Aren't Hospitals Great?

I was visiting my brother in law in the hospital and was impressed by the comedians coming and going. Practically everyone who came in the room had a comeback for any comment we made. You’d think they’d heard all our questions before.

While I was there I made up a riddle that I think is quite clever. Feel free to impress your friends with it. Where is the only place you can be in bed all day without getting any rest? A hospital.

I was there for about four hours, and it was a veritable freeway in there. We never did figure out who was who – people brought in water, pills, just stopped in to say “How ya doin?” The only ones we were sure about were the phlebotomists because they had long fangs and carried fat needles and said, “Excuse me, I vant to suck your blood.”

Which reminds me of an old joke that we used to love to say when we were kids. A man invited the Count to his home and asked, “Count, would you like some wine?” The Count replied with a wicked laugh in a thick, Transylvanian accent, “I don’t dlink vine, I dlink BLOOD.” We thought this was the funniest thing in the world, but I guess you had to be there. It doesn’t type out as funny as it sounded in person, especially when the Count swings his fake cloak in front of his face.

Speaking of kids, is there anyone who did not stumble across some Ex-Lax and think it was a chocolate bar when you were a kid? I found a “chocolate bar” on my grandmother’s dresser and ate a square. It was so good I ate another, and then another. Not too long afterward I was making chocolate syrup in the toilet.

The nurses gave my brother in law some stuff to relieve him. “Your goal is to go three times, and then we’ll talk about releasing you.” So he drank the stuff they gave him and pretty soon he went to the tiny, in-room restroom. When he came out, he was quite proud. “One down, two to go!” he said brightly. When the nurse came in, he couldn’t wait to tell her.

“What color was it?” she asked excitedly, as if he were telling her he’d just seen a unicorn.

Where else but a hospital can you talk about BM’s and everyone thinks it’s totally acceptable? Can you imagine being at work or at a party and having this discussion?

“Hey, where have you been?”

“In the bathroom. I’ve been a little plugged up, you see, so my doctor gave me some pretty tasty stuff and I’m very relieved to say that I’m flushing again after three days, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful. Bob and Carol, I want you to me Ben, here. He’s just taken a crap after a three day drought.”

“You must be so proud of yourself, Ben. Just out of curiosity, was it brown? The reason I’m asking is that just the other day I was reading an article in Bowel Health Quarterly that the color is very important.”

“You don’t say!”

However, even though we were in a hospital, I can tell you that today I was not comfortable with the direction the conversation was going. He might be my brother in law, but I do NOT need to think about him on the toilet. I’m going to have nightmares tonight.

But other than that, my visit to the hospital was quite pleasant. There is never a dull moment. When there was a small lull in activity and we were about to resort to having to watch the TV that was mounted in such a way that you’d get a crick in your neck after a couple of minutes, a man came in the room and asked if he could test the fire alarm. At first we said, “Absolutely NOT!” But when he started begging and I could see he was about to break into tears, I finally said yes. He put this long stick with a cone on the end up to the fire alarm and must have blown some smoke into it because the alarm went off. Woo, that was some excitement for a couple of seconds until he disarmed it.

At regular intervals of about 2.5 minutes apart, various staff members needed to know what my brother in law’s blood pressure was – and it was never the same or even close, even though he was just lying there. They also kept him hooked up to a monitor that beeped every thirty seconds for no other reason than to remind us that there was no peace and quiet to be found in this den of sickness.

Luckily, after his third trip to the john, they told him he could go home after he gave a play-by-play of the size, shape, consistency, and color of the intestinal discharge (or “poop” in lay people’s term). It was the first time on record that my brother in law was NOT full of sh--.

Truth be told, I’m gonna kindof miss it up there in Room 377D.

Mom's Medical Myths

Tonight I had to take my daughter to an Urgent Care because she spiked herself in track. That sounds like something illegal or immoral. It doesn’t sound like the name of a rock band, however (inside joke).

