Screw You Guys. I’m Going Home. And I’m Taking My Penis With Me.

(If you need catching up: Part I is here, and part II is here.)

The docs examined their handiwork, and proclaimed it to be Good, then went on to tell me that they had to change course mid-surgery and go ahead with the buccal mucosa graft. I said, “Mmmm mmmmfit,” which loosely translated from the original Klingon means, “No shit.”

They told me to get rested and I’d see them in the morning.

Meanwhile, in the bed next to me, my roommate was in some serious pain. He’d used up all his allotted morphine, I guess, because he kept calling the nurse and asking when he could get more in his clicker. I was hoping that they would cave and give him some because he was obviously in agony. We were separated by a thin curtain (dignity!) so I could hear him quite well. Sleep was pretty hard to come by, but at around 11:00, he buzzed the nurse and said, “I think I’m ready to take a dump.”

I heard the nurse come in, and they set up one of those standalone commodes. I know this because the nurse said, “I brought in a commode for you to use.”

There were some rustling noises as they got him out of bed, and on to the john. I then heard an explosion which can only result from several days of non-compliance to the PWD Ethos.

Then, oddly, I heard him snoring. Then, the nurse went into panic mode, and called code on him.

I was wide awake at this point.

Lights came on and the room filled with everyone on the floor. At one point, the chaplain was over on my side of the room. She asked if I was OK, and I told her, “Yeah, and quite honestly, I think we should be saving our prayers for Mike.” She nodded and thought that she was probably needed more urgently elsewhere. They got him out, and later, an orderly came in and cleared the floor. I don’t know exactly what the condition of the room was, but the orderly either had a bad phlegm problem, or was trying not to vomit. I didn’t spend too much time thinking about it.

At some point, I slept for a while. At least until the nurse came in for the hourly vital check. (Which was getting annoying by now.) I asked after Mike and learned that they got him into the ICU and he was doing OK. That was all I would ever know. (Mike, if you’re out there, hope you’re OK, buddy.)

Next morning, the Cock Docs came back for a final inspection. The pain was so bad in my cheek that I wasn’t even concerned for my taint. Seriously. I just wanted the pain in my cheek to go away. There was a big wad of gauze in my mouth and the Cock Docs wanted me to pull it out. I wanted it out, but I was scared to move it. But, I did. And it hurt. I would rather have another HVUC than pull that gauze out of my cheek again.

After that, the Cock Docs decreed that towards the end of the day, I would be released from the monochromatic cheerfulness of the hospital, and unleashed upon the world.

I spent most of the day drinking apple juice. Other juices were far too acidic for my delicate cheek, and I’m the kind of person who tries to avoid pain, not seek it out. Also, I slept. And watched football.

In the early afternoon, a young Indonesian(?) nurse’s aide came to help me go for a walk. Most of you don’t know me, but I am not a small dude. I’m built somewhat like a potbelly stove, only slightly less flexible. So, there’s this slight little thing “helping” me walk around the floor. I kept thinking that if I happened to fall, we would both most likely be screwed, because there was no way on earth she could catch me and hold me upright.

If I had to describe the attitude of my Saturday nurse, I would say she was definitely a hands-off type of gal. I didn’t see much of her throughout the day. Which I didn’t mind so much, except after I got dressed and was standing next to the bed getting ready to leave, my blood sugar plummeted. If you’re not familiar with the sensation, it involves you becoming very lightheaded and sweating profusely. It’s like being drunk, though not at the pleasant stage, it’s at the stage where you are holding on to the floor to keep from falling off. Fortunately, there was some leftover juice(!) which I guzzled, and the episode passed. She returned shortly after, and she asked what my travel arrangements were. I told her I was going to get a cab. She offered to call me one, and I accepted.

At that point, I was turned over to the “transporter,” a young man named “Dhani” or something like that. His name slipped my mind as we careened through the hospital corridors just under the legal speed limit of 70. Say what you want, but Dhani was in some kind of good shape, and we hauled ass. First stop was the pharmacy, which was in a seemingly endless hallway, only broken by the 24″ square of 5″ bulletproof glass. A dude was there, ranting and raving about being stuck in the hospital for five hours, and then he got to storying about how Warren Moon was his good buddy and Warren was going to buy him another condo or something. He may have been perfectly legit, but he really struck me more as a raving lunatic. Because, why not just call Warren and have him pick you up, instead of waiting 5 hours in the hospital.

