The there’s only one reason a sane person would check in to a busy hospital’s emergency room.
They’re dying.
Pro tip: If you want to die in front of a doctor, plan to put death on hold for 4 or 5 hours. Emergency rooms don’t move quickly.
I knew I wasn’t dying but was in enough discomfort that it was starting to seem like a decent alternative.
Briefly, here’s what lead to this.
I’ve been in treatment for neck/throat cancer. Treating cancer in this area means radiation to the neck. Radiation to the neck means a very tender thoat. A tender throat means it hurts to eat solid food. Giving up solid food means a liquid diet.
An all-liquid diet is great for weight loss, but all liquids means no solids, and no solids means one day you’re gonna say, “Um, honey, would you please pick me up some Depends?”
Congratulate yourself, sir. You have just reached a new low in your life.
For even when you no longer need to depend on Depends, you can never pretend you didn’t once depend.
The end.
Wait, not quite.
Once seen in these, it can never be unseen.
This, by the way, is another ending. The end of romance as you knew it. Boom! Love life over.
Your man-card will NOT be recalled because your name is no longer even on the list.
Now, the end?
Nope. There’s more.
For about two weeks, things had not been right. Despite being on an all-liquid diet, somehow my system was grinding to a halt, and I knew it.
Air traffic control had been receiving warnings that planes were circling overhead with no place to land.
In riverboat terms, nothing could move because of a log jam on the river.
In automotive terms, traffic had come to a standstill because the exit was blocked.
It finally reached a point where I could no longer handle it alone, and that’s how I wound up in the emergency room.
I figured the doctor would give me the strongest drugs known to man, get me out of pain and send me home. Simple stuff.
Not how it happened.
The ER doctor examined me. Thoroughly examined me. COMPLETELY examined me. Rubber gloves involved.
Then announced, “You’re an enigma.”
Actually, he said, “You need an enema,” but this is my story, and I’m taking literary license.
You know what? I expected this would be the conclusion when I came in. This train had been derailed for a while, and I knew it would take dynamite to blow up the wreckage and clear the track.
So I was resigned to it. Let’s do this thing.
He called in a nurse to take over the dirty work. Of course.
While everyone knows the basics of this procedure, I must tell you I was really, really unprepared for what was ahead.
What I saw next can only be described as a 40-gallon water tank hanging from an IV pole and heading my way.
Apparently, the plan was to break up the logjam by creating floodwaters the likes that hadn’t been seen since Noah plucked animals from the earth two-by-two.
I don’t know just how big of a water balloon they thought they could make my butt but clearly there were great expectations.
“Might as well lose the hospital gown,” I was told. “It’ll only be in the way.”
Great. Now I knew exactly what it meant to be naked and afraid.
Here’s how it would work. I’d lie on a bed of absorbent pads taking on water until I couldn’t, hold it until I couldn’t, then grab the corners of the pad, holding them up like a diaper with no pins and dash to the bathroom.
When finished in the bathroom, I’d walk buck naked back to the bed, lie down on more absorbent pads and repeat the process. Over and over.
It went on for days. Or 15 minutes. It was awful.
This was humiliation on a level I had never dreamed. New lows in life? I was mining them by the minute.
Having lost almost 40 pounds in the last couple of months, my skin hangs on me like old drapes in a haunted house. And if I haven’t mentioned it, I was naked in front of a nurse.
And an enema was involved.
Got the picture?
Good. You’ve suffered enough.
The end. For real.
”I’m sorry you’re not feeling well, son. How long has it been since you had a good BM?”
-your grandma