The question is pretty much always the
same but you don’t like to ask it of yourself. You wait until the question is
right in front of you, asking itself in loud, belligerent terms: Can you handle
it?
When you’re young, loud and ignorant,
the answer is that of course you can handle it. Head a little further down the
road, maybe reaching your thirties, and you answer, “Yeah, sure, I guess so.”
And when your hair has more grey than any other color, your answer is always,
“What choice do I have? I’ll handle it.”
In the case of Your Loyal Blogger the
answer is usually a little different: The answer is usually, “I don’t want to handle it.” Unfortunately for
YLB, this is not a legitimate answer and that’s the bad news.
The good news is that Mrs. Leeway
usually says something like, “You idiot, go see a doctor,” and then the whole
question of dealing with it comes into play.
Yesterday, in the final moments before
my surgeon began sticking, carving and, yes, burning my nose, I told her that I
am not good with needles or knives. She immediately jammed a needle into my
face and said, “Little pinch.” She moved from spot to spot, leaving some finger
or other jammed into my right eye as she numbed the targeted area with needles
and some kind of buzz juice, which medical professionals term a, “numbing
agent.”
Then the three docs all walked out for
a while, probably to double-check on our insurance company, which nobody in the
office had ever heard of. Back came the Doctoral Trio and, I have to assume,
out came the knives. Truth be told, you don’t feel much if the buzz juice has
done its job. A little pressure where the carving is under way and the standard
finger in the eyeball, but not much else.
Once the carving was done, the burning
was next and that seemed odd. In the kitchen, I usually burn things before I
start carving them. Not so in this case. The boss doctor pulled out a soldering
iron, or what looked like one, and started cauterizing (med-speak for burning)
the open wound in order to stem the flow of blood.
You know you’ve lived a full life when
you hear and smell your own flesh sizzle. I commented on the matter at about
the time the cook-off reached its zenith, but got no reaction at all from the
three medical professionals in the room. The women to whom I had entrusted my
health and well-being. The surgeons.
Geez, one fake laugh at that moment
might have been nice.
They slapped some gauze and tape
across the offended nose and sent me out to sit with Mrs. Leeway while they
inspected and detected the piece of my flesh they had removed, then called me
back for more needles, knives and soldering irons. More jabbing, cutting and,
of course, burning.
This
time they were not fooling around. They gave me so much buzz juice that my
upper teeth went numb. “Too bad none of you are dentists,” I said. “My teeth
are numb.” In response, they dropped a bigger piece of paper over my face,
jammed a finger in my eye and resumed the Jim Bowie treatment to my face.
“We’re
going to move closer to your eye this time,” the boss surgeon said. I was
confident my eye would be safe. Her finger was still planted smack on top of
it. To damage the eye, she’d have to cut her own finger.
More
digging, more burning. At one point I felt something and mentioned it,
generating a brief, “Um hum,” from the boss doc. It seemed like a breakthrough
after the humorless silent treatment I’d been getting.
They
sent me out to the lobby a second time while they turned my flesh into another
science project. I reread the six-month old edition of Sports Illustrated I’d
gone through the last time they sent me out. It was still full of old news.
Finally
they called me back with the good news that they had gotten all the bad stuff
out of my face and that it was now time for the sewing. I asked how many stiches
I’d need and they told me that it was really just one because they were going
to sew me up like a baseball, one continuous string. Some would be under the
skin, some visible. The stuff would dissolve in time and there would be minimal
scaring.
Now,
Your Loyal Blogger has had stitches before, but this was the first time the old
baseball stitch has been used. None of the educated professionals in the room
(other than me) were aware that Vin Scully is retiring or what that means. They
were somehow aware that the Cleveland Indians had clinched a playoff berth. But
they did not seem to link these comments with their own comment about the
baseball stitch they were about to perform on Your Loyal Blogger’s face.
By
that time, I didn’t care. They’d put the soldering iron down and that was good
enough for me. On the way home, I regaled Mrs. Leeway with tales of the
operating room and she said, “I think I hear a blog coming.” She was right, as
usual.
Thanks for reading
and, please do yourself a favor: Use lots of sunscreen and wear a hat when
outdoors.
