Doctor? No.
Hello. Today is my regular installment of the Sunday Gene Pool, in which I ask for questions but, as always, generously give back with entertainment. Today’s entertainment is the true story of what happened to me yesterday. But first, a one-question Gene Pool Gene Poll.
So: I am scheduled for surgery Monday morning to excise a truly disgusting event that has occurred on my face. (My face itself is already a truly disgusting event, but this is a further insult to it, the way a maggot infestation further destroys the look of a morel mushroom.)
Anyway, it is fairly serious surgery — as I wrote last week it could wind up damaging a nerve and leaving me with a perpetual snotty sneer, which wouldn’t be that big a change, actually, but is still technically alarming. So before the surgery I had to submit to a physical exam and blood test to make sure I could withstand a three-hour procedure, which was not a given inasmuch as I am 71, have lived a life of shocking debauchery, and am in generally ghastly health with a prostate the size of a beanbag chair.
I took the physical on Thursday, and on Saturday I received a panicked phone call from a physician’s assistant at my doctor’s office. She said I was, basically, dying. My blood test came back with wildly elevated levels of potassium, which can mean many bad things — I confirmed this with Dr. Google — the worst of which is that your heart might explode. The physician’s assistant said I had to go to an emergency room, immediately.
I am not making any of this up.
So I went to an urgent-care clinic and got my blood re-tested and it turns out my potassium levels are fine. The initial test was wrong. So never mind. Sorry! Your heart is not exploding, it turns out! You’re good to go. Have a nice rest of the day!
This did remind me of something that happened 50 years ago to my father. One of his eyes lost focus, and he went to a neurologist who told my mother and me (out of his earshot) that he probably had a malignant tumor behind his eye that would grow and quickly disconnect his brain from the rest of his body, leaving him fully conscious but basically a giant protoplasmic mass, unable to do anything, including talk or move or breathe without assistance until he died in existential agony. It turned out, he was just having a bad reaction to a new diabetes drug. He lived another 30 years. This is just one more reason I love modern medicine.
Anyway, I will be having my surgery. I will be left with kind of a big scar on my face, which I am sort of looking forward to because it will connect me to Pacino and Tony Montana and my lil’ fren, I will feel more manly.
Today’s question: Have you had an amusing medical event in your life? Tell us, please. Send your stuff to here:
Does everyone get shunted to Google forms to submit to substack through the "submit here" option?
Here's my fun times medical story:
I worked in a kennel where dogs were trained for law enforcement. We trained virtually every K9 team for one federal agency, as well as many for other local, national, and international agencies. All I'm saying, we handled A LOT of dogs. We didn't have that many intentional bites, little less attacks, but quite often someone didn't move his hand fast enough, or misjudged where a dog was going to grip, and ended up at urgent care.
One day I was exercising a dog with known issues who decided to exhibit just why he was labeled as having issues.
He bit my wrist, my boob, and my other hand before I regained control.
I went to the local urgent care, -A place where someone from our unit turns up with a dog bite every few weeks- in the middle of the work day, in my work clothes embazoned with the kennel's logo, with bites on both hands as well as the bite on my boob, and had to argue extensively with the Nurse Practitioner that this was in fact a work related injury and not rough sex.
I do realize *almost* every bite wound on a woman's breast(s) typically comes from another human, but come on!
I'm sitting there, covered in mud and dog spit from the morning's previous training, overweight, my hair in no kind of style whatsoever, and this woman is insisting she thinks I just popped in straight from the middle of a bout of overly passionate sex.
I was an avid hiker with my dog when younger and would check the both of us for ticks frequently.. After one hike I noticed that a tick had settled itself into my scrotum. I plucked it out the best I could but didn't get the head completely out. Over the next few weeks I noticed a small lump forming that was becoming quite tender at the site of the bite. After much thought I decided that I was not going to visit the doctor due solely to the the embarrassment factor. I was a dentist and had a little experience doing minor surgical procedures in the mouth but, not surprisingly, no real scrotal experience. One evening I situated myself in my dental chair, a bright light highlighting my package area. I numbed the site with a local anesthetic, used a scalpel to hemisect the lump, and was able to remove the tick mouth parts with dental pliers, flushing the area with saline to finish. I relayed this story to some close friends and they informed me that I should have recorded this on video as it may have been worth some money on certain internet sites. That was my only regret as things quickly healed. I made sure that for any upcoming hikes this area was liberally coated with tick repellent.