Make sure your seat is comfortable, grab an extra cushion, you might want to fix a sandwich...

I haven't been to the hospital many times, though, being in my fifties now I'm operating on an expired warranty and things are starting to fall apart like crazy.

Nearly all of my hospital visits could have been Saturday Night Live sketches.

Episode One: “Queen of My Heart”

I got married at a particularly stupid age: eighteen. My lovely bride was so young, we couldn't get married in Georgia; we had to go to Alabama.

Sadly, that's not a joke, it’s a big, flaming, red flag that I ignored.

Just before Christmas, a little over a year into our marriage, I tried to be a tough guy and went to work with pneumonia. I didn't know I had pneumonia, I thought it was just a chest cold, and no chest cold is gonna slow me down. I was a laborer on a construction crew. It was a couple of weeks before Christmas. I ended up in the hospital with pericarditis. That's inflammation of the tissues around the heart.

So, there I was, a not-quite-twenty-year-old, very sturdy construction worker in ICU. I learned somewhat later that I was considered something of a spectacle; young, tanned, lean, well-muscled, and utterly helpless. Attempting to sit up, with the help of two strong people, left me completely exhausted, wheezing for breath, and shaking all over. I didn't want them to catheterize me, so going to the bathroom was a ten-minute ordeal involving a couple of sturdy, very patient guys. I weighed over two hundred pounds, and none of it was fat, by the way.

I ate like a king. As long as there was no salt, and not a lot of fat, I could eat all I wanted. So I did. On day one, a young lady came into the room and squeezed my arms and legs all up and down, then left with a look of concern on her face. She returned with a nurse and pointed out that my arms and legs were severely swollen and she feared that I was retaining water or worse. The nurse sighed and said, "Those are muscles, dear. This one is actually under seventy years old."

Late that same very dark, very stormy night, my lovely young wife and our baby son appeared on the scene, a bit soggy, and she demanded that I give her a hundred dollars.

Without voicing the fact (which she should have known) that I didn't have a hundred dollars — there was very little likelihood that I even had ten — I inquired, "Why, pray tell, do you need a hundred dollars?"

She explained, "When I drove up here, your car ran off the road on the shortcut and got stuck..."

Very loud alarms went off all over the room, and suddenly I had a herd of doctors and nurses in the room with me, and my wife had been shoved abruptly out the door.

You see, my wife had no driver's license, she couldn't pass the road test. On her last attempt, the very nice, slightly pale highway patrolman who rode with her asked me to please never bring her back again. "My car" was a 1974 Chevrolet Bel-Air with four mismatched tires of questionable integrity, barely functioning brakes, one wall-eyed headlight gazing forlornly at the ground directly beside the car, no insurance, and no registration. I rode to work in the seatless back of an old Chevy van with four of my co-workers, paying ten bucks a week for gas. Lacking a drivable automobile, we did not yet own a baby seat to facilitate the safe transport of an infant in a car. The shortcut is a very narrow paved road bordered on one side by a concrete wall and on the other by a sixteen-foot ditch which became a flowing river when it rained like it was raining at that time.

I was hooked up to a heart monitor.

I learned somewhat later, thankfully no longer on a heart monitor, that she had driven the car into a shallow part of the ditch, only about ten feet deep, and managed to climb out with our son in her arms. The car was perpendicular to its normal disposition at the time, with the driver's side pointing mournfully up at the stars. There was a married couple in the car behind them who had seen what had happened and picked them up and took them to a nearby convenience store where they called a tow truck which was too small to move my two tons of Detroit steel from the deep, narrow ditch. In fact the tow truck managed to topple into the ditch too, requiring a front-end loader (a big, honking, twenty-five-ton tractor with a bucket) to be deployed to retrieve both vehicles; each of which had to be towed away. The car was a total loss, and I ended up relinquishing it to the towing company, which didn't really want it. The nice couple who picked them up waited through the whole several-hour ordeal and gave her a ride to the hospital. The hundred dollars was what she imagined the towing fee would be. No, it was eleven hundred dollars. They got my soggy, dripping, broken-down car instead.

A few days later, as my convalescence progressed, I was sitting in my bed conversing with my marginally contrite wife when another young lady came in and said, "Well, Mr. Tom, today I'm going to help you pedangle."

Wifey fairly leapt from her seat and proclaimed, "Like hell you will!"

It scared the poor girl out of the room. She sent a young man in her place after that. I never got a chance to apologize to her.

I'm not sure what my wife's interpretation of the young lady's statement might have been, I have some ideas; but she simply meant that I was to, for the first time in several days, hang my feet off the side of the bed and sit up with my legs dangling below me, unassisted.

Episode Two: “Just Say No to Drugs”

About ten years later, shortly after my son's terrifying bout of appendicitis and a severely ruptured appendix culminating in six hours of surgery, I was afflicted with abdominal pain that nearly threw me to the floor. I was rushed to the hospital, expecting a similar event to what my son had suffered through. It was on that afternoon that I was introduced to my dear friend, Mr. Demerol. I tend to have a somewhat exaggerated response to sedatives. I can't drive under the influence of two aspirin. My mother pointed this out to the nice doctor who was setting me up with my fix, so he put me on the tiniest drip possible. We had been in the emergency room a couple of hours when this was happening. After a couple of minutes of growing slowly woozier, I complained that this was taking forever, my son said, "Hmmm. What time is it?"

