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PART ONE
------Webster’s Dictionary
“This f**king hurts!”
-------Noah Webster
It all started a couple of weeks ago when I paid our family physician a visit because I had developed a noticeable bulge inside my pants. Unfortunately, this bulge wasn’t of the nature that would make most men proud.
My doctor told me to drop my drawers. He put on a latex glove with that clinical, resounding snap that brings you to attention and then he proceeded to examine the….well, testicular area.
In the old days, doctors always prefaced this examination with this command: “Turn your head and cough”. My doctor apparently felt I was well mannered enough not to hack in his face, so he just said, “Cough”.
“You have a hernia,” he told me. “And next time, turn your head before you cough. It’s the cold and flu season!”
I asked him why, if a hernia appeared to pop out in the pelvic area, was it necessary to feel my gonads. He said nothing but wore a glimmer of a smile. I hoped I wasn’t being scammed.
Of course, I knew what the next step was. He was going to prescribe magic pills that would cause the hernia to disappear in 3-5 days to never return.
That step was bypassed. He recommended surgery!
“Well,” I told my wife, “this shoots my track record all to hell!”
58 years old and I’d never spent a minute inside of a hospital except for visiting. Visit the sick is what the nuns told us to do in Catholic school. I didn’t mind that rule, because it made it good to be the visitors and not the patients.
Visiting the sick was one of the “corporal works of mercy” that the Catholic church said we should perform. The Church also said, “But stay out of the goddamn hospital gift shop. Those prices will eat you alive!”
This is why I like to do my hospital visiting shortly after Memorial Day. On the way to the hospital, I can drive through the cemetery and pick up some really nice flowers. Quite affordable that way.
So the next day, it was off to the surgeon for a consultation. Actually, my wife chose this particular doctor because she knew him and his family personally.
He seemed pleasant enough, but what bothered me was his name: Dr. Goering.
Goering, Goering….hmmm. My mind was racing through its index and checking its files under “World War II”.
Ah, yes! I thought, Could he be related somehow to Hermann Goering, the head of the German armed forces during World War II and sadistic henchman to Adolph Hitler?
Possibly from the same family as that same Hermann Goering who was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials and who cowardly committed suicide by taking cyanide rather than face execution?
Well, at least he saved the taxpayers a few bucks, I’ll give him that.
So I tested the "good" doctor. “How are things in the Luftwaffe?” I asked craftily.
He looked at my wife and asked, “Is he currently taking any medication or perhaps fallen on his head recently?”
My wife twirled her finger in a big circle alongside her head and rolled her eyes in my direction.
Surely there could be no family ties between the evil Goering and this surgeon, I tried convincing myself.
But then…. he got out the latex glove, slipped it over a pair of vise grips and latched on to the fellas down below like there was no tomorrow! He didn’t even ask me to cough, let alone turn my head!
Good thing, too. I couldn’t have coughed. My esophagus was paralyzed.
He squeezed some more.
Now that my cahones felt like a couple of tangerines in a Cuisinart, I decided that there was no way Dr. Goering could share the family tree with the notorious Hermann. This guy was way too brutal.
[Note to reader: the following italicized remarks are my thoughts only and not audible, verbal expressions. This was not because I didn’t want the doctor to hear me. Rather, as a result of what felt like having my testicles run over by a dump truck, I was rendered speechless and barely able to take a deep breath for several hours.]
“You have two hernias,” he happily announced. “What I’ll do is a laparoscopy.”
There you go, talking secret German code!
“First I’ll make an incision under the belly button.”
Ah ha! A naval attack!
“Then I go in with a camera…”
Oh crap, this is going to be on YouTube! All it will take is one Tweet from this guy and my hernia surgery will go viral! Broadcast throughout the Nazi underground!
“Once I can see the hernias, I’ll make two smaller incisions and go in and repair them.”
“How do you repair them?” my wife asked.
“When I’m inside, we’ll inflate his abdomen with gas.”
Couldn’t I just drink a couple of beers? But no, he’s using a special gas! The Nazis know all about those things!
“This allows me to see what’s going on inside his body. I’ll push the protruded parts back inside the cavity, then insert a mesh lining.”
Sounds like he’s trying to catch mosquitoes!
“The mesh serves as a protective patch.”
Oh sure! A patch that will systematically release an agent to my brain that will make me spill top government secrets! Well, Goering, you’ll get nothing from me!
Dr. Goering asked me to hop up on the examining table. He turned away and grabbed a stethoscope. “You can sit up,” he said. “You don’t need your feet in those stirrups.”
I told him the Kentucky Derby was coming up that Saturday and I was into interactive participation and I was getting into the feel of things.
“I just want to listen to your heart.” He told me to take some deep breaths.
You’ve got to be kidding!
“Did you know you had a murmur?” he asked.
“Isn’t that one of those guys who dresses in black face and women‘s clothes? They have a big parade in Philadelphia every New Year‘s Day.”
“That’s a Mummer,” he said. “I’m hearing a murmur.”
The only murmur you’re hearing is the one sweeping through the Nazi-hunting crowd that’s gathered outside your door with pitchforks and bloodhounds. They’ve found you out, Dr. Goering!
“What I’d like to do,” he said, “is make an appointment for you to have an echocardiogram. It’s like an ultrasound of the heart that can show us how well the blood is pumping. I don’t want to proceed with surgery until I know your heart is in good condition.”
This brought me to attention like the snapping of no latex glove could ever do. Suddenly I felt no pain below my waist. As a matter of fact, I felt nothing below my waist.
“My heart?” I asked. “No doctor has ever heard a heart murmur inside my chest. What does it mean?”
“Generally nothing, but for a murmur to develop this late in life, it’s best to check it out before we put you under anesthesia.”
Suddenly, Dr. Goering seemed like a decent, concerned individual. He made some notes on my chart, then told us that his nurse would contact me with the day and time for my echocardiogram.
“The truth, doc,” I insisted. “Do you think it’s anything serious?”
He shrugged and said, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”
Copyright 2011 by Wendel Potter
COMING SOON: THE HERNIA CHRONICLES, PART 2
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