My Operations

The Ins and Outs of My Various Operations

At the behest of my many friends and admirers, I have been persuaded to repeat and reveal some of my most recent suffering, which I am only too happy to do.

First, I want to apologize for the depth of my knowledge about medical terms, and hope that the rest of you will not only be able to understand what I say, but will also admire without envy the expertise with which I use them.

Approximately three years ago, I was walking my dog, when we met a close friend and his dog at the corner just down from my house. We stopped to exchange pleasantries, when I suddenly found my legs swathed in leashes, and I fell into the gutter. To make a short story long, I ended up a few days later having my right hip operated on. Fortunately, I did not actually break my hip, but the upper nob was shattered on the inside, and the surgeon stuck it back together with three long screws.

Then, at the end of the past October, I was hurrying to get into my bank in order to deposit a vast sum of money before it closed. I didn’t see that there was a separate piece of carpet lying on top of the regular carpet, and I tripped with both feet, thus ending up flat on the floor with my glasses off somewhere and a multitude of stars in my eyes. The result was that both hips were badly bruised, and the bruises eventually ended up on the bottoms of both feet. This did not bother me anywhere near as much as the security cameras, and I am taking steps to assure myself and my heirs that we will own the exclusive movie rights to the film. I am also planning to contact various movie companies in Hollywood. This fall may have been one of the really fortunate experiences in my life.

About three weeks after this experience, I had three operations performed at the same time on my right hand and wrist. Arthritis was certainly involved, although what went on was so scientifically intricate that I will not bore you with my medical description. A few of the details more easily explained will be easier for you to follow.

I am a stickler for style and flair, so I was delighted to find that patients can select from colors ranging from black to pink for the color of their casts. Naturally, with my artistic nature, I chose purple for my cast, which reached from my hand almost to my elbow. After a month, the cast was removed so that the surgeon could do a little more work on the three operations. She has a reputation as one of the most capable and distinguished surgeons in the area.

Not wanting to bore you or frighten you with a description of the work my surgeon did after the cast was removed, I decided to close my eyes while she was working. I can say that she injected something into my hand so that I wouldn’t feel any pain. This worked fairly well. My hand had been x-rayed before she did her exploration, and she informed me that there was a screw that had been inserted into my thunb during the operation to join together two bones which had separated, and the screw will remain.

At this point, it is incumbent upon me to inform you that patients and doctors do not always agree about what is going on, and from this point on we did not see things the same way. My arm, at this point, was lying on its back, with my hand facing upward. (On second thought, it might have been facing down, but you have to remember that my eyes were still closed.) Be that as it may, I distinctly heard the doctor ask for the step stool, after which she climbed the stool and planted her left foot on my hand and her right foot on my arm. Then she called for some sort of wrench and yanked two rods out of the middle of the side of my hand. Now, you uderstand that both of these rods where at least eight inches long. I could tell.

When she had finished, another purple cast was placed upon my arm, for a second month. And last week, that cast was removed and replaced with what they told me was a splint, but which is just as long and stiff as my casts, which is just plain old white, which I have to remove so that I can bathe my arm and gradually rub off a great deal of dead skin. And to add to this humiliation, I have to wear this for still another month.

ARW
1/22/09