This Isn't Exactly What I Had in Mind . . .

Hmm. Seems I've been neglecting this for a while. Not that anyone really notices, mind you, and no, I'm not that conceited that I believe people are hanging on my every word. Anyway, aside from pure laziness, I could say that there are some very good reasons as to why I haven't written anything for a while but, of course, that is the same excuse I use on myself when I neglect my real writing - you know, the stuff that is intended to make some money. Oh, well, the road to Hell is paved with good excuses.

At the moment, my groin is the most amazing shade of purple I've ever seen.

Now, if you haven't fled screaming after reading that, you may be asking yourself why you should care what colour my groin is. After all, I doubt very much that you have any kind of emotional attachment to that part of my anatomy. On the other hand, that statement is not exactly a common way to open a conversation, so there may be, indeed, a kind of perverse curiousity involved.

Okay, some background. Those who know me will recall that, unsure of what to give myself for my 42nd birthday, I finally decided on a heart attack and a quad by-pass. I mean, why not? Think of it as my very own reality-survival show. The fact that it has left me permanently disabled was something I wasn't counting on but, hey, no plan is perfect, right? So let's not quibble about the small things.

Since then, my heart has been ticking away almost like it did before, and after being roto-rootered my total cholesterol was less than 110. So perhaps I can be forgiven for thinking, aside from the diabetes and the kidney disease, that things were proceeding more-or-less alright.

Boy, was I wrong.

The cardiologist I had been seeing decided to up and leave the practice without explanation in between my six-month checkups, so I was assigned to one of the others in the office for my last checkup at the beginning of October. So I go in to see this doctor, and the first thing he does is listen to my chest and my neck with his little stethoscope, and tell me that I have a blockage in my carotid artery. You know, sort of a good news, bad news type of thing - "You don't have to worry about your heart, you just have to worry about stroking out." Oh, joy. Anyway, he writes up an order for a doppler study of my carotid, to determine the extent of the blockage, and also one for my legs (swelling and bad circulation there, too), that he wants done within one week.

Right, so off to the hospital I go to get these dopplers done. Since, between those and the next time I saw the caediologist, a couple of days later, no one called up hysterically screaming that I shouldn't be making any long-term plans, my level of panic had started to ebb, and I was thinking that they couldn't have found anything too serious or I'd have heard about it. Of course, that was before I went back for the follow-up visit.

At which point the doctor gives me another good news, bad news scenario. Right off the bat, he tells me that the doppler study didn't find any blockage in my carotid artery at all, so I can stop worrying about a stroke and shopping for a drool cup. But, he insisted, there must be a blockage somewhere because, after all, he determined that there was one, and the only other place it could be is in my heart. Now, if he were trying to induce a heart attack in me, I can't really think of a better way to go about doing that. But, no, he says, it isn't that bad. He can fix me. He is, after all, a cardiac surgeon. So he schedules me for an angioplast and tells me that he can open any blockages by putting in some cardiac stents. And, hey, how bad can it be? It's an out-patient procedure.

So, last week, after the requisite chest x-ray and labs, I show up at the hospital's out-patient surgery wing, with my little just-in-case overnight bag - meaning my old rucksack from the Navy, since that's the only luggage I own these days - while somehow wishing that I was anywhere else doing anything else.

Now, I have to say that the two nurses assigned to my care - the surgical nurse and the ward nurse - were wonderful. I also feel compelled to say that, while it has always been a fantasy of mine to be lying naked on a bed and surrounded by hot women, that wasn't exactly what I had in mind. And was it really necessary for them to take turns shaving my groin? But I digress.

The upshot of this whole thing is that I spent twelve hours - two in pre-op, one on the table, and nine in recovery - in the hospital for . . . nothing. That's right. They snaked that camera in through my crotch, up through my body and into my heart, and found nothing. No blockages. Zip. Nada. Nothing.

And now my groin is the most interesting shade of purple I have ever seen.

Perhaps I can be forgiven for feeling just a little pissed off over this whole affair. Yes, I know, not finding any blockages is a good thing, and I suppose it is better to know than not to know, but . . . Aside from the complete indignity involved in having a rather personal part of my anatomy examined and shaved by complete strangers, then being tossed naked on a table in a cold room - the shrinkage! The shrinkage! - in front of yet another group of complete strangers and having a foreign body inserted, I went through about a week of panic over whether or not my heart was blinking out on me again. All for, as it turned out, nothing.

And guess what? I have to go through it all again in three more weeks, when they do the same procedure on my legs. I tell you, it just doesn't get much better than this. I have this theory, you see, that doctors would probably have more success if they just stopped pretending and just painted their faces white and waved chicken feathers at the rest of us. But that could just be me being cynical again . . .

Look, I'm well aware of the fact that we're all in a game we ultimately can't win, and that we have to play the hand we're dealt. But I'm getting awfully tired of feeling like I'm bluffing while God is drawing to an inside straight with the deck stacked. Enough is, as they say, enough. Of course, the fact that this doctor is, so far, batting 0 for 2 doesn't fill me with a lot of confidence either. But what the Hell, it's not like I've got anything better to do at the moment . . .

I just wonder if they're going to have to shave me again . . . and if they do, if I can ask them to turn off that funky 1970s-era bad movie music. Not to mention the question of just how much more purple can my groin get?