAWWW, don’t need em, drop by the mall, we have a kiosk ready to serve you. You’ll have a pacemaker installed in 15 minutes or it’s free…
REALLY? Come on. One night in the hospital? I know medical science has come a long way but jeez, give a guy a chance to catch his breath will ya. Granted, I never paid much attention to pacemakers before but, wasn’t a pacemaker basically the size of a George Foreman Grill and required an 8 month stay in the critical care unit. Now you go in and 45 minutes later you walk out with a balloon and a slurpee, oh, plus a tiny machine, in your new flesh pocket, with wires screwed into the walls of your heart?
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But then I calmed down and reasoned, I guess they wouldn’t send you home if it wasn’t safe to do so… hahahahahahahahahahahahah… as if.
So the next few days I made ready my visit, and as Wednesday evening wore on, I found it difficult to sleep and I seriously wondered, would I be different afterwards? When I was no longer able to sustain life on my own, but would instead be forevermore tethered to this little disk, counting on it to not fail, not malfunction, remain error free for the duration of my life.
Would I start to feel a strange attraction to robots, would my gaze linger longer than normal on sexy household appliances from now on? What would the future hold? Who’s to say?
I guess I’m about to find out.
Next Time, the operation…
Have a Great Day.