Don’t it always seem to go
Joni mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi” (1968)
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone.
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.
In the year and a half that I took off between undergrad and grad school, I worked my first real job at a cellphone company. The great thing about a real job is that, if it is indeed a real job, you get health insurance.
About two months before I was set to head off to North Carolina to become a graduate student for the next 5-6 years of my life, it dawned on me that being a graduate student wasn’t going to be a “real job.” In other words, I was about to lose any semblance of meaningful health insurance.
Realizing what I was about to lose, I went off on a manic medical appointment making spree, tearing through my bucket list of check-ups and procedures that had been on my mind.
By some miracle I pulled off a trifecta, and after less than 15 minutes on the phone, I had somehow scheduled 3 doctor’s appointments for three consecutive days the following week. I was–and am still–way too proud of having achieved that feat in my lifetime.
Two of these were really run-of-the-mill: an eye check-up and a trip to the dentist’s office. The third one was a little more interesting: a consultation with an ENT (ear/nose/throat) specialist.
Well, it shouldn’t have been that interesting, and it didn’t really seem to be at the time. The pretense of the appointment was related to my lifelong bad habit of picking tonsil stones out of my tonsils in my spare [alone] time.
It wasn’t anything crazy like the tonsil stone videos you might find on YouTube–they were just little fellas. Quick tip, though: if you haven’t seen a video of someone harvesting1That can’t be the right term, yet somehow feels the most right… their tonsil stones…you might want to pass on that offer. It’s about as bad as the cockroach-nest-in-the-kid’s-ear videos…
Anyways, I decided to be proactive and seize the opportunity to do something about my tonsils while I had the coverage, so my trip to the ENT was to see if I could get a tonsillectomy scheduled before the end of the summer. While the doctor said my condition was only a low-grade infection that I had probably had for quite some time, he agreed that I could get them taken out if that’s what my heart so desired.
Fast-forward a few weeks to the night before my first-thing-in-the-morning surgery. I was trying to be a good patient, so I had dutifully followed the no-food-or-drink bit, and didn’t consume anything after 10 pm. Of course I didn’t want to get dehydrated between then and after my surgery, so, thinking ahead, I drank a bit more water than I normally would have otherwise.
My mom was the one that would be accompanying me to the surgery and taking me home afterwards, and right on schedule, she picked me up and whisked me off to my date with destiny.
The surgery itself was pretty much run-of-the-mill: they knocked my ass out, and when I came to, I was slightly less of a man than I used to be. I was little ticked to learn that they had immediately disposed of the trophies with the rest of the medical waste, as I was hoping to keep them (or at least see them) like I got to with my wisdom teeth.
After I came out of surgery, they let me have a quick bathroom break before wheeling me off to the recovery room for a planned hour or two of rest and recuperation.
Well, it was supposed to be a quick bathroom break. I ended up setting up camp for a good 10 minutes, as I was pretty sure I had to pee, but instead just sat there having not a single drop of luck.
I thought that was odd, especially since it occurred to me that while I had drank plenty of water the night before, I had forgotten to use the restroom before going into surgery. So surely it couldn’t be that I didn’t actually have to pee, could it?
I tried sitting in there as long as I could, but the orderly kept nagging me and said I had had more than enough time to do my business and that I needed to get to the recovery room. They basically had to drag me out of that bathroom. A boy knows when he hasn’t peed enough. I can’t explain how, he just knows.
After about 10 minutes in the recovery room, the need to pee hadn’t subsided at all, so I made them take me back to the bathroom. But, it was just pretty much déjà vu all over again, with the exact same script as before playing out.
They told me I just needed to chillax, and I tried to explain to them that it was kind of hard to do that when I seriously needed to take a leak.
But, again, I found myself trying to relax in the recovery room against my will. The doctor had ordered me to just lay there and try to maybe nap some, and then in 40 minutes I could try again–if I really thought I needed to do my biz and take a whiz, that is.
They kept telling me that it probably just felt like I needed to pee, so I should be able to safely ignore the urge. I thought, hey, what do I know? and tried to take them at their word.
So I just laid there in the dimly lit room, so ----- miserable, trying to convince myself that my body was lying to me and that I should just get a little shut eye. I had the mental fortitude–I could do this. Only 40 minutes until I had another shot at sweet relief, right?
After about 30 minutes had passed, I started to be confident I could make it the full 40. Of course I needed some objective verification of the situation:
Me: “Hey Mom, how long has it been?”
Mom: “Since when?”
