Steven Hunley
03-31-2015, 08:06 PM
The Procedure
The title of Dubrovnik should be Death Stalks Dubrovnik- a mystery/ romance/ adventure.
That’s what I’ve decided, after taking Barb’s suggestions. But by making up titles I’m stalling for time. It’s ten until four and I’m about to take my first dose of, what’s that stuff called?
Pofofil or Prophylactic,? No, that’s not it, I have to go read the label. Wait a second while I get the box. Oh boy, oh joy, there it is! It's a patriotic red white and blue box labeled Prepopik.
I know about the stuff, all but the name, on accounta I can never remember names, and on accounta I had some around the third of the month, accidently. Yes, accidently. Freud said there were no accidents, that the conscious and unconscious planned everything. But it is my feeling I had no idea the date of the ‘procedure’ had been changed, and the scene of the crime too.
I took my medicine, just as I am now, the afternoon before the “procedure”. I got down there the next day as scoured out as a sewer line after the Rotor Rooter man has finished his dirty deed. Then I found out about my mistake. I took it for nothing. Barb says I have to get organized about appointments…and everything else.
So now it’s strike two and it’s four so I’m off to the kitchen for 5 oz. of water and the magical mix of sodium picosufate, magnesium oxide, and anhydrous citric acid. It like Kool-Aid, you just add water and they turn into ‘oral solutions,’ ‘oral solutions ’ to your problems! No Kiddin!
I down it with five ounces of water.
Hey, it’s fizzy and this one says it’s Cranberry flavored! Hey, let’s read more of the label, and hey, what’s this?
OMG OMG! Guess what? Something nasty and ominous this way comes. Turns out it’s the manufacture’s name. And it’s real tiny and faint near the bottom; in fact it’s the smallest print on the box.
For: Ferring Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Parsiperry, NJ, USA.
But right above that it says
Manufactured by Ferring Pharmeceuticals (China) Co. Ltd.
Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, CHINA
This means it’s possible they got this stuff at the 99 cent store. Most all the stuff at the 99 Cent store is made in China. Chinese workers work for rice and don’t make much per hour. Workers of the World, unite and all. And I mean everybody. Make out-sourcing not worth it. And another reason I’m wondering about the efficacy of the stuff is that two hours have gone by without any evil stirrings from my bowels. Last time it was swallow and zoom! Jackie Gleason’s “And away we go!”
Aye me lads, but now…eh?… what’s that?
I feel a sort of rumblin’ sensation below decks. Pirate Girl would understand, her below decks have their odd moments too. Down the Hallway of Mirrors be twenty-two paces, but a straight musket shot. The other girl’s powder room be closer, at thirteen paces, but you have to run it daintily, with a quick left and right, while dodging all the family pictures that be on the walls. Either way, it’s time to dash.
Funny how I think like a pirate when I get nervous. Pirates often used smaller vessels than the ships they overcame, and showed false bravado to ensure success. But the Jolly Roger is me, the toilet desperado, who’s not finished yet. There are more adventures in science and medicine coming, and I’m ready to face them all. Damn the torpedo-like colonoscopy probes and full speed ahead. More than my butt is cheeky.
I’m already giving myself the bronze medal for having the foresight to stack an extra roll of toilet paper on the back of the toilet. Domestic foresighted Barbara would be proud. Time to drink more Java from Java, maybe partay-down with some broth, you know, a "clear liquid". But only after I deal with the first hurdle, a stomach that just won’t quit.
All hell broke loose, and I mean loose.
The stint in the men’s room was really a scream. I grabbed the laptop off the Venetian end table, ran down the Versailles Hall of Mirrors, sat it down on the green wicker clothes hamper made in Bangladesh in the bathroom, and slid it across the tile between my feet. I was prepared to conduct my correspondence from here, and deal with old Delhi Belly at the same time. Like Long John Silver once said, “Let ‘er rip!”
It was horrendous, a shot heard 'round the world'. Fortunately, after a paragraph, it ended.
Whew! How dramatic! What power, what force! Real stinko too. Was that whole chorus of garbanzo beans? What’s wrong with me? Don’t I chew my food?
Barb calls, asks me for an update and tells me she’s going to drop by the store for clear juice.
My angel is homeward bound.
