doctors

And Nothing But the Tooth

Posted on by JayWill

Dentists.

***I will stop there and let some of you shiver and cringe until you’re ready to move on***

Not going to lie – not my favorite person to visit even though most of the dentists I’ve had in my life have been awesome.  They were awesome people (one of them was one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met in my life) – but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re, well, dentists.

For the longest time, I had awesome teeth (I’ve always needed braces and never got them, but that’s besides the point) – I didn’t have my first cavity until college.  After that, I’ve had a few, but, for the most part (knock on wooden teeth) they’ve been awesome. Strangely enough, even though I was extremely phobic of doctors for most of my life (up until my little “almost dying” thing a couple years ago), I never really had a fear of dentists.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t hop around gaily strewing confetti and flower petals on dentist day, but I didn’t dread it either.  Of course, there is one thing that dentists find a little strange about me…

I don’t want Novocain.

Now before you get a picture in your head of Bill Murray from Little Shop of Horrors, no, I’m not some wacko masochist.  I just had a terrible fear of needles and I was more afraid of the needles than I was of the pain of having a cavity filled.  It’s a weird phenomenon – believe me, it sucks – but the pain doesn’t last nearly as long as the pain from the shot does after the Novocain wears off!  The drill gives you a cold, dull pain – but as soon as the drill comes off your tooth, the pain stops.  By the time I’m leaving the office, I feel like nothing happened.

Most of my dentists didn’t have a problem with this – or anything really – they were laid back, roll-with-it kind of folks.  I just had a bad habit of picking dentists that were nearing retirement so I never got to keep one for more than a couple years.  But there’s always one bad apple…

My dentist had recently retired and I needed to find another one fast – I had lost a filling.  I looked through the phonebook and found one that was taking new patients and I made an appointment.

I should have known I was going to have issues when I had to go around the back of another business and up the back stairs to an unmarked office to find this guy.  I checked in at the front desk; the receptionist handed me a clipboard and pointed to the chairs.  No warm fuzzies there!  I filled out the patient information and brought it back to the receptionist who then pointed at the door to the office.  I walked in and saw the dentist sitting at a little desk in the corner.  He turned around and looked at me as I entered and told me to have a seat in the chair.

He was all business.  Asked me a couple questions and then had me open my mouth and got to work.  During the exam, he started scolding me.  I knew he was scolding me because before he started he said, “Now that you can’t talk back I’m going to scold you a bit.”

Who says that?!  I chuckled a bit because there was no way this guy was serious.

He was.

He said my gums were angry.  Angry?  They always seemed pretty chipper to me.  They held my teeth pretty solid, I treated them to some Juicy Fruit now and then – we had a good relationship.  They never voiced their opinion to me; never once told me that they were unhappy in the least!  What hurt the most was that they wouldn’t tell me themselves, I had to find out through a stranger – one with psychic gum reading abilities, no less!

He said I needed a much stiffer brush (I chuckled again, not because I thought he was joking – just because I’m not mature enough to handle the word “stiffer” – he was not amused) and I needed to brush my gums until they bled.

Hold up…I’m SUPPOSED to have bleeding gums?!!  1) How would making them bleed help my gums with their anger issues?  If anything I was sure that would piss them off even more!  And 2) what kind of weird bizarro doctor wants you to cause yourself to bleed?!!  If I were to go to my general care physician and tell her that I exercise until I bleed, she might have an issue with it.  If I go to my optometrist and tell him I put my contacts in until I bleed, he might steer me in a different direction.  If I go to my proctologist…okay, never mind.

He went on to tell me if I keep neglecting my gums like I do my teeth would fall out by the time I was 35.  Um…just turned 37…still NOT making myself bleed…and still have all my choppers nice and secure!  BOOYAH!!!  If I wasn’t scared to death of that guy, I’d go back and give him a serious “I told you so!”

Then came the main event.  The drilling and filling.  He brought in the needle and I cringed.  I told him of my phobia and I told him I didn’t want the Novocain.  He looked at me like I just farted in his chair.  “What do you mean you don’t want it?”  Now what I wanted to say was how most people get a shot in their gums that numb the area before he starts to drill and I want the same thing except the exact opposite…but I figured my usual sarcasm and sass should not be used on this man.  I explained again politely and he slowly put the needle behind him, never taking his eyes off me and never changing his look of dumbfounded disgust.

I gripped the arms of the chair and took a deep breath and he started drilling.  At one point the drill hit the nerve and I winced.  He stopped and yelled – “Well, it’s not going to feel good!”  That’s when I snapped.

I pushed his hand away, stood up and got in his face.  I yelled, “Look, doc, I’ve had just about enough of your attitude. I didn’t complain, I didn’t even whimper, I think I’m being pretty badass here and I’m even saving you some time and medicine in the process.  So how about you do your damn job so I can get out of here and we can go our separate ways.  Or you can keep this crap up and I’ll report you to the ADA for harassing your patients!”

…okay, none of that happened.  I just nodded sheepishly and closed my eyes again.  Seriously, I think the dude was crazy – not even sure he was a real dentist – I wasn’t going to get lippy with the guy drilling into my face!

He finished drilling, put in the filling stuff, and asked me to bite down firmly.  Then he told me to open up and repeated that two more times.  Then he said, “Okay…” like you would before you said or did something else.  He went into the next room.

