Poetry & Blindfolds

On Wednesday, May 20, 2009, I ended my 15,988^th consecutive day of being surgery-free as I went under the knife to have two hernias attended to.  Actually, I did not go under the knife; I went under the things that poke holes in me to stick in lights, mesh and puff up my middle section like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon.

 

Naturally enough, I remember nothing of the surgery.   The day’s activities – from admission to interviews to the surgery to the post-care to the wheelchair making sure the elevator doors didn’t hit me on the ass on the way out – were militaristic and meticulous.  By the time I remembered to think of a few Last Words that I might want to say in the operating room, I already had three new holes below my navel in an area that hasn’t been that hairless since I was 12.

 

The adventures have all been post-surgery and have all involved re-learning basic skills.  Walking, standing, sitting, sleeping, drinking, laughing, coughing: these were all brand new challenges in the first twelve hours.  These were all warm-ups, though, to the ultimate challenge of the day.  For the surgical procedure, I had urethral catheterization (in layman’s terms, this can be defined as ‘tube up the dick’), so I was warned that urinating might initially come with a burning sensation.  It was certainly burning: the first bit of urine felt like someone lighting a match and holding it at the end of my penis.  But there was so much more!  This was followed by the sensation of someone else dumping molten lava on my genitalia, followed by various extreme hot sauces available at authentic Mexican restaurants chunking their way out of my urethra, followed by a sting that was evocative an STD if it was carried by a wasp and that wasp was intent on stinging only the end of my penis.  Repeatedly.

 

Because this was my first surgery, my body reacted in very odd ways.  The oddest was my genitalia, which grew massive and blue and lumpy and purple and pushed my thighs apart, so much so that my walking resembled a very old horse-ridin’ gunfighter from 1880.  At times, my penis and testicles chose to resemble three large decaying grapefruit filled with meat. 

 

The wonders of relearning how to defecate will the spared here.  Suffice to say that it has been an adventure in and of itself.  Let me paint this minor male-centric picture: of course, one has to sit when one takes a poo.  However, when one’s abdomen is distended and healing, it also disallows the ability to tuck oneself to point into the bowl.  So one has to combine balance, necessity, aim and precision into a situation in which you have little balance, aim or precision into a procedure that normally only takes some amusing reading material.

 

During this time, my girlfriend embarked on her monthly pre-PMS routine and her breasts became swollen and sensitive.  Thus, in the most comedic turn of the recovery process, we could only hug as long as I did not touch her breasts and she did not touch my stomach.  A shoulder pat and a holding of breath.

 

Four days later, I am putting on jeans for the first time and am going from sitting to standing in time measurable in seconds, not minutes.  Now I can focus on more important things, like stretching out the Vicodin supply for as long as possible…