We talk over the events of the day and I relate that there was two hours between the first dose and first blast, but now it’s almost time for the second dose. I’m already so hot I’m about to lose the rifling on my poo barrel with the next explosion.
Barb opens a bag of lemon freezer-pops and hands me one. “Here, Thskinny, this will help cool you off.”
It tastes good. Anything cold and wet and lemony tastes good.
Ten comes and goes and my last dose comes and goes…with a vengeance.
This keeps me up until two and costs me three full rolls of Bunny Soft Toilet Paper. Finally, and in a weakened state from the battle of the bowels,
I crash.
The morning is always brighter with coffee, and I’m ready for it, since it’s one of the few things I can have. I’m on empty. Barb is being optimistic as usual. She’s the ‘been there, done that’ woman and counsels, “Don’t worry,” No matter how dirty the fight, she’s good to have in your corner.
Alas, I’m reading Lawrence right now and he uses alas. I figure if I use alas, I might bring it back into style, but alas, I fear the worst, that it will disappear from the lexicon with alacrity. In the driveway, Barb kisses me goodbye and takes off with a girlfriend. Within a minute Jim comes to pick me up just as a neighbor pulls into her driveway. That’s more traffic than I’ve seen here in a week. Jim’s right on time. He’s been dependable ever since third grade. I owe him plenty, but alas, never take the time to thank him. So it's true I've been a jerk, but now I’m a jerk in trouble, so here he is to the rescue. I pop in his car and we speed away.
“You’re buried here,” he motions, swinging his free hand every which-way.
“You mean the twists and turns and everything?”
“There isn’t a straight block in the place.”
Then we both go silent for several miles down the 163 south. I’m about to get my butt reamed but I say nothing. This ‘device’ of theirs has as light as big as one of those lights they used in WW2 to spot German bombers over London during the Blitz. And that’s not all.
It’s got a camera they rented from David Lean. It’s big, about 70 millimeters, with sand caught up in its works, left over from Lawrence of Arabia. They somehow squeeze that in there too, that and the most hideous demon of all, the cruel and immense stainless steel grabber. I don’t know exactly what it does but I have an idea it slices and dices and grabs like a monster in a three dimensional B movie.
Jim and I both know what I’m here for. But we say nothing. It’s too scary to talk about. That’s what makes us real men. We are Hemingway quality men. We know when to not talk about something. Stoic is our middle names. What Jim doesn’t know is that I have a hidden agenda.
I’m getting the whatever-oscopy now because Barb convinced me to do it. After it’s over and I report back that it was no big deal, Jim may decide to get it done too! I’m being responsible. I’m setting an example. But I have to be suave and subtle. I have to sneak up on Jim about it. I’ll ask Barb how to do it. She was always sneaking up on Ric. Barb, if you’re reading this, don’t be offended. And, Ric… love ya fella! You make the best split pea soup I ever had, and if you two hadn’t broken up I wouldn’t have the most wonderful woman of the face of the earth. Thank you fate, and thank you Rickster.
So we finally pull up in front of Mercy Hospital and I find my way up in the elevator and into the waiting room.
I’m on the list, the dreaded patient’s list.
“Sign in please with your name and time.”
She hands me a stack of forms. There are three desks for nurses and almost thirty chairs. Only five people are waiting and they were as nondescript as the room. Yet every one of them was upbeat but me and a lady gazing absently out the window at the fountain and the flag and overcast clouds. I wished I could nondescript out of there but I was too chicken to go.
Kevin Spacey was on the news getting interviewed. I’d felt sorry for him all through the movie Usual Suspects, until the end of course.
“Wonder how Kevin’s colon is?” I conjectured.
After an hour, they called my name and I followed a nurse to pre-op. I think that’s what it was, pre-op. The doc pokes his head in to say hello. You change into one their nighties.
“Be sure to leave it open in the back.”
They pierce you in a vein, hook you up to a tube with a bag of You Don’t Know What, and adjust the drip. Before you fall asleep they roll you into the operating room. This is what bothers me most of all. You’re on your back, facing the ceiling, watching the squares of light drifting over your head. Each square of light is worth a horrible thought.
“What is that inky blackness going to be like?'
"Will I wake up?"
"How the hell do you wake up from that stuff?"