I raised my hand to look at my watch and said, "It's almost eleven-thirty." When I looked away from my watch I was no longer in the hospital bed. I was in the back seat of my mother's car.

This elicited gales of laughter from my dear son who was the only one who realized that I was seamlessly answering the question he had asked almost three hours previously.

I learned that I had an “itty-bitty little, teensy-weensy” kidney stone that wasn't worth surgery and should pass with relative ease, and that I was being a total sissy about the whole thing. I was given a funnel with a screen, and told to pee through it until something lands in it and bring it back to the nice doctor.

Later the following morning my anemic trickle turned suddenly into Niagara Falls, and a spikey little, pale, brown bee-bee appeared in the funnel.

I dutifully took it to the doctor who replied, "Well, I'll be damned. That’s a doozey. Looks like we probably should have operated after all."

Episode Three: “No Shrooms for You!”

Sometime in my mid-thirties, I managed to contract what I thought was an explosive case of food poisoning.

It turns out I have an extreme intolerance for certain mushrooms. All my life I've known that I have a severe intolerance for alcohol; a glass of wine can kill me. My dad was the same way, and so is my brother. Mushrooms are just as bad for me. Mushrooms stuffed with brandy-marinated crab may be absolutely delicious, but cyanide would be gentler to me.

There was a sign in my intestines saying, "Two check-outs, no waiting!" and I kept passing out. I came to in a bed in the emergency room of my local hospital. A young man, whose name tag labeled him an "advanced intern," entered with a paper packet in his hand, dropped it, bent over to pick it up, kicked it under my bed, bumped his head — really hard — on the bed frame, dropped the packet to the floor again, gave up on it and pulled another from the pouch at his side and looked at me and said, "I'm sorry, I'm all thumbs today. Could I have your arm please? I need to find a vein to get this IV started."

I'm told that my repeated, shrill screams of "Assassin! Assassin!" actually managed to get the police into the room, but I passed out again.

Episode Four: “A Real Pain in the Arse”

This one really is not for the squeamish...

Roughly ten years ago, sit-down potty became somewhat painful for me. I was pretty certain my hemorrhoids had decided to try to ruin my life again. It got so bad that I began to lose sleep because I was pretty sure that I wasn't going have the good fortune to die before my next trip to the bathroom. I gave in and went to the urgent care center.

The bad news was, it wasn't what I thought.

If you want to lose a little sleep of your own, Google "perirectal cyst." I had a large, infected growth on the periphery of my exit.

We began with antibiotics. I was told to come back in a week to see how much better it is. In two days I couldn't walk unassisted, and I couldn't sit down either.

It really is hard to describe the feeling in the pit of your stomach when a jaundiced, old trauma doctor who has seen it all looks at your arse, gasps, and runs from the room. Neither is there relief to be derived from him reluctantly returning to the room and saying, gently, with pity in his trembling voice, "I've called an ambulance. You're going to the emergency room right now!"

I remember thinking, "If there's a truly frustrating and humiliating way to die, I'm going to find it."

There was no paperwork or delay of any kind, I went to the emergency room where a doctor was impatiently waiting.

My arse became the spectacle du jour. Everybody who happened to be wearing scrubs came in to check out the old, fat, bald guy's butt.

I simply can't describe the pain. It left me reminiscing fondly of the good old days with the kidney stone.

They put me on a Dilaudid drip. When my friend's mother was dying of cancer, and they had given up hope of saving her and just wanted to try to give her a little relief until she finally died, this was the stuff they gave her. It made Demerol look like Kool-Aid. It didn't knock me out, though. It just made me the world's worst stand-up comic, while lying down. It didn't stop the pain, it just made it remarkably interesting, and very, very funny.

The doctor told me that our little hospital was not equipped to handle what needed to be done, so I was going to the big city where they were flying in a specialist to hack this thing off my arse. My response was, "Doooooooood! Cooooooooooooool!"

The ambulance crew was all female. As they were transferring me from my hospital bed to the gurney to roll me to the ambulance, one of the women asked what I had that made this such an emergency. While one of her teammates reached for my papers, I explained, "I have what my ex-wife says I am!"

There was a happy blur, and I was in a tiny room and my roommate and my son were looking down on me from opposite sides of the bed with expressions of deepest concern. My Dilaudid drip continued.

I said, "You look like you collided and your heads stuck together. Why are your heads stuck together?"

Another blur and a young woman comes in and introduces herself as Mary, and says she's my surgeon and she's going to fix me up in just a couple of minutes.

So as I lay on my left side, with my knees almost to my chest, she stood behind me and asked if I wanted her to describe what she's doing, or to just do it. I asked for the play-by-play.

Mary: "I'm going to clean the area first."

Me: "...and I bet it needs it."

