Health Care: Feeling a bit Franky...

The absolute first clear memory I have is a doozy.  I was somewhere around three years old.

It was the mid 70's... so imagine a house filled with awful wallpaper, plywood wainscoting, shag carpeting... every last bit of it in the most awful shades - mainly prairie gold, rusty orange, deep brown, and avocado green.  Basically, a big group of designers from around the world all took a massive crap and said, "Oh isn't it DEVINE!"

The only good thing about that color scheme is that you could literally drop anything on it, and you'd never stain the carpet.  Or, even if you did stain the carpet, who the fuck could see it?

"Oh, the dog puked.  No problem!" you'd exclaim as the baby took a shit on the swivel chair, just after throwing Gerber on the walls.  "I'll get all of that on Saturday."

Ahhh... I'm having a flashback to pork chop sideburns, greased back hair and short, wide ties.  And slacks.  How is the word "slacks" not the second worst word in the english language?  The first, of course, is "moist."  If I was ever wearing a pair of moist slacks, I think I'd have to commit hara-kiri just to stop hearing that fucking phrase.  

"Fuck me!" I would scream before disemboweling myself. "And fuck you too," I would whisper just before kicking the bucket, my body slowly being returned to the force.  I often think I'll die really cool like that.  I hope so.  I want to go out like a smack-talkin' Yoda!

I'm surprised more people didn't commit seppuku back in the 70's, given the awful decor and fashion.

So my sister and I were playing football in the living room.  She was five, and I was somewhere around three, and I'm pretty sure the Purple People Eaters were on their way to losing another Super Bowl.  

We were playing with one of those tiny plastic footballs.  This particular football we got at some parade, as I recall.  You know, the local bank had a float and everyone was tossing these tiny footballs with the bank name on it.  

I'm sure everyone on the float was smiling, their pork chop sideburns and wide ties blowing in the breeze.  The parents looking down at their children, watching their little eyes widen as free shit gets tossed their way.  The kids becoming impatient, on the verge of tears, never wanting something so badly before in their tiny lives.

I really wanted that football.  It was yellow and maroon.  It was small, like me, and I would cherish it forever.

At least that's how I imagine the parade -- this isn't the first clear memory I have.  

Now that I'm older and have been in a few myself, I know that's what the kids are thinking.  And if they don't get whatever the hell is being passed out, they cry.  They cry until they upset their parents, and all the parents want is for their kid to shut the fuck up.

Then, after the parade and the kid still has nothing and won't stop bitching about it, the parents give in and go to Toys 'R' Us and spend twenty bucks just to shut the kid's awful face.  Later that day the dog has a slipper in its mouth and THAT'S IT.  The dad starts yelling at Fido and gives it a swift, hard kick in the ass.  Thirty minutes later, Fido takes a chunk out of the mailman's balls to relieve its aggression.  The next day, twenty people are gunned down at the post office, but somehow the supervisor managed to hide in a giant bin, burying himself under letters now covered in blood spatter.

Don't you just love parades?

Somehow we managed to pull off the most brilliant thing ever.  Somehow we got a prized, plastic, piece of shit football with a bank logo on it.  Our family escaped the melee that day at the parade.

Crap.  Now I'm starting to read like Dr. Seuss.

Now, my sister and I devised a way of scoring in our two person game of football.  We set up goals and used the couch on one side and the fireplace on the other as our sidelines.  The real goal was just to escape being smothered by the other as we tried to get past.  We had invented a two-player version of Smear the Queer.

The couch was substantial for a three year old.  Heavy, long... prairie gold and rusty orange pinstripes decorated the otherwise taupe couch, making it look like the inside of a waste water pipe.  And the fireplace was made of large, rough, porous rocks that, at points, jutted out several inches from the wall, as natural stone might do.

And our parents let us play.  It was the 70's.  It was cold outside.

I had the ball.  My sister had been kicking my ass three ways to Sunday, and I was going to score this time.  Fuck yes.  I will score.  I will cheat if I can, die if I must.

I spouted off my quarterback speak the only way I knew how as I gauged the field.  "Hut, hut, hut," I started, eyeing my route.

"Hut, hut, hut, hut, hut, hut, hut."  My sister was starting to tire, I knew it.  

"Hut, hut, hut, hut, hut, hut."  She straightened up and put her hand on her hip and tapped her foot.  How do little fucking girls know exactly what drives guys absolutely bonkers???

"Hut, hut... HUT!"  I faked her out with the hard snap count, and she was pissed.  Now I was fucked.  "HUT!"

I took off, cutting side to side as my sister stretched out her massive, five-year-old arms and followed my moves.  Damn she was good.  The couch route was completely blocked.  I knew it.  She knew it.  She knew I knew it.  Damn she was good.

I had to go monk.

I cut left and launched myself onto the hearth of the stoney fireplace, the only saving grace I had left as my sister charged after me.

That's all I remember.

I had to get a few stitches on my upper lip because my sister got me.  Falling into the porous fucking rock of the fireplace didn't help any.

