The Flip Side

So, a little second surgery story for you.

I ended up running in kind of hurriedly for it, to fix a spinal fluid leak. I couldn't do much to prepare my sorry body for the procedure (--not that anyone can likely tell a difference when I do 'prepare' my body for naked procedures . . but I try).

Normally I like to pluck, perfume, shave, pray, bathe, dye, exfoliate, massage, and pedi for surgeries ( . . and formal readings and baby showers.) -- but all I could do this time, was slap some tanning lotion on my legs and call it a day. --and Thank Goodness I did because when I lifted up my leg, I found a clear circle 'x-lrg' stickertag stuck to the bottom of my foot!
I don't know whose shirt purchase it was from, or what it fell off of -- but Lord knows I didn't need an informational toe-tag of the Extra Large kind, hanging off my foot when I was being moved, flipped, and pushed into an unconscious-rump-high-surgery position!


And once in surgery, finally, and laying in the cold metal surgical room, on my wee, pre-flip-me-over gurney, waiting patiently for my nighty-night medicine, --I got to thinking.

There was turning out to be an awful lot of people in the surgery room.

And while I'm no professor, I could easily do the math.
--I bet flippin' a body (dead weight, especially) ain't like flippin' an egg-whites omelet, you know? And I bet these people were being called in (from every nook and cranny of the hospital) . . . to flip ME!

And those two guys over there? The ones that look like janitors or Wrestling Federation members? --They've got those big belts on, -- you know -- the kind of flat, wide, back-support thingys dudes wear at Costco for lifting pallets of televisions or stacks of tires. hummmm.    And still, more and more hospital workers streaming in.  What the?   --finally, the ugly truth sinks in.

I hate my life.
Someone quit picking up the emergency batphone and calling more heavy-lifters in here!  Enough is enough!!
(Man, I've got issues.)

The anesthesiologist says he is about to give me some medicine, that might make me see double - but not to let it bother me.
I tell the Russian-Olympic-gymnast-looking woman next to me doing her pre-lifting squats, "great . . so now I'll think there's twenty of you in here instead of ten, waiting to give me the heave-ho." She smiles, and I nod off. Or was she laughing at me?


Well, the last laugh will have been on them, my blog friends, when those Heave'rs will have gotten a good long look at my flip side.  I have some very tricky to deceiver artwork there.

At my last MRI - to find the spinal fluid leak - I took some Valium in an effort to ease the claustrophobia.
My girlfriend drove me there, and helped me fill out the paperwork.  She asked the questions, -- and I drugged, as it were, through the answers.   Turns out that Valium is like truth serum! -- and everything just came spilling out.

No doubt it would have shocked my friend when she asked if I had a tattoo, to hear that in fact I did.   Yup, I went ahead and spilled the beans to her tender little ears.

"I was young . . . I was stupid . . . I don't know what I was thinking ----
--- years ago I got a big tattoo of cellulite plastered across my whole bum.  It's true.
. . I know, I know -- it was a crazy thing to do.   It was immature.  I was a kid, you know?
Do I regret it now? Of course I do. But what's done is done . . .--and, now, well . . that's what's doin' back there, --should you ever get an eyeful.   Frankly? -- I'm glad to finally have it off my chest."

And so to all those Hospital Heave-Ho'ers -- Hope you got the memo! 

It's aaaalll a tattoo, bru'ther' ---
Pretty crazy, eh?   Looked real, right??  One day I may have stretchmarks tattoo'd onto my belly, too!  Just to be silly!!   Ha, ha.   But ya, who knows.  


Good news is ultimately, the day all worked out. I was flipped, sewn, scarred, re-flipped, and no doubt --- entertained the hospital peeps with my intricate tat'art in the process.  But I'm nothing, you should know, . . if not a crowd pleaser.