Fear and Loathing at the Hospital
or A true story
by A Candy-Colored Clown They Call the Sandman
As I lay enveloped in a particularly vivid dream in which the munchkins from the 'Wizard Of Oz' were poking, probing, prodding and caressing my pale, naked body with their dirty, stubby fingers, an increasingly ominous thumping sound began resonating and connecting me with an uncomfortable reality. Just before being jolted awake with the most intense, acute pain I had ever experienced, I glimpsed an image of the Head Munchkin, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Gabe Kaplan, repeatedly plunging a tiny dagger into my side while attempting spectacularly unfunny Groucho Marx impersonations.
I jumped out of bed clutching the right side of my groin, and noticed the thumping from the dream was now a loud pounding, as if a huge bass guitar string connecting my brain and my lower right abdomen was repeatedly being plucked by a preadolescent aspiring death-metal rocker with Attention Deficit Disorder. The pain symphony rose to a crescendo and turned my lower back into a sea of fire. I shouted to my wife to wake up and asked her if that scene in 'Alien' where the little reptilian slimy mass of goo and fangs "hatched" out of the guy's stomach bothered her, and she looked at the clock and informed me that it was 4:30 in the morning and yes, that scene bothered her very much. I then told her that either I was about to recreate that for her, or some hitherto never-experienced physiological phenomenon was occurring inside of me.
On our way to the hospital, visions of my appendix being yanked out of a gaping chest cavity danced in my head as my body temperature plummeted and uncontrollable shaking set in. As I staggered into the emergency room, with my pale, sweating form racked by spasmodic twitches of agony and a rictus grin of a grimace plastered on my face, I'm sure I appeared to be a freshly resurrected cocaine casualty to the nurse on duty. As he took my temperature and blood pressure and we discussed my symptoms, he said it sounded like I had a kidney stone. I laughed feebly, and told him he could "shoot straight" with me and asked him how long I had. He assured me I would be OK as he wheeled me into the examination room where, neatly folded and awaiting its next fashion victim, lay the famous hospital gown. As I donned this hideously demeaning cotton atrocity, which is unstitched in the back to allow easy access for the prying hands of the hospital staff, I began feeling nauseous from the pain. My wife helped me onto the comfortable, narrow, cold, steel bed and I lay in wait for the doctor, shaking and moaning. He arrived surprisingly quick, and within minutes had an intravenous drip filled with water and a mild painkiller hooked into my arm.
He asked me where it hurt and I pointed down toward the right side of my groin and my lower back. Of course, this immediately indicated to him that he needed to thrust his hands into my underwear and begin squeezing my testicles. Now, I enjoy a good manly testicle-squeezing as much as the next guy, but this was starting to become mildly uncomfortable and definitely wasn't helped by the fact that two other doctors and a nurse were staring down at me barely able to suppress their urges to burst out into uncontrollable laughter. The doctor asked me if "it hurt" when he squeezed my left testicle, and I thought to myself does he mean does it hurt compared to when other strange men wearing white lab coats clamp their grubby paws around my left testicle, or does it hurt compared to the state in which it exists in nature-comfortably nestled in the protective womb of clean, double-stitched, size 36 Hanes Classics? I told him that it hurt a bit, but probably nothing unusual given the circumstances. He then asked if my right testicle was always missing, whereupon I leaned up, looked down and nearly passed out. It seems all the excitement and pain caused Mister Right Testicle to declare the sack area unfit for testicular habitation and he fled to the relatively safe confines of my lower abdomen. The doctor assured me this was fairly common, but he still wanted to check it out "just to be sure." The doctor was starting to make me a little nervous. He urged me to help him coax the testicle out from its little sanctuary by straining my muscles as if I were preparing for a bowel movement. Oh, dear reader, the revenge fantasy that waltzed through my brain at this moment I'm sure needn't be spelled out, but I guarantee you that the over-eager Doctor Friendly would think twice before embarking on another genital safari.