"Can these Medicare monkeys guarantee nothing is going to go wrong? "
" Are they competent? Do I even know these people?"
I remember asking Doc about the anesthetics, since I couldn't pronounce what he said and was too scared to remember it.
“What’s that one for? I’ve never heard of it.”
“That’s to help you forget.”
Right now, anesthetized out of my noggin, rolling mindlessly down that sterile hallway, but still not unconscious, I question what about this procedure is so terrible you’re going to want to forget it.
Into the OR I glide.
They roll me to one end of the room and ask me to turn on my side and slide my bottom closer to the edge. Uh, oh, I know what they’re after. On the wall I see a clock. The gas man gives me a look and gives the doctor a look, and raises his eyebrows. The doctor gives a look back that says 'you know what to do' so the gas man reaches up and adjust the drip again.
I’m watching the clock. The sweep hand seems to be slowing. It looked like that math problem where even if you close on something by half the distance with each step, you never get there. It was doing that now, the thin black sweep hand indicating seconds, was slowing in it's arc, then slowing even more, and never made it, or at least I didn't see it his its mark. I was too busy plunging naked into a dark sea of dreamless sleep.
Next thing I know they’re rolling me down the main hallway, into an elevator, and out the front door.
Jim is waiting and off I go. On the way home I feel a little discomfort and am amazed I’m dressed. I don’t remember them dressing me. But then I don’t remember dressing myself either.
We pull up and after he’s sees that I’m safely situated he takes off. I decide to take a nap, but for some reason can’t sleep.
It’s not much of an image to leave myself with. I don’t remember…a smell, a thought, a taste, a color, a feeling, not a thing of significance. What part of it was real, and what part was my imagination?
Strangely enough, it leads me back again to one of my favorite authors. Old Joe Conrad in his book Typhoon compared two different characters. When it came to a storm, a tight spot, the Captain with no imagination saved the day, while the mate with imagination lost his noodles. Sometimes my imagination gets to me, making mountains out of molehills. I love a good cliché.
In the final analysis, the writing was therapeutic. While I was going through the ‘clean me out’ process I needed a distraction. And I needed a record.
There, you have it, a writer’s confession.
©StevenHunley2015
The title of Dubrovnik should be Death Stalks Dubrovnik- a mystery/ romance/ adventure.
That’s what I’ve decided, after taking Barb’s suggestions. But by making up titles I’m stalling for time. It’s ten until four and I’m about to take my first dose of, what’s that stuff called?
Pofofil or Prophylactic,? No, that’s not it, I have to go read the label. Wait a second while I get the box. Oh boy, oh joy, there it is! It's a patriotic red white and blue box labeled Prepopik.
I know about the stuff, all but the name, on accounta I can never remember names, and on accounta I had some around the third of the month, accidently. Yes, accidently. Freud said there were no accidents, that the conscious and unconscious planned everything. But it is my feeling I had no idea the date of the ‘procedure’ had been changed, and the scene of the crime too.
I took my medicine, just as I am now, the afternoon before the “procedure”. I got down there the next day as scoured out as a sewer line after the Rotor Rooter man has finished his dirty deed. Then I found out about my mistake. I took it for nothing. Barb says I have to get organized about appointments…and everything else.
So now it’s strike two and it’s four so I’m off to the kitchen for 5 oz. of water and the magical mix of sodium picosufate, magnesium oxide, and anhydrous citric acid. It like Kool-Aid, you just add water and they turn into ‘oral solutions,’ ‘oral solutions ’ to your problems! No Kiddin!
I down it with five ounces of water.
Hey, it’s fizzy and this one says it’s Cranberry flavored! Hey, let’s read more of the label, and hey, what’s this?
OMG OMG! Guess what? Something nasty and ominous this way comes. Turns out it’s the manufacture’s name. And it’s real tiny and faint near the bottom; in fact it’s the smallest print on the box.
For: Ferring Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Parsiperry, NJ, USA.
But right above that it says
Manufactured by Ferring Pharmeceuticals (China) Co. Ltd.
Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, CHINA
This means it’s possible they got this stuff at the 99 cent store. Most all the stuff at the 99 Cent store is made in China. Chinese workers work for rice and don’t make much per hour. Workers of the World, unite and all. And I mean everybody. Make out-sourcing not worth it. And another reason I’m wondering about the efficacy of the stuff is that two hours have gone by without any evil stirrings from my bowels. Last time it was swallow and zoom! Jackie Gleason’s “And away we go!”