I’m not sure how you spike yourself on the side of the leg just under the knee, since it has to be done by one of your own feet wearing a track shoe with spikes, but she was pole vaulting and found a way. She came home limping and bleeding with a bandage the size of a sheet of paper on her leg.

Unfortunately, her timing couldn’t have been worse because my son was coming over for dinner for the first time since he moved out, so I was preoccupied making hamburgers. “We’ve got 24 hours to get you stitches if you need them, so we might as well all sit down and eat,” I told her.

I don’t know where I got the 24 hour rule, which is much like the 5 second rule of letting food drop on the floor and being able to pick it up and eat it. Within 5 seconds it doesn’t get any dirt or germs – after that it’s infested. This is a handy rule with small children because they are constantly dropping food, either by accident or on purpose. If it’s an accident, like if it’s candy, they cry but you can cure that immediately by saying in a very chipper voice, “5 second rule!” and pick it up and give it to them. If they’ve dropped it on purpose, like if it’s broccoli, then you can say in a flat voice, “You know the 5 second rule,” then pick up the broccoli and put it back on their plate so they learn they’ll have to come up with something more creative to get out of eating “healthy” food.

If some of you reading this think it’s disgusting that I have picked food off the floor, let me assure you that it is a common practice among the mothers I know, and we are not meth moms.

Anyway, we had a rather pleasant dinner, and fortunately for my daughter, my son was chomping at the bit to leave because he had a friend coming over, so we went directly to the clinic. They looked at her gash and said, “Yep, she needs stitches.”

A rather cute, very young doctor, who I had passed in the hall earlier and, I’m telling the truth, he winked at me, came in and examined the wound. He smiled with dimples before he told us that he would be injecting pain killer right into the wound itself. We gasped.

“It’s a very short needle,” he said reassuringly.

“Oh yeah,” I said, “like that’s going to make a difference.” I continued to joke and kid around, getting a snicker out of my daughter here and there. Apparently to the medical staff, however, this was no laughing matter.

Part of the reason my daughter was snickering was because I had informed her earlier that the gash, swollen and on the soft, puckery tissue of the inside of her leg just below the knee area, looked like a woman’s private. She shushed me, of course, but as the doctor squeezed the wound and prepared to stitch, there was no denying the resemblance. I told her to take pictures with her phone, and when she showed me the first one, a close-up of the gaping wound just prior to the first stitch, it looked like pornography.

We watched him sew her up, which he did with delicate precision using a needle shaped like a U, pulling at the skin on the side with tweezers that made us both cringe, and slipping the U through then repeating on the other side before tying the whole thing in several carefully engineered knots. If I had been young and single I would have said, in a heavy southern accent, “Oh, doctor, you have such wonderful hands.”

Instead I made pleasant conversation. “Good thing she’s within the 24 hour rule of getting stitches,” I said to show how medically astute I was.

“Oh no,” he said. “Only 6 hours,” after that she risks serious infection.” My daughter scowled at me because I had forced her to sit and eat before getting medical attention. “Well, we’re still safe then, since it’s only been two hours since it happened.”

I did not mention the 5-second rule.

Post-operative Ramblings

I had oral surgery today and so I have been sleeping all day from painkillers. But I have to write something for today so I don’t miss, so I’m going to ramble about nothing. What do you mean all my posts are rambling about nothing? I have subjects and topics. Why would you insult me while I’m down? What is this world coming to?

For your information, I have been laying (or lying) on the couch all day suffering with a bag of frozen peas on my face. Do you think that’s fun? Well, do you????

Just because I’m a very positive person on occasion, and this is one of them because I want you to feel guilty, I will share that I’ve also been watching reruns of lots of very funny movies like The Blues Brothers and Hot Shots, Part Deux. I think Hot Shots is one of the best movies ever made because there’s some new dumb thing on the screen every twenty seconds. Like when Topper Harley says to Ranada (or Renada), “You must be joking,” she says back, “If I were joking I would say: ‘A horse walks into a bar and the bartender says, ‘Hey, why the long face?’’”

