The Coming Attraction

As I had mentioned previously, my appointment to have an upper body MRI had me arriving at Baylor Hospital in McKinney at six-thirty on a Tuesday morning. I arrived to find there were two other parties in line before me. One was a woman with an entourage waiting for surgery, the other was a pregnant woman about to burst and her husband. The person at the front desk called out a last name and both parties stirred. Both had last names that were quite similar.

While that situation played out to a conclusion, another woman came in, looking as tired as I was. In the meantime, the sole woman at the front desk was trying her best to do her job.

A second operative finally came to the front desk. She and I went through the paperwork, ran the card for the deductible, and proceeded to the empty radiology waiting room.

The show for me was supposed to start at 6:45.

There was no one able to get me going on the machine until a little before 7:00.

I knew the drill and the tech knew me. He was a little puzzled, having seen me a little less than three weeks earlier. When the situation was explained, we were able to work on getting the session done while having short bursts of conversation before and after we did the deed. When we were done, it was back home to wait until my appointment with the surgeon the following Monday.

*****

To this point, my struggles with doctors were confined to my Primary Care Physician in Allen (about 7 miles away) and to the other doctors, the hospital and the cancer clinic ten miles away in McKinney. The surgeon’s office is in Plano – a good 15–20-mile drive from my home in Princeton.

Carol and I were quite aware of where the surgeon had set up shop in an office building adjacent to Baylor Scott and White’s Plano location. We spent our first anniversary at that hospital – Carol had a double mastectomy ridding her of some suspicious lumps that kept popping up. Adding to the irony, the surgeon who performed the mastectomy on Carol shared an office with the surgeon who was going to work on me.

I was impressed with the man. His overview of what I was to expect was quite thorough. He laid out several scenarios before telling us (Carol was with me) what would be the best scenario for everyone involved. The sample needed by the surgeon was too small to attempt a “Needle Biopsy”, so instead, he proposed a bit of laparoscopic surgery instead.

Been there, done that. Have the T-Shirt.

I remember waking up early, like 4:00am on a Sunday morning early, to intense abdominal pain, thinking I was about to have a heart attack. A trip to the ER eventually revealed that I had gallstones in a gall bladder that needed to be taken out.

The following Friday, May 8,1992, I was in the hands of a surgeon who successfully removed my gall bladder, assisted by one of the local OB/Gyns working the camera. The reason I am specific on the date was that on May 9^th, Bruce Springsteen made his first appearance on Saturday Night Live. I was on meds, zonked out of my gourd, but I was sure as sin not going to miss The Boss on SNL!

Two takeaways from that experience were relayed to the surgeon thirty-one years later. When my gall bladder was taken out, the surgeon complained after the fact that was a lot of scar tissue from a previous bit of surgery. Fair warning for the upcoming surgery. The other was my having to pay an Ob/Gyn for his part in the surgery. I was amused at the time and am still amused to this day about “My Gynecologist.”

The surgeon was similarly amused.

With the chit-chat out of the way, we determined to arrange for surgery at Baylor Scott White in McKinney as soon as arrangements could be made.

That left me time to think about a few other things, like scars. While making out an entry for my personal blog, I got to thinking about the other scars I’ve had on my body over the years and got to thinking about those scars.

First and foremost was the scar on the right side of my belly gained when an unknown doctor cut into one-month-old me to relieve my pyloric stenosis. That scar was the one creating the scar tissue the surgeon going in after my gall bladder (with the assistance of my OB/GYN) complained about when he ran a video of his work afterwards. The pyloric stenosis scar grew with me. I learned later on, that cuts for pyloric stenosis were moved from a prominent place on the abdomen to just under the rib cage where the scar would be a lot less noticeable. When I worked in the oil patch[1], one of my co-workers came to work his two-week stretch worried about his newborn son’s diagnosis of pyloric stenosis. I showed him my scar, told him about the newer way surgeons would make a cut, and assured him that since I survived 28 years with the affliction, his son would surely do the same.

Other scars included (not counting my circumcision) included one where a cyst was taken out of my backside, one of the four incisions made for the removal of my gall bladder, one for a hernia repair, and the inside my rectum cut for the resection of said body part.

I made the choice to count however many cuts made for my upcoming surgical appointment as part of a larger collection… making what for some would be considered some sort of life altering experience. What’s one more cut to a pro, eh? For that matter, how many men can honestly say that they had work that included the services of an OB/GYN?

*****

A week and a half later, I got the call.

I was scheduled for pre-admission testing on the 24^th of August, followed by surgery early in the morning on the 28^th.

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[1] Between 1980 and 1984 I worked as a roustabout on offshore oil rigs run by Keydril. Two weeks on and two weeks off. It was quite the adventure. The incident mentioned here occurred on Keydril’s Aleutian Key.