I've had a few stitches since that time, the most notable being in the top of my foot.  Apparently when you drop a travel mug from the very top shelf onto a ceramic bowl on the counter, chunks of it fly at mach speed.  I was never very good at physics.

Well, after my trip to Key West, I was scheduled to see a dermatologist.  I thought it would be extremely fun to show up right after my skin took a beating in the sun, if nothing more than the scowl I was sure to see on his face.  However, I had that miserable fucking cold... so I had to wait another week.

When I met him, I noted that he was short like Napoleon, but didn't seem to have the complex.  He looked at a cyst in my neck, which was really the reason behind the appointment.  I was self conscious.  I was vain.  But, in my defense, it was pretty fucking huge and showed above many shirt collars.  I don't like freaking people out with my hideous looks.  I prefer freaking people out with my hideous stories.

It's time to see if I can freak you out.

As long as I was there, he also took some samples of other moles and such.  The nurse pricked me with a tiny needle filled with lidocaine, and the tiny doc shaved off the moles.  

I bet you're really happy you're reading this.  I bet you can't turn away.

So, I schedule removal of the thing on my neck, and when I come back I find out the results are back.  The mole on my arm is abnormal, not a keratosis like the general practitioner told me years ago.  What a prick.  Why do fucking doctors think they know everything?

Are you slowing down, anticipating the traffic accident ahead?  Ready to rubberneck?

The nurse shot me full of lidocaine this time with a bigger needle.  I'm okay with pain, it's seeing my own insides that I don't like.

The doc outlined his cuts, first on the neck, then on my arm.  He draws a 2 or 3 inch open S shape in purple marker on my arm, capturing the mole (that's smaller than the width of your standard #2 pencil) between the lines.  

"Whoa.  That's a big incision, doc," I say, trying to be casual.  Meanwhile inside my head the doc is playing the warden in my own special prison, and he's bending me over a railing pulling my pants down.  All I can think of is tossed salad.  I shivered.

"It'll help with the dog ears," he said.

Dog ears?  What kind of deranged de-evolution process have you got planned for me, you sick midget prick fuck bag?

"Good thing chicks love scars," I joked.

"Uh, yeah."  He hated me.  He wanted to put dog ears on my arm.  I was going to be his lab experiment.  And, just think of the earless dog wandering aimlessly around the city!

Which reminds me of a funny line my brother-in-law told me.  We were driving past these tiny houses built on tiny lots in the 50's that didn't have eaves over the front door.  

"Look at those pieces of shit," he said.  "A house without eaves is like a dog without ears."  He was right.

So, I was numbed up and ready to go.  I imagined houses in the busy streets of Richfield, and labrador retrievers with no floppy ears bouncing with their gait.  I leaned back, refusing to look at my arm during the process.

I felt pressure, sure... but thankfully no pain.  He cauterized it before stitching it up, and I could smell the burnt blood, skin and hair.  Meanwhile he talked casually to his assistant.  She was going to hook him up with a friend of hers.  He seemed a little too eager.

What a lonely little man.  Okay, let's get back to ME!

Then it was time for the cyst.  After slicing me open, he started cutting away at the cells with small scissors.  Considering the cyst was just behind my ear, all I could hear was the snipping.  

And with each snip, there was pressure.  With the pressure, I could feel a reverberating pulse through my neck and head.  The snipping grew louder.  The snipping went on forever.

Snip.  Snip. Snip.  

It reminded me of my quarterback experience when I was around three years old, the scissors calling out the snap count.  Er... snip count.

Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip. SNIP.  I almost jumped offsides.

Later, the nurse told me how to care for the stitchery.  They were as follows:

1. Leave the bandages on for a couple of days and keep them dry.  No problem.

2. After two days, I could clean them with soap and water, putting vaseline on the stitches before covering them back up.  Again, no problem.

3. No drinking for 2 days.

Excuse me?  It was March 16th.  You mean I have to be sober on the one day when 75% of the world's population gets plowed like a Minnesota driveway in January?  It's MY DAY.  Even says so in the title!  This is the one day where being named Patrick is cool, whereas the rest of the year being "Pat" is completely androgynous and pathetic... I'm so glad Julia Sweeney is off Saturday Night Live.

Fuck me.

They never said anything about not drinking BEFORE the procedure.  And, with the discomfort that comes along with stitches, all I wanted to do was grab a couple of fucking drinks.  I needed to dull the sensation.

So, I looked like a retard with all the bandages on my arm and neck, and I was sober.  I stayed home and sulked.

So far, the recovery process is okay, though I did find out that I shouldn't be playing guitar quite yet.  Maybe I'll come back to this story if something hilarious happens, but if it stays fairly dull I think we'll just play it by ear.

Speaking of ears.  Apparently that Napoleon nazi warden asshole doctor fucked up his own plan and didn't put dog ears on my arm.  See?

I feel a bit like Frankenstein.  Or, as my cousin posted  on my Facebook account, "I prefer the more concise, 'Feelin' Franky,' but then again, people might look at you funny."

Oh yeah, Cuz?  Well, too late for that shit, because when you walk around covered in bandages like the Invisible Man, people stare.  Oh, they stare plenty.