I had to put all those extra quotation marks because that’s a quote within a quote within a quote, just so you don’t start pointing fingers and saying I’m making typos, which I can do all on my own without your help, thank you very much.

The Blues Brothers is good because of all the music. Like the scene where Aretha Franklin tells her husband he can’t go off with the Blues Brothers and starts singing, “You better think (think) think what you’re trying to do to me (think!) Think (think think)” and so forth. Now these aren’t typos either. That’s pretty much the lyrics as best as I can remember them, and I hope I don’t have to get permission to use them because I feel like I’m going to throw up. Excuse me while I grab my barf bucket.

That’s better. So while Aretha is singing, some girls get off their bar stools and start dancing in being backup singers. Other people in the diner join in, and even the Blues Brothers. It’s one of my favorite scenes in a movie. And I think I misspelled scenes somewhere above but I again feel the need to barf. Must be the oxycodone, or the laying around or... I gotta run

When Did We Become Giants?

If we left our house for the day, and Jack (of Jack and the Beanstalk fame) crawled up a hypothetical vine and found a bowl of porridge on our kitchen table, would he think he was in the home of a giant?

Absolutely, because of the size of the bowl.

I made myself a can of soup today, and all my favorite, human-sized bowls were in the dishwasher, so I had to use a bowl from a set I’d gotten as a present that I don’t like to use because they are TOO BIG!

This so-called “soup” bowl could masquerade as a serving dish at a Thanksgiving dinner and no one would be the wiser. Usually I get two human-sized bowls of soup out of a can, which is satisfying because I like seconds, and if I divvy it up just right, even thirds. But I poured all the soup in this bowl and it didn’t even fill it – I think I could have gotten another whole can of soup in there, plus croutons, and a fly doing the backstroke (an old waitress joke – Customer: What’s this fly doing in my soup? Waitress: The backstroke).

I got stuffed on the one bowl of soup, and I didn’t even get seconds, which made me cranky. Food is so psychological – they don’t call it comfort food for nothin.’ You think if you’re having seconds you’re getting full, and you walk away from the table mildly miserable but contented.

With a bowl made for giants, you fill it up, and it fills you up, but you still want seconds so you put a little more in there of something, like cereal, and when you’re done, you are belly up on the couch moaning until sleep mercifully puts you out of your misery. This is not good for humans.

Giants, on the other hand, eat from giant-sized meal on a giant plate, then they have seconds, then they have a short nap before going out and roaming the countryside looking for gooses laying golden eggs. This is how it should be. The giant eats a hearty meal suitable to his size, and then walks it off.

In contrast, when humans are forced to eat using plates and bowls designed for giants, we fill the plates and plow through acres of food, stretching our stomachs every time we sit down to a meal like we’re in a hot dog eating contest, then we go back to work where we sit all day updating Facebook and Twittering, then go home and eat the same thing all over again and settle down for a few relaxing hours in front of the TV. We have consumed as many calories as the giant, through no fault of our own, but we don’t have that extra three or four feet of height. The extra calories have to go somewhere, and they decide the best place is our bellies, hips, thighs, ankles, under our arms and, yes, our jowls. What has made the giant a strapping specimen has made us hot air balloons.

If you want to know who is responsible for the obesity problem in America, you don’t need to look any further than plate and bowl manufacturers. And people who make Big Gulp cups and super-size containers for French fries. And the makers of boxes of candy in the movies that don’t even try to hide it – they say “GIANT SIZE!” right on the box. Same thing with popcorn and potato chips. Remember how a little bag of Lay’s chips would just hit the spot? Now the smallest bag you can get is, “GIANT SIZE.” Is it a conspiracy that these manufacturers, let’s call them “Communists” for want of a better word, are making us weak and ill from fat-related maladies so can they take over and rule the world? It certainly is food for thought.

I've Got a Cure for That

My daughter and I were watching a movie. Well, we were attempting to watch a movie, but it kept being broken up by little mini-series about drugs.