Mary: "It's going to feel a little cool..."

Me: "Cooooooooooool!"

Mary: "We won't be knocking you out. I'm going to apply some Lidocaine. You may feel a slight stinging sensation."

By "stinging sensation" she apparently meant "Tex-Mex, peppermint hell-fire."

Me: Louder than any belligerent drunk — "Yeeeehaaah! Bring home some sour cream, baby! We're having jalapenos tonight!"

Mary: "Please, sir. I can't be laughing with this scalpel in my hand."

Me: Disappointed — "No jalapenos?"

Mary: "No sir."

Me: "No sour cream?"

Mary: "Maybe later."

Me: "Promise?"

Mary: "Please stop talking..."

Me: "Pizza?"

Mary: "I haven’t eaten pizza since I got this job."

Me: "Pizza has vitamins..."

Mary: "You may feel a little prick..."

Me: "What did you call me?"

At this point I felt something cool touch my bad spot, there was a sudden, heavenly release of pressure, and everything was wonderful.

There's a bit of a blank spot; I suppose I passed out for a moment. She was standing on my other side with her back to me, pulling off a pair of gloves.

I must have made a sound because she turned around and looked at me. She was wearing a face covering that looked like a completely clear welding mask, and had on a long apron. She was covered from her waist to the top of her mask in blood and something a bit darker. I told her she was the most beautiful woman in the world. She congratulated me on being her most entertaining patient ever and said that someone would be by shortly to move me to my room.

Do a Google search for "necrotizing fasciitis." That's what I had.

Episode Five: “Walking Is Good for You”

Almost seven years ago, thanks to the generosity of a couple of dear friends, I got to spend two weeks in Europe. We started in Dublin, Ireland; flew to Paris; drove up to Normandy; drove back to Paris to fly to London; drove to Stonehenge; drove to Edinburgh; drove out to Tantallon Castle in Scotland; back to Edinburgh; then we flew back to Dublin preparatory to our return to the States.

We walked nearly every street in Dublin proper. We got lost in Paris, on foot, with dead batteries in our phones. We walked a good bit in London. We did the rounds several times at Stonehenge. We walked every street in Edinburgh, and tromped up and down Castle Rock all around Edinburgh Castle. We walked the grounds of Tantallon Castle, and even got to climb around on parts of the castle itself.

The pedometer on my borrowed iPhone said that I walked over a hundred miles while in Europe.

My second day back on the job in North Carolina, I knelt down in the sand on the beach, took a few photographs of the family I was photographing, and blew out my right knee.

I was working with another photographer because we had a group of thirty-nine people, and we always send two photographers out for groups that size. I picked the right group to injure myself with. They were all military doctors, orthopedic surgeons and therapists, nurse practitioners, and hip, knee and leg specialists. There were also plenty of hale and hardy, large, young men there to schlep me up the beach to their deck.

My shooting partner, like the pro he is, finished the whole shoot himself without flinching.

We interrupted my boss’s fishing trip so he could drive me to the hospital in my own car. The doctor on call that day was the same one who had diagnosed my necrotizing fasciitis about three years before. He examined my knee and said, “You never do anything just a little bit, do you?”

Shortly after he left the room, a large, not especially friendly woman with only the word “MUSCLE” on her name tag entered, stood at the foot of the bed, and said, “We have to straighten this leg as soon as possible.”

I told her that I was perfectly happy to keep this leg in the shape of the letter “L” for the rest of my life. It looks pretty good that way.

She shook her head, sighed, put one hand under my ankle and the other on the front of my leg just below my knee, pulled the ankle and pushed the knee. There was a sound much akin to a dry twig snapping and a bright red flash of light.

I screamed “Ffffiretruck!” in a register that would have embarrassed Minnie Mouse, and began demanding Dilaudid. Now!

She shook her head and said, “You men are just a bunch of little girls.”

It was at this point that I realized that there was absolutely no pain in my leg at all. I started to get up and she put both hands on my ankles and told me not to bend that leg until she gave me permission, and to stay put until she got back. Her tone of voice inspired in me a deep desire to obey without question.

I was given a leg brace/immobilizer and ended up unable to walk unaided for nearly a week. I wasn’t allowed to bend it for three days.

For some time after that, I could bend that knee just right and I would feel a gentle slip from inside followed by gut-wrenching pain. Having been properly taught, I know that I have to immediately straighten it out, getting the dry twig snapping sound and a bright red flash of light, then everything is okay after a few minutes of being perfectly still.

If you made it all the way through this, congratulations. I hope you were able to find some entertainment value in it.

Edit 4–24–2020: Sarah Madden, thanks for the edit suggestions. Except for one, they were exactly what I should have written. I’m gonna stick with “gonna” up near the beginning because, while not a quote, it more succinctly conveys my attitude at the time. I usually start all my longer stuff for online publication in Word and copy it over. I find that a bit easier than composing online. I got lazy on that one. Thank you for catching my slip-ups!

Edit II 4–24–2020: Derek Allen, thanks. I really don’t know how I managed to miss that! It takes a village…