Medical shit

1. I just saw my dad's heart! It was all bloody and veiny and still beating in the triumphantly raised hand of the Mayan priest who savagely ripped it out of his cruelly non-anesthetized thorax in a centuries-old ritual to ban staggeringly repulsive hypocrisy and men with melted-candle faces, first practiced by Mitch McConnell at the dawn of the vampire age. (HA! I kid! Using the art of sarcasm! In reality, Mitch McConnell has a whole melted-candle head. Plus he puts the Hi! in Hypocrite.) But I digress. I actually saw dye flood the veins in my dad's heart on a grainy computer screen as his surgeon told my mom and me that his exploratory cath surgery showed no heart blockages so everything about him heart-wise is fine. And -- I kid you not about this because it would never in a million cat years occur to me to make this up -- the nurse actually and with an authoritative, straight face told my 77-year-old blind father with an established history of heart problems and COPD in the middle of an Iowa winter that he's not allowed to go skateboarding for a week. A whole week. Who comes up with this bullshit? A whole fucking week.

2. So it turns out you lose all your radio presets when you put a new $160 (including labor) battery in your car. Which I know technically isn't medical shit but the hot mechanic at Sears -- which, incidentally, is probably hemorrhaging money and closing stores because it's selling all of its merchandise at 75% off right now -- did have to excise -- which is often used as a medical euphemism for "hack out amid pools of squirty blood and, depending on where on the body we are, maybe the occasional accidental poop" -- my old dying car battery. All of which I'm bringing up just so I can say "excise." And "accidental poop." And "hot mechanic." And, of course, so I can complain that I lost all my radio presets and now I have to retrace my steps and figure out what they were so I can reprogram them all. And who in this world has that kind of time?

3. Speaking of my dad's heart, it seems that on top of all my other this-is-getting-beyond-ridiculous fucking medical issues, I've perhaps also inherited his proclivity for heart problems as well. Because it turns out I I have an enlarged heart quadrant thingamajig, which is a condition that I believe is commonly called cardio-bipolardepressionisn'tenough-thecopayswillkillyou-pulmonary-thenursewilltalkyourearoffandeventellyoushehasenormousfeet-atleastMYfeetarepretty-itis. But I'm not a doctor so I might have misspelled that. Anyway, i had to leave in the middle of Dad's post-stickahugelongthingupyourgrointoyourheart recovery to go get an echo-my-eggo (or something like that; again, I'm not a doctor), which is basically a four-location ultrasound for your heart, only with those sticky pads that rip off all your chest hair and (hopefully) no surprise baby. And a chatty nurse who eventually tells you she has enormous feet. Anyway, I'm now encased in slimy gel residue and I'm missing key patches of chest hair but I did make it back to my dad's hospital in time to jam his Mayan-snatched heart back into his bloody, open thorax, get him all dressed and cleaned up, and help my mom get him back home in time for a cozy, restorative nap.

4. Remember the part up there about my this-is-getting-beyond-ridiculous fucking medical issues? Well, in the last few months I've lost most of the strength, dexterity, fine motor skills and feeling in my right hand, which makes it almost impossible for me to hold a pen, cut pancakes with a fork, start my car, open the toothpaste, squeeze my nail clippers, clip on my CZ chandelier earrings and do pretty much anything else any non-medical-catastrophe-circus-freak can do without even imagining to imagine a world where simple everyday tasks like these are even remotely difficult to impossible. Anyway, it all apparently stems from a compromised nerve in my elbow and it's so severe my doctor sent me to a surgeon yesterday who -- holyshit thankfully -- recommended that I wear a custom arm splint to bed for four weeks first and see if that fixes it. That's right: I went from temporary disabling surgery to a simple sleepytime arm splint -- that, along with my CPAP nose pillows (and Ishitnounot that's the industry term for the rubber air sirens you stuff up your nostrils) and CPAP ultra-secure two-strap headgear and socks because my pretty feet get cold, makes me irresistibly irresistibly irresistibly mega-ultra-come-ravish-me-now sexy-kitty unfairly genetically-superior-lust-objecty in bed -- in one two-minute conversation with the surgeon. And after a lengthy, ponderous, obsessive, life-defining discussion by the the custom-sleepytime-arm-splint-making lady about my choice of Velcro-strap colors that nobody would ever see because I sleep alone in my parents' basement in the endless winter darkness (and I steadfastly kept saying blue every time she tried to confirm with absolute certainty that I was selecting the color that was truly truly truly right for me), I chose blue. And now I get to sleep every night for four weeks encased in a custom sleepytime arm splint (with blue Velcro straps!) to maybe hopefully eventually make it possible for me to reclaim my long-dormant ability to clip my toenails again. Which to me is eminently worth it because a right-handed person who can't use his right hand is nothing more than a filthy syphilitic baby-kicking bipolar claw-hand with an enlarged heart quadrant thingamajig who doesn't deserve to eat reasonably bite-size forkfuls of pancake.

5. Bonus list item! My custom sleepytime arm splint (with blue Velcro straps!) was engineered with an as-advertised 30-degree bend at the elbow. So it looks kind of like a massive concave banana (with blue Velcro straps!) when I'm not sexily sleeping in it. Once I'm all healed and my fine motor skills are restored, I'm thinking I might use it as a handsome table centerpiece or a merrily unconventional hors d'oeuvre tray. But I'm currently a filthy syphilitic baby-kicking bipolar claw-hand with an enlarged heart quadrant thingamajig who doesn't deserve to eat reasonably bite-size forkfuls of pancake at the moment so I welcome your suggestions. As long as they go with blue Velcro straps. And they don't involve skateboarding for at least a week.