The first string of eight or nine drug episodes had miserable, worried actors with heartburn, high cholesterol, twitching legs, insomnia, heartburn, insomnia, and heartburn. A couple of minutes later, another mini-series with more miserable actors came on with insomnia, diabetes, depression, heartburn, high cholesterol, heartburn, insomnia, and insomnia. All of these ended the same, with smiling actors running through fields waving scarves in the breeze, tossing small children in the air, petting dogs with wagging tails, and all because they had taken drugs.

It was very educational. There are literally thousands and thousands of maladies just waiting to ensnare the human body, and, thank goodness, at least a gazillion drugs to snatch us away from the brink.

My favorite part is the disclaimers, “Do not take…” and “See your doctor if…” The ones that win my personal Academy Awards are for erectile dysfunction. I love when they say, “See your doctor if you have had an erection lasting more than 36 hours…” I bust a gut every time I hear this.

My mirth is bittersweet; however, because I went to Europe last summer and watched French and Italian TV. They have all our same shows, but in their languages, so I know everyone else in the world is watching our commercials, and I know they must be thinking, “Is every man in America a limp d___?” The answer is an emphatic NO.

According to a reliable source who works in the film industry, ED drugs are only used by older Hollywood men who are trying to make young actresses happy. I can say this about that. If I were attempting to secure employment, and my only option was spending “quality time” with a wrinkly old (30+) geezer, and he’s taken a pill to make the “quality time” last longer, I would not be happy. I’d have to be a pretty skilled actress. Some drug company should come out with a pill for this situation and call it something like “CouchOhNo.” I can’t wait to see those commercials.

I want to tell the world that America is not a bunch of sissies. We’re not! We simply prefer our ethnic foods, like potato chips and dip, and our big screen TV’s over yucky vegetables and running around like a bunch of stupid Olympic athletes. And you can bet your bootie we could rise to any occasion if we wanted to, we’re just rich enough to pay a drug company to do it for us. So there.

Now I’m in a cranky mood. I’m going to ask my doctor for a pill for that, and if he won’t prescribe it for me, I’ll get a free sample straight from the drug company by calling 1-800-CRANKYNOMO, (that’s 1-800-CRANKYNOMO).

To see Cuba Gooding, Jr.’s classic ED commercial on MySpace, copy this link into your browser: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=32622947

He should definitely get best actor, and best stunt man.

Here's to Health

I’m happy to say I’m back in the saddle again after fighting the good fight with that flu virus.

And I tell you, it’s good to be back. While I was battling the sickness, I entertained myself with a detective novel that was a fast, exhilarating read. The only thing that bothered me about it was that it had little errors in it — not a ton of them, just enough to be aggravating.

In this blog I might have a misspelled word or misplaced comma here and there. It’s easy enough to miss your own mistakes. Look at those two “mis” words above. They both started out with the same “mis” but one has one “s” and the other has two. Luckily my computer had my back and fixed both of them as I typed.

This book had a problem with commas. They’d show up in the oddest places, where you’d never even think to put a comma. A kid in middle school writing a paper and just sprinkling commas in at random like he was putting pepper on scrambled eggs would not have put commas where these commas were. Here’s an, example. See what I mean?

Since the author is a best seller and it came from a good publisher, you'd think the editors would have caught these unworthy commas and sent them packing.

He made a mistake that had me scratching my head, mostly because I hadn’t washed my hair in a couple of days for fear my virus would turn into pneumonia. One place he said the police found a dead woman in one park, and about 200 pages later she had moved to another park across town. “Huh?” I said. I went back and looked it up, and sure enough, she'd moved to a totally different park.

It makes you lose a little bit of trust, you know? You want to believe his cockamamie story (WOW, my computer just fixed that word – who would have thought cockamamie was in it’s vocabulary?), but then he makes a big error and you realize that all the killing and conspiracy and corruption are just make believe.

Since it’s set in my town, I recognized a lot of the places in the book and I was totally convinced that these were real events, you know, but the names had been changed and facts rearranged to protect the guilty. Which wasn’t really necessary because he killed off all the bad guys or had them put on death row by the end of the book, and all the characters I liked ended up coming out fine, even the one who was shot in the head, and the one who shot her, who then got shot himself in the temple at point blank range but escaped with only a scratch.