Me: “Since, you know…”
Mom: “Since you last asked how long it had been?”
Me: “Yeah, I guess. I thought it was patently obvious what I was asking.”
Mom: “Oh, about 5 or 6 minutes.”
Me: …
Me: “Fuck this shit. Call the doctor in here NOW.“
It was at this point when I realized that I had entered into the bowels–no, bladder–of hell.
After much pleading with the doctor, he finally ordered an ultrasound for me. I gotta say, given that I was a virgin,2You expected this footnote to completely contradict that statement or have some Mormom-type qualifier saying that butt-sex is excluded, didn’t you? Well, guess what? It’s actually as true of a statement as it seems. I hadn’t even gotten to second base at this point in my life, save for one time in 5th grade that was completely by accident. I hadn’t envisioned myself getting an ultrasound any time soon.
Or ever. Because, you know…I’M A ----- DUDE.3Okay, so we know that I don’t mean this literally. I just established that this was one dude who actually had never ----- , so ” ----- ” in the usage as “one who ----- ” is not what is intended here. In case that wasn’t clear. Which it’s probably not, thanks to every other word getting censored.
Well, anyways, it took waaaaay too long (~20 minutes) for the ultrasound tech to show up. The tech did her thing, and, as she came to terms with what she was seeing, she actually let out a soft audible gasp . “Oh my” was all she said at first.
That is not the response you ever want to hear from a medical professional.
She went and grabbed the doctor and he came back to double check her calculations.
The doctor:4Not to be confused with my friend The Doctor… “So…I guess you were right when you said you needed to pee. According to the ultrasound, you have over a liter of liquid in your bladder. That’s well over the capacity of a normal human bladder.”
Me: “No shit, Sherlock–or should I say, ‘no piss, Paddington’?5I’m indulging here. I didn’t say either of those. Though it would have been completely appropriate in that moment. What’s our move here? I’m dying, Doc!”
Doctor: “Well…we’re going to need to insert a catheter up your urethra. Are you okay with–“
Me: “Yes, I know how caths work. Shut the ----- up and stick it in my ----- for God’s sake!”
Anyways, as you can imagine, it’s not within the doctor’s pay grade to be shoving catheters in every Tom, Dick, and Harry that comes along…or should I say…nevermind. You know where that joke was going. Implied humor should suffice here.
About 5 minutes later, a nurse walks in with the godsend/catheter in hand. A young nurse. About my age. And kinda cute.
Sooo…yeah, that was an awkward moment for me. About to get my tally-whacker touched for the first time by a comely lass, and I can’t think of a more romantic setting.
The truth is, though, I did not give a flying ----- in that moment. You know, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and all that. Not having an exploding bladder kind of trumps everything else except for breathing, I would argue.
She gracefully and deftly got the tube where it needed to go, and then…oh, the sweetest relief a man could ever taste in this lifetime.
I CANNOT overstate the flood of emotions–and urine–in that moment. On the surface, this all may sound trivial and laughable even, but I’m here to say that not being able to pee is an incredibly ----- up situation that I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemas.6Yes, that’s a pun. Ha ha.
On top of everything else, the collection bag couldn’t handle all that I had to offer, and they had to pinch off the flow while they changed the bags out. I can’t be certain, but I want to say that the bags were 750 ml, and I filled up 500 ml of the second one, so about 1.2 liters in total (!!!).
About 20 seconds after the nurse completed her duties, I was struck by a sharp pang…of regret.
Throughout this, I was in something of a loopy state, a combination of exhaustion and coming down off the anesthesia. Add to that the weird high I was getting from the overwhelming relief the catheter offered, and my sense of humor was as mirthful as ever.
What I regretted was missing the opportunity for a couple of zingers I had come up with in the middle of the cathing process, but didn’t have the wherewithal or presence of mind to say aloud to the nurse.
I really, really wish I could go back in time and at least say to her “I could kiss you right now.” And the truth about that comment is that I could have. Not in a romantic or sexual way, mind you, but in the sense that you would want to kiss the angel who is delivering you from the pits of Hades.
But if I really had been with it, here’s how I should have answered the age-old question first posed by early-90s heartthrob Jamie Walters,7https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Do_You_Talk_to_an_Angel “How Do You Talk To An Angel?”:
Geez…Let me at least buy you dinner first.
A young man being touched by an Angel for the very first time
To be continued…
Content created on: 27/28 January & 15 February 2020 (Monday/Tuesday/Saturday)
Footnotes & References:
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