Aye me lads, but now…eh?… what’s that?
I feel a sort of rumblin’ sensation below decks. Pirate Girl would understand, her below decks have their odd moments too. Down the Hallway of Mirrors be twenty-two paces, but a straight musket shot. The other girl’s powder room be closer, at thirteen paces, but you have to run it daintily, with a quick left and right, while dodging all the family pictures that be on the walls. Either way, it’s time to dash.
Funny how I think like a pirate when I get nervous. Pirates often used smaller vessels than the ships they overcame, and showed false bravado to ensure success. But the Jolly Roger is me, the toilet desperado, who’s not finished yet. There are more adventures in science and medicine coming, and I’m ready to face them all. Damn the torpedo-like colonoscopy probes and full speed ahead. More than my butt is cheeky.
I’m already giving myself the bronze medal for having the foresight to stack an extra roll of toilet paper on the back of the toilet. Domestic foresighted Barbara would be proud. Time to drink more Java from Java, maybe partay-down with some broth, you know, a "clear liquid". But only after I deal with the first hurdle, a stomach that just won’t quit.
All hell broke loose, and I mean loose.
The stint in the men’s room was really a scream. I grabbed the laptop off the Venetian end table, ran down the Versailles Hall of Mirrors, sat it down on the green wicker clothes hamper made in Bangladesh in the bathroom, and slid it across the tile between my feet. I was prepared to conduct my correspondence from here, and deal with old Delhi Belly at the same time. Like Long John Silver once said, “Let ‘er rip!”
It was horrendous, a shot heard 'round the world'. Fortunately, after a paragraph, it ended.
Whew! How dramatic! What power, what force! Real stinko too. Was that whole chorus of garbanzo beans? What’s wrong with me? Don’t I chew my food?
Barb calls, asks me for an update and tells me she’s going to drop by the store for clear juice.
My angel is homeward bound.
We talk over the events of the day and I relate that there was two hours between the first dose and first blast, but now it’s almost time for the second dose. I’m already so hot I’m about to lose the rifling on my poo barrel with the next explosion.
Barb opens a bag of lemon freezer-pops and hands me one. “Here, Thskinny, this will help cool you off.”
It tastes good. Anything cold and wet and lemony tastes good.
Ten comes and goes and my last dose comes and goes…with a vengeance.
This keeps me up until two and costs me three full rolls of Bunny Soft Toilet Paper. Finally, and in a weakened state from the battle of the bowels,
I crash.
The morning is always brighter with coffee, and I’m ready for it, since it’s one of the few things I can have. I’m on empty. Barb is being optimistic as usual. She’s the ‘been there, done that’ woman and counsels, “Don’t worry,” No matter how dirty the fight, she’s good to have in your corner.
Alas, I’m reading Lawrence right now and he uses alas. I figure if I use alas, I might bring it back into style, but alas, I fear the worst, that it will disappear from the lexicon with alacrity. In the driveway, Barb kisses me goodbye and takes off with a girlfriend. Within a minute Jim comes to pick me up just as a neighbor pulls into her driveway. That’s more traffic than I’ve seen here in a week. Jim’s right on time. He’s been dependable ever since third grade. I owe him plenty, but alas, never take the time to thank him. So it's true I've been a jerk, but now I’m a jerk in trouble, so here he is to the rescue. I pop in his car and we speed away.
“You’re buried here,” he motions, swinging his free hand every which-way.
“You mean the twists and turns and everything?”
“There isn’t a straight block in the place.”
Then we both go silent for several miles down the 163 south. I’m about to get my butt reamed but I say nothing. This ‘device’ of theirs has as light as big as one of those lights they used in WW2 to spot German bombers over London during the Blitz. And that’s not all.
It’s got a camera they rented from David Lean. It’s big, about 70 millimeters, with sand caught up in its works, left over from Lawrence of Arabia. They somehow squeeze that in there too, that and the most hideous demon of all, the cruel and immense stainless steel grabber. I don’t know exactly what it does but I have an idea it slices and dices and grabs like a monster in a three dimensional B movie.
