Doctors, are for the most part, unflappable. They are stoic icons of professionalism, the pinnacle of their vocation. They are as cool as a cucumber under stress, and in my 75 years on this planet, I never saw one flinch, that is, until yesterday – and I made him do it.
My hand surgeon remained unwavering when I confronted him with the awful truth that his surgery on 3 of my fingers failed miserably a couple of years ago. He danced around his words, calling it a ‘rare and unexpected outcome’. His unexpected outcome left me with a hand that would no longer fully open or close – not an unworkable situation, but one I was hoping to avoid by enlisting his professional jurisprudence in the first place.
I was seething at the time, since I still had most of my health, but the partial loss of my good hand --which is now my bad hand since my bad hand got worse, moving the good hand somewhere else in the chain of -- aw shit, I really don’t care anymore – they are both my bad hands as far as I’m concerned, placing me on the injured reserve for many of the extracurricular activities I have enjoyed for so long. (Whining done for a moment…I hope).
Anyway, the point of being a doctor is to be able to roll with the punches so well and so often that you are easily mistaken as a high-level member of Cirque du Soleil, just curiously out of costume.
The reason for this visit was lingering discomfort (really pain – but please don’t try to box me in with that 1-10 scoring regimen. I discarded that acronym a real long time ago. I now simply define my agony by how high I am screaming -- usually in ‘A’ above high ‘C’.
Sadly, my surgery from last August, while a more-than-comforting success, left me with some herniated abdominal muscle tissue around the incision site. After poking and prodding, this other good doctor emphasized that a surgical fix (a state-of-the-art robotic repair) had to be performed much sooner than later. The risk of damaging what remains of my intestinal tract and turning ‘simple’ into ‘lifesaving’ rests gingerly on the horizon like an albatross sitting peacefully on the ocean as a killer whale stealthily approaches at ramming speed from the rear. What started out as a peaceful winter day with relatively mild and sunny weather is precariously transforming into a midday lunch where I am unfortunately the main course.
As the surgeon (I digress for a moment: I just checked my exceedingly detailed MEDICAL NOTES section on my iPhone and I have 16 surgeons on call for my 23 operations since 1972.) is explaining to me how he will make the incisions for the insertion of the robotic instruments that will address the issue at hand -- I thought it was appropriate to explain to him about the other hernia that I have had for nearly 30 years resting very close to where the incisions will be made.
This is a hiatal hernia just below my rib cage on the left side of my abdomen. I managed to abruptly tear the tissue during a brutal-as-shit coughing fit as a result of a hideous case of the flu so many years ago. I watched the tissue pouch begin to protrude through my abdominal wall and my first thought was the scene in ‘Alien’ where the chestburster unceremoniously forces his way out of John Hurt.
My primary care doctor had warned me about the consequences of having this repaired (which have since dissipated since the advent of robotic surgery makes these procedures simple and straightforward, if it is possible to ever say that (always the pessimist I am). I told him that I was quite knowledgeable about the process of popping the tissue back into its proper location through the massaging technique that he detailed to me for this new injury.
I then proceeded to recount one of my bravado experiences that usually leaves a room full of jaws on the floor.
I don't tout these stories in an attempt to define my manliness -- or my foolishness as it sometimes appears when I reflect upon these defining moments in my life. But this was a good story, so I thought it was appropriate to share it with the good doctor.
It was a Saturday, and I was at my home DZ (Drop Zone) in Perris Valley, Ca. For well over 20 years, I spent nearly every Saturday here, skydiving with a group of friends. We carried a party atmosphere with us wherever we went. Don't let this imply that safety took a back seat at any point in time during a skydive. That was never the case. Unfortunately, some things can pop up on the way to altitude that require an immediate decision as to whether or not it is safe to continue. I had been in one of those situations several years earlier and made the wrong decision and ended up with a torn rotator cuff which ultimately required a very serious surgery.
The Skyvan we were jumping from this morning was a monstrously huge plane. It's door, if you can call it that, is a gaping chasm at the tail end of the plane which is wide enough to drive a car through. This makes for beautiful exits – we call them linked exits, where 6 or more jumpers take grips on the suits or gear of one another, and smoothly exit the plane, usually in a circular pattern.
At around 10,000 feet the hernia that I had been nursing for about 10 years decided to pop out. I'm scrambling past my gear straps and my reserve ripcord to take two fingers from each hand to push the little puppy back underneath my rib cage. I don't say anything to the other guys -- I don't want to make them nervous.
I watched the color drain from my doctor's face as I talked about sitting on the cold hard floor of the aircraft on a slight angle backwards -- as I'm positioned in between the legs of the guy behind me. I'm feverishly manipulating this piece of muscle, pushing and prodding and poking it back through the hole; hoping it will settle before we get the green light.
I could not get a grunt, a groan, or a grimace from the good doctor. He just stood there frozen in fear listening to my story. He could not fathom the notion that I was about to exit a plane at 12,500 feet flying at 135 mph and me falling somewhere between 120 and 150 mph, trying to get this hernia to settle down. Whatever string no matter how thin that connected the doctor to reality, it had now been pulled as tight as a whip about to crack. He could not believe what he was listening to, and I certainly was not embellishing the facts.
Just between you and me, I'll let you know that if I wasn't 100% when the green light swung on and we rose and sauntered to the edge of the lift gate (staring down at the little ants that used to be people walking around on the drop zone), I would have worked my way to the back of the plane and took the ride down out of an abundance of caution.
I managed to get the hernia back in, and my experience in the past was such that I knew it wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. I tried to make eye contact with my doctor, but he had one of those 1000 yard stares frozen to his face. He was used to playing by the numbers, counting slowly from 1 to 10 and taking each step in order, in order to make the process perfect with whatever he was doing at that point in time. I had put a chink in his armor, and although it was only temporary, he looked like a man facing a reality that he had never experienced before, clueless to know which number was next in the list.
I laughed a little under my breath -- I had never seen a doctor flinch before, and I assure you by all that is holy and good in this world, I had no intention of attempting to do this when I began the story.
As I described the skydive to him, the movements we made in unison to complete what we call “points”, I might as well have been speaking Swahili to the young man (which, as a matter of fact, I am mildly conversational in), because it appeared as if the rest of my story was going way over his head. He eventually did snap out of it -- but by the rules of the street that we used to play on back in the 50s, he did deserve two good punches to the shoulder for flinching.
I stopped jumping about 10 years ago – I did not know at the time that both of my rotator cuffs were torn – preventing me from properly flaring my canopy on landing. This is a critically necessary skill for it makes the difference between a soft-as-cotton-tiptoe-landing -- and dropping a sack of potatoes (me) on the tarmac from 15 feet.
I was now, that sack of potatoes, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it but continue to move forward. What used to be yards are now inches, and I’m certain that those inches are destined to become millimeters sometime soon. The point is still the same. Keep moving forward.
Try to externalize the pain. I’m not hurting, my body is.
I’m fine, it’s this old bag of bones that is seriously in need of repair. I’m way out of warranty, and there are only so many parts that can be repaired or replaced. Hopefully the surgeon that saved my life twice last year can add a little more duct tape and baling wire to me, so I can hold out a bit longer. As far as I’m concerned, I’m just getting started…
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