A Few Laughs I Got During Fraught Moments in 2022
A Few Laughs I Got During Fraught Moments in 2022
And you will know me by the trail of bewildered.
I am pleased that I have not died and — wishing to continue my streak into the more death-friendly territory north of 50 — I set out to visit doctors more often. I also intend to get laughs as I go. The more awkward the moment the better. I’m also going to do this on hard mode by which I mean I intend to take the extra step of doing what my doctors say.
The world’s greatest wife, a nurse by trade, has assured me, “Most people die of non-compliance.” It goes without saying that I do what she says. You have only to look at the picture above — which includes an 8lb menace whose nominal vocation is “cat” — to know that much.
Let’s Put Things Up Him
True to form, the first thing my doctor recommended was that she, or one of her friends, be allowed to put a length of garden hose up my porthole. They would then invite the same team that clears our gutters to go at me full tilt.
“It’s not a garden hose,” she said. She explained that the garden hose would have a GoPro and some scissors on the end.
I would be required to:
Eat nothing that isn’t (a) liquid and (b) disgusting
Shit as though I was a grad student at Turd University cramming for my PhD defense
Be unconscious while they root around in my guts like a broke kid rifling a couch for loose change.
Women, including the world’s greatest wife, are nonplussed about these concerns. I am told that every doctor’s visit for them is an experiment in just how much each orifice can withstand the contents of a sporting goods store.
Point taken. I should quit crying and get on with it.
Forbidden Elixir
As a comedy writer toiling these long years I am, and my comedy is, like unto a forgotten raisin in a hatchback. Dark. Shriveled. Distilled malevolence.
You might imagine the most fraught moments as merely those. If so, I envy you. I see them each as a frozen crevasse over which I must throw the rickety ladders of my perception and clatter across with punchlines in hand in the name of comedy. Often, I achieve only doom.
Regaining consciousness after my colonoscopy, I realized my doctor was on the phone with WGW. He was giving her a review.1
The doc told WGW they’d removed a few things and, though they were probably nothing, they’d need to be sent to a lab. I mustered the wisps of my wherewithal and said, clearly, “Can I have them back after that?”
My doctor did not laugh. In fact, he looked at me as I assume one looks at a polyp about to be snipped. WGW, her voice tinny over the phone speaker, said, “He’s making a joke.”
I fared a little better with the nurse a few minutes later. She showed me some photos of my innards and I told her, “No thanks, I’m not on Instagram anymore.”
She laughed. Still got it.2
Let’s All Pull On This Guy’s Dingus
I mentioned before that because of the organization of my “downstairs mix-up,”3 I am assured by those I trust that I have a relatively easy time with doctors. Even so, I do my part. That’s why, when the young woman at the urologist’s asked me if I’d shaved my bits I answered, “Yes.”
“Oh thank God,” she said. “So many men don’t shave before they come in. If they don’t, I have to do it.” I laid on the table and she began looking through some cabinets for the liquid nitrogen container where they keep the Betadine.
She applied extremely sitcky tape to my area as though restraining a turtle with its neck bent up out of the shell. Next, she seasoned the whole works with the Betadine superfluid which had been chilled to around four degrees Kelvin.
Then she left, saying, “Try not to touch that area.”
I said, “People have been telling me that my whole life!”
She laughed. Even when my meat-beans are colder than the Oort Cloud, I still got it.
Enter The Plum Shocker
A few minutes later, the urologist and another nurse arrived. The nurse stuck a big square patch to my left leg. I didn’t catch what she said but I did hear the word, “cauterized.” I took it to mean that some part of the festivities would include a few things roasting over an electrical fire.4
Next, my doctor allowed a pit viper that he’d stuck into the room to chomp down on my scrotum. “A lot of people say this is the worst part,” he lied. A few minutes later he began electrocuting either my privates, the base of my spine, or both. I couldn’t tell which. I grunted and bucked but stood my ground.
After some time, he asked, “How are you doing?”
“Great,” I said. “I’m only going to get one of these so I really want to get it right,”
The doctor and nurse both laughed. (Still got it.)
“You’re savoring every moment, huh?” the doctor said. We all laughed.
Son of a bitch, he tagged me at my own game. Not his own punchline, mind you, but since he’s a doc and not a comedian I’ll grant him the tag.
Touché, medicine man. Well played.
I’m proud to say I got excellent marks on my prep but annoyed that it is not industry practice to congratulate good colon preppers like me by saying, “Nicely shitted!”
The things they removed turned out to be nothing but I still have not gotten them back.
I do wish they’d told me that as long as I was shaving my assorted unmentionables I should also shave a big patch on my leg for the cauterizing ground lead. It would have saved the nurse and myself an awkward conversation a few minutes later about how fast certain things should be ripped off other things.