Jim and I both know what I’m here for. But we say nothing. It’s too scary to talk about. That’s what makes us real men. We are Hemingway quality men. We know when to not talk about something. Stoic is our middle names. What Jim doesn’t know is that I have a hidden agenda.
I’m getting the whatever-oscopy now because Barb convinced me to do it. After it’s over and I report back that it was no big deal, Jim may decide to get it done too! I’m being responsible. I’m setting an example. But I have to be suave and subtle. I have to sneak up on Jim about it. I’ll ask Barb how to do it. She was always sneaking up on Ric. Barb, if you’re reading this, don’t be offended. And, Ric… love ya fella! You make the best split pea soup I ever had, and if you two hadn’t broken up I wouldn’t have the most wonderful woman of the face of the earth. Thank you fate, and thank you Rickster.
So we finally pull up in front of Mercy Hospital and I find my way up in the elevator and into the waiting room.
I’m on the list, the dreaded patient’s list.
“Sign in please with your name and time.”
She hands me a stack of forms. There are three desks for nurses and almost thirty chairs. Only five people are waiting and they were as nondescript as the room. Yet every one of them was upbeat but me and a lady gazing absently out the window at the fountain and the flag and overcast clouds. I wished I could nondescript out of there but I was too chicken to go.
Kevin Spacey was on the news getting interviewed. I’d felt sorry for him all through the movie Usual Suspects, until the end of course.
“Wonder how Kevin’s colon is?” I conjectured.
After an hour, they called my name and I followed a nurse to pre-op. I think that’s what it was, pre-op. The doc pokes his head in to say hello. You change into one their nighties.
“Be sure to leave it open in the back.”
They pierce you in a vein, hook you up to a tube with a bag of You Don’t Know What, and adjust the drip. Before you fall asleep they roll you into the operating room. This is what bothers me most of all. You’re on your back, facing the ceiling, watching the squares of light drifting over your head. Each square of light is worth a horrible thought.
“What is that inky blackness going to be like?'
"Will I wake up?"
"How the hell do you wake up from that stuff?"
"Can these Medicare monkeys guarantee nothing is going to go wrong? "
" Are they competent? Do I even know these people?"
I remember asking Doc about the anesthetics, since I couldn't pronounce what he said and was too scared to remember it.
“What’s that one for? I’ve never heard of it.”
“That’s to help you forget.”
Right now, anesthetized out of my noggin, rolling mindlessly down that sterile hallway, but still not unconscious, I question what about this procedure is so terrible you’re going to want to forget it.
Into the OR I glide.
They roll me to one end of the room and ask me to turn on my side and slide my bottom closer to the edge. Uh, oh, I know what they’re after. On the wall I see a clock. The gas man gives me a look and gives the doctor a look, and raises his eyebrows. The doctor gives a look back that says 'you know what to do' so the gas man reaches up and adjust the drip again.
I’m watching the clock. The sweep hand seems to be slowing. It looked like that math problem where even if you close on something by half the distance with each step, you never get there. It was doing that now, the thin black sweep hand indicating seconds, was slowing in it's arc, then slowing even more, and never made it, or at least I didn't see it his its mark. I was too busy plunging naked into a dark sea of dreamless sleep.
Next thing I know they’re rolling me down the main hallway, into an elevator, and out the front door.
Jim is waiting and off I go. On the way home I feel a little discomfort and am amazed I’m dressed. I don’t remember them dressing me. But then I don’t remember dressing myself either.
We pull up and after he’s sees that I’m safely situated he takes off. I decide to take a nap, but for some reason can’t sleep.
It’s not much of an image to leave myself with. I don’t remember…a smell, a thought, a taste, a color, a feeling, not a thing of significance. What part of it was real, and what part was my imagination?
Strangely enough, it leads me back again to one of my favorite authors. Old Joe Conrad in his book Typhoon compared two different characters. When it came to a storm, a tight spot, the Captain with no imagination saved the day, while the mate with imagination lost his noodles. Sometimes my imagination gets to me, making mountains out of molehills. I love a good cliché.
In the final analysis, the writing was therapeutic. While I was going through the ‘clean me out’ process I needed a distraction. And I needed a record.
There, you have it, a writer’s confession.
©StevenHunley2015