It was a seriously complex story until the end when everything came to a screeching halt and got wrapped up as if the author was tired of writing and wanted to be done with it. I know how he feels. If I let any more time elapse, I’m liable to suffer a relapse.

Revenge of the Virus

Well, I beat the bacteria, but the virus threw a knockout punch to the head so I’ve had the joy of lying in bed all day with a throbbing headache and trying to keep from coughing as much as possible. What a swine the swine flu is, if that’s what I’ve got but it’s hard to know for sure since they say that it has about the same symptoms as regular flu except that you might, or might not, get a fever. One thermometer said I had a fever of 100.2, the other said I’m at a steady 98.6. At any rate, I set a goal to comment on this blog every day for 365 days, and no stinking virus is going to stand in my way, even though I’ve got the chills and can’t stand to be on this computer anymore. Stay well, my friend, and beware Halloween parties, which is surely where I got this bug. Next year I’ll deck myself in a clever costume to avoid contact – I’ll go as a surgeon and wear a white mask and latex gloves, and stuff myself before I leave home to avoid the inevitable double dippers, which would make a fine topic if I were feeling better, but since I’m not, too-da-loo!

Food for Thought

Where do you go for inspiration? I go to the refrigerator. If I’m feeling at a loss for anything, like I can’t find my black gloves, I’ll open the refer door and, no, I generally don’t find the missing gloves, they’re usually in the bread bin, but I will find something that makes me forget that I’m at a loss.

The something is comfort. I don’t know what it is, but staring into that bright box, one hand braced on the outside of the refrigerator and the other swinging the door back and forth, has a calming effect on me.

There’s rarely anything in there to eat in an emergency. Jars of assorted pickles only appeal on occasion, like when I’m pregnant, which hasn’t happened in awhile. Those pickles would be covered in mold except that even bacteria won’t go in those jars.

Bacteria are a funny thing. I feel like I’m catching a cold right now because I’ve got a scratchy, dry throat. I guess I’ve got the swine flu. That’s caused by a virus, you know, scientific name: the swine flu virus. Viruses seem to like to cause damage to your lungs and their associated apparatuses. Bacteria, on the other hand, seems intent on making you upchuck or get a festering, oozing, swollen, and I would say puss-ie but I’m not sure how to spell it, infection from an innocent cut.

I once tripped over a vine at Girl Scout camp, and it made a little cut on the front of my ankle. That thing swelled up and got so red and puss infested that I had to go to the doctor and get a tetanus shot in the bottom. Gosh that hurt. I limped around for two days because the nurse reared back and aimed that syringe at my cheek, and it went right through the muscle and lodged in the bone. The nurse and doctor were yanking and pulling, trying to get it out, sweat beading on their faces and dripping to the floor as they strained, me screaming like a banshee birthing a porcupine. Yes, I’m kidding. But it did hurt like a son of a gun.

Bacteria aren’t anything to mess with. That being said, yesterday I made a huge pot of fresh vegetable bean soup, and, what with the time change and everything, I left the pot on the stove all night. This morning I promptly put it in the refrigerator, but I knew those bacteria had been partying in there all night. I saw some swimming in the broth this morning when I opened the lid. They dove for cover behind green beans and carrots, but they were in there — I could see the splashes.

The all-knowing Google said I should pour the whole pot down the drain, ladle and all, and I started to, but I couldn’t bring myself to waste all the food and time and energy, and besides it was a rare batch of soup for me—it was fit to eat. I had a giant bowl for lunch, figuring I might as well make it worth my while if I was going to be heaving all evening.

Knock on wood, so far so good. But I do have this puss-ie thing on my leg I’m going to keep a very close watch on. No sense in having those bacteria in my belly joining forces with the ones on my leg, with the swine flu virus playing tag team. BACK OFF, BACTERIA! VAMOOSE VIRUS! I showed them who’s boss. I’ll be fine now.