Well, everything ended up copasetic in the testicle department, so the good doctor left me on my own to writhe in agony. I noticed the painkiller in the IV didn't seem to be having the intended effect; if anything, the pain increased, and when I peered up toward the mute television and caught a glimpse of Rush Limbaugh's fat head filling the screen and his tiny lips moving a mile a minute, my whole lower torso was racked by the most intense, gut-wrenching pain I've ever experienced. As I lay screaming and crying, my body began flopping, gyrating and thrashing about as if I were auditioning for Linda Blair's role in 'The Exorcist.' The doctor came running in with a syringe the size of my arm, and for the first time in my life, a needle that size represented relief instead of fear.
As the Dilaudid coursed through my veins blanketing and caressing away the pain, I looked up at the TV and noticed Mr. Limbaugh now had long hair, a goatee, love beads, and was urging viewers to "stay away from the brown acid-it's a bummer, man." Yes-the medication was definitely working. At least for the next twenty minutes it was, at which time round two of painus excruciatus returned. This time, the doctor came in looking a bit worried and assured me that although he was confident that I was suffering the effects of a kidney stone, he just wanted to "check something." Suddenly, he opened a drawer and snapped on a pair of rubber gloves of the clear latex variety and commanded me to roll over onto my stomach. I caught a glimpse of the inbred "banjo boy" from 'Deliverance' strumming the opening chords of what was to be my theme song for the next five most degrading minutes of my life. When the doctor felt that I had been sufficiently violated, I was rewarded with more Dilaudid (to keep the incident "our little secret" perhaps?).
I was then wheeled into an x-ray room which bore a strong resemblance to Buffalo Bill's dungeon/basement of horrors in 'Silence Of The Lambs.' My diminutive, overly-cheerful nurse, Primilia, explained that she was going to take a "bunch" of x-rays. I asked her how long this bunch would take because the Dilaudid was wearing off. She said she'd be done in "ten or fifteen minutes." Forty minutes later, Primilia seemed happy to inform me that the right side of my body was not showing up on the x-rays and she would need take a fresh set of images again. I informed her, through gritted teeth, that if I didn't get some more medication quickly, my right side would never show up on ANY x-rays EVER because I would claw my insides out to reach the source of the pain. Fortunately, I received the Dilaudid, and the x-rays taken shortly thereafter revealed what the doctors had suspected all along-a small (3-4 mm) kidney stone was on its way from my kidney to my bladder. The doctor assured me that "90% of the time" stones of this size pass naturally through the urethra. My throat went dry as I feebly inquired what happened the other 10% of the time.
"Then, we have to go in and get it," he replied with just a hint of sadomasochistic glee.
What, pray tell, does "going in and getting it" entail, I asked with a gulp. He said that one procedure involves me sitting in a special bath while being bombarded with laser beams which will break up the stone into small pieces. The other procedure, he said, evil smirk returning, requires that a small tube be inserted into the hole at the tip of my penis and pushed up through my urethra to capture the stone. I asked him if there was a way to increase the odds of allowing it to pass naturally, and he urged me to drink lots of water.
Immediately upon arriving back home in my drug-induced stupor, I, for all practical purposes, attached a garden hose to my mouth and commenced a urination schedule for the next three days which required that a toilet be within a three-foot arc at all times. And it's not that I don't enjoy urinating into a strainer and having approximately one-third of my offering splatter back onto my legs and feet, it's just that after 72 hours, I was running out of socks.
Finally, just as I was preparing to give up hope and ready myself for the inevitability of becoming more than intimate with Mister Tube, out plopped a roundish, lumpy, reddish-brown globule/chip into the strainer. Surprisingly painless, I bent over to examine it, thoughts of a champagne celebration dancing in my head, when suddenly the stone began vibrating and jumping like a Mexican jumping bean. As I looked on in horror, the walls of the stone began erupting and soon cracked open completely to reveal a miniature Lyle Lovett, dressed as a scarecrow, singing 'If I Only Had A Brain' while he performed cranial surgery on Montel Williams. But that's another story....
[Writers] [Birdhouse]