And they’re pumping those fluids….
So there’s this tech: John. Yacks and yacks and yacks. No doubt trying to put me at ease. Admirable enough goal, I guess, considering I’m about to get all kinds of medical crap jammed up my femoral and into my black little heart. But, dude, shut the hell up. Take your goatee’d face and zip it. I’m fine drowning in my own self-induced mental drama.
He was nice enough, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t respond well to the standard pitch. It was the same way at the police academy during my physical fitness test. A pile of young pups started running with me, “You can do it,” “Keep working it,” and “We have faith in you.”
Yap yap freakin’ yap. They got on my nerves so bad I actually slowed down…hoping they’d decide I had no chance and they’d leave me alone. Eventually, they moved on to some other hapless recruit, I got back into my head, my comfort zone, and beat the required time by better than a minute.
So I dig the sentiment, but I prefer a little edge, such as the text I got before surgery from Officer Friendly: “I get first dibs on all your police gear.”
Now that’s motivation, baby! Damn sure gonna survive…if for no other reason than to keep his grubby fingers off my stuff.
And still they’re pumping and pumping those damned fluids into me….
So John babbles babbles babbles. He took me into the room, which was, just like during the heart attack, fucking polar cold, and he told me that when the doctor arrives, I needed to announce my name and birthdate in a loud voice. It’s a security check to make sure they’ve got the correct patient.
We wait and wait and wait. Finally the doc came in and I said, “Dude, you were supposed to be here an hour ago.”
The doctor’s support staff gasped. The doctor, without missing a beat, said, “Damn cops. Pulled me over. One mile over the limit! They’re never eating donuts when you want them to.”
Had I not been restrained and drugged, I would have laughed my ass off. Obviously, this is the right doctor for me.
So Goatee John nudges me and I announce my name: “Johnny Rocket, here for an amputation, sir!”
“Shaddup,” the Doc says, and immediately gets to carving.
Pump pump pump, more and more fluids, endless fluids, an ocean’s worth of fluids…starting to be a problem….
“Trey,” John said, “Look over here.”
I half expected a magic show, maybe some wall puppets of a beating heart or something. Instead, it was a giant screen TV. But instead of, I don’t know, a Dirty Harry flick, it’s of what the doc is doing to me.
I thought: wow, that could be a torture device. “If you don’t anzer de qvestions, ve vill do zis to you!”
But I’ve got a better idea for torture.
“Uh…John?”
“Yeah, buddy?”
“So this fluid thing you guys are doing? And the fact that it’s about ten fucking degrees in here? Pretty quick, it’s going to be a problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Getting a little floaty, John.”
“I – uh – sorry, I don’t get you.”
“In a very few minutes, I’m going to start raining a nice, warm, spring rain on everyone.”
He started at me a second, and then I saw a glimmer of understanding. “Oh, no problem. Hang on.” He turned to the entire team. “Doc, he’s got to piss, that all right?”
Here’s the thing. I’d said it to him quietly to preserve some last shred of dignity, since everyone had already seen my junk and shaved around it and used a truly small piece of cloth to cover it (told you, it was reeeeeeaally cold in there). So I didn’t really need him announcing to the team I needed to pee.
“Pee all you want,” the doctor fairly shouted, interrupting the completely unrecognizable song he’d been singing.
So John, confidante that he’d become, grabbed my manjack and moved it all around to get me set up in a urinal. (Gotta tell ya: that’s an excruciatingly odd sensation, a guy helping you piss.)
And then?
Absolutely nothing.
A bit of performance anxiety. Couldn’t squeeze a drop.
Lots of people watching, plus it’s just weird to be told to piss when you’re on your back and you have no idea where the hose is pointed. Goes against every bit of toilet training and social reinforcement I’ve had for my entire life.
Nothing happens and nothing happens and now it’s starting to hurt and still I can’t get any action.
Still fluids are pumping, like a freakin’ pressure pump, blasting into me….
And so finally, after I’ve begun shaking from the need so badly that the doctor has actually put pressure on my bladder, I let go.
It explodes and I feel oh so much better.
And…somehow…warmer.
“John, dude,” I said.
“Oooops, sorry. Didn’t get you lined up right.”
Are you kidding me with this? This is exactly – exactly – what happened during the heart attack in February, 2001. Pissed all over myself then, too. Lots of fluids, an extremely cold room, that time a stainless steel table, and a tech who will probably never have kids because he has a problem getting the hose in the hole.
Either the team was really good with poker faces, or they didn’t care, or didn’t notice. Exactly none of which helped my sense of humiliation. John moved me around some, and the next time it was all in the cup.
What’s the Meat Loaf line? One out of two ain’t bad?
That was about it for excitement. The team murmured to themselves frequently, pulled some seriously long bits of equipment out of a nearby cabinet, did their thing, and then just stopped.
“That’s it, boy,” the doc said. “We’re done.”
I raised my head, looked down the length of my body, and yelled, “Where the hell are my tits? I came in for breast augmentation.”
“Best of luck with that, then,” Doc said as he left the room.
They took me to recovery, I fell asleep and, in fact, am sleeping still.