I didn’t have to wait more than 5 hours for my meds; it was more like 5 minutes, and then Dhani and I rumbled down the corridor at 67 per to the final checkout destination. It was 7:00 by this time, and Dhani was getting a bit antsy, since he was supposed to be off at 7:30. Guess he must have had a hot date or something. We stopped at the checkout desk, where I learned that the nurse was only kidding about calling me a cab. Dhani wanted to call Yellow Cab, but the lady at checkout was calling Orange Cab. It was around this time that I was starting to become rather unamused by the whole thing, and didn’t really give a fuck if it was Taupe Cab.

Finally, Orange Cab showed up, and I went back to the hotel for some sleep, and to get rested up for the flight home.

One of the bad things about living out here in East Buttfuckistan is the lack of direct air service to anywhere. Any flight originating here will stop at either Minneapolis, Denver or Salt Lake City. My return flight was from Seattle to Portland to Denver, then finally home. I guess they routed me through Portland because they couldn’t find a timely flight to Kuala Lumpur. And I was glad for that. Sitting on a stitched-up taint with a Foley catheter and a leg bag isn’t on anyone’s bucket list. Although, if it were on mine, I could cross it off. Glass half full, baby.

The flight from Seattle to Portland was uneventful, since we put the landing gear down approximately 30 seconds after we stowed them. The flight from Portland to Denver, however, was interminable. I was in the back seat, and couldn’t recline. Plus I was sitting next to Cap’n Seathog. I’m sure you know the Cap’n. He’s a portly gentleman, with pleny of bushy armhair and a sense of entitlement to the seat rest. After 68 hours in the air, we landed in Denver.

Now, I am a man of foresight, so I made sure that when I stowed my drugs, I made sure to put the painkillers in an easy-to-access pocket in my duffelbag. In Denver, I learned that I didn’t have to foresight to actually double-check, so it was with no small amount of dismay that I found that I’d actually packed the antibiotics. Fortunately, I didn’t have that much longer to go, and the pain wasn’t all that bad.

I had a seat to myself on the final leg, which was nice because I could stretch out, and also because I when I went to adjust the strap of the leg bag around my calf, the strap snapped loose, and the whole thing sagged into the leg of my sweats. It was impossible to discreetly hook it back up, so I prayed that when the time came, the elastic straps of my sweats would hold up to a full leg bag.

Which they did.

I made a beeline to the bathroom to empty the bag, and as I was preparing to enstall, I came face to face with a woman in her mid 60′s who was de-stalling. There was an awkward pause. She asked if she was in the wrong room. I shrugged and laughed. “I guess one of us is.” Turned out it was her. I emptied my leg bag, and went home to sleep for three days straight. Almost.

For the first two weeks, I had to keep the Foley in. This is not the most pleasant thing to have in you. It’s in a place where, if you are wearing clothing at all, gets … jostled. Daytime, nighttime, you name it. Jostle, jostle, jostle. In fact, the only thing worse than having a catheter in you is having it taken out. But then again, when it’s out, it’s done.

Also, you have to be careful when emptying the leg bag. If you do not get the valve fully closed, it is entirely possible, while you are sitting in the chair, watching TV, for urine (which is at body temperature, and almost impossible to feel) to drip straight from your bladder into your shoe. At which point, you stand up, feel your shoe slosh and think, “I don’t remember walking through any puddles,” and then it occurs to you that you haven’t walked through any puddles, since you’ve been in the chair, and can’t walk anyway. This will leave you with the dubious distinction of rather than having pissed your pants, you have pissed your shoe, which clearly merits a new pair of shoes.

Hypothetically speaking.

After two weeks, I went in for ANOTHER HVUC. Thankfully, I already had a catheter in, so we just had to dump in the dye, then take pictures. Which we did, and everything was fine. Catheter came out, and life is (mostly) good.

One thing was bothering me, though, and that was the scar. Having showered plenty of times, and not being averse to scrubbing my personal areas, I had come to have a mental picture of what the scar must look like. And one day, I got the courage to look at it in a mirror.

To my trained medical eye, it looked almost exactly like a vagina — a mangina — if you will.

Now that I know this, my daily experience with the “repair area” involves my hoping against all hope that the scar fades down to a thin line; only visible under ultraviolet light, in laboratory conditions.

But the upshot of the whole encounter with Modern Medicine™ is this: I am peeing well, dudes. I am peeing well.

Filed under: Beavis, You Are One Dumb Sonofabitch, LOLPENIS!, What the Fuck?