Ten minutes later the receptionist came in and yelled at me.  “Why are you still here?  He’s done.  He already went to lunch.”

Dude!  I still had cotton in my mouth!  I was still wearing the little bib thingy!  He just up and left!!!  So I cleaned up my little area and walked out.

I still don’t have a problem with dentists…but I did develop some slight abandonment issues thanks to that guy and, needless to say, my gums and I have been in counseling so that we are no longer afraid to share our true feelings with one another.  It has made all the difference.

“Happiness is your dentist telling you it won’t hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill.” ~ Johnny Carson

A Spoonful of Applesauce Helps the Medicine Go Down

Posted on by JayWill

(continued from yesterday) So there I was, getting wheeled up to the ICU, which I believe was the Unit for Insanely Cool people, so that I could get some rest and the nurses could keep a close eye on me (because if you are trying to break a Guinness Record, you need witnesses).  Now, I had never been in the hospital ever – my mom was in the hospital when I was born, but I don’t think I was there with her – so I really didn’t know what to expect, but I was really shocked to find out there are A LOT of sick people there!

I felt very weird being in there because I knew I was pretty sick, but I had walked in on my own power, I was functioning, and until I went to the hospital I was going about my day-to-day routine.  Now here I was surrounded by people who were in really bad shape: heart transplants, severe accidents, and other pretty serious situations.  Part of me felt guilty that I was getting the same attention as they were…but on the other hand…most of them were too worn out to press the call button, so I might as well request a fresher drinking straw or another fruit cup, right?

I had an awesome nurse as soon as I got admitted.  Good ol’ Pauly!  He didn’t seem like a nurse – he was like a college buddy.  When I first got settled in he told me, “Try to get some sleep.  I say try because every hour I’m supposed to come in and stab you with something.”  I’ve never been equally amused and terrified by the same human being.  And he told it how it was because I was barely dozing off when in came Pauly with a tiny little needle – it was almost cute if it weren’t so horrifying.  He held it up so I could see and explained that it was something called Heparin – it was a blood thinner and I needed to get it every couple hours.  He told me that there was good news, bad news, and some really bad news: the good news is that the needle was super small and super fine so it wasn’t going to hurt much BUT the bad news was it had to be given to me in my stomach and that isn’t a very comfortable place to get poked.  The really bad news was that even though the shot doesn’t hurt much, the medicine was going to make me feel like I was injected with acid.

Oh goodie.

He let me prepare myself and then he administered the shot.  Now, I was still petrified of needles and I had just had two pokes with the biggest needles the ER could find, but this guy was good!  I felt nothing!  I was amazed and I sang his praises!  To which he replied, “Wait for it…”

PAH-LEASE!  I can handle a little stinging medicine; I have always been known as a guy who had a high pain tolerance.  I popped my own dislocated knees back in, I had cavities filled without novocain, there was no way that tiny amount of medi….SWEET BABY JESUS SAVE ME!!!  My guts were on fire!  Luckily, Pauly wasn’t offended by copious amounts of profanity.  He actually was quite entertained by the whole thing.  I was writhing on the bed and reenacting The Exorcist‘s greatest hits.

An hour later, it was time to draw blood.  Then an hour later Heparin.  Needless to say, there was not a whole lot of sleep.  The next morning they gave me a potassium pill which was about the size of my fist.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t swallow this beastly capsule.  Another nurse had taken over for Pauly and she suggested that I take my pills with applesauce.  What a revelation!  I started telling everyone who brought me pills that “I take my pills with applesauce” as if I were ordering Perrier because nothing says “high class” like using a small plastic cup of mashed fruit because you can’t swallow your big boy pills with water.

After two days in the ICU they were planning on moving me to a regular room and the very nice (and brilliant) applesauce nurse offered me a chance to get cleaned up.  I had not washed, brushed my teeth, or shaved in two days – this sounded like heaven.  She brought me a bunch of toiletries and a basin of warm water.  Her only warning she gave me was to be extremely careful with the razor because I was on A LOT of blood thinners.  DO NOT GET NICKED!

I got nicked.

Three times.

She wasn’t kidding!  My face looked like the elevators in The Shining!  But, after I clotted, I was finally moved to a regular room.

It was private.  It was quiet.  I finally got to sleep.  Real sleep.

For an hour.

Then in crept a new nurse into my pitch black room.  He had the Heparin…

***Pause.  I don’t understand why they call my first placement the INTENSIVE CARE unit because they were so calm and reassuring and nurturing.  The care I received once I left the ICU was way more intense!***

When Pauly gave me these shots he made sure I was awake and ready and then when he actually administered them, his hand moved so quickly and slightly I never felt the needle at all.  My new nurse, who I shall refer to as Beelzebub, wasn’t even sure if I was awake as he lifted his arm (he lifted his damn arm!) and plunged the needle into me with as much restraint as a satanic priest sacrificing a goat!  An hour later I got a new blood drawing dude, who I shall refer to as Beelzebub, who didn’t believe in the “if at first you don’t succeed” mentality.  I had phlebotomists who missed my vein, apologized, pulled the needle out, and tried again.  Not this guy!  Uh-uh, not Beelze, he was a “never say die” kind of guy.  He stuck me by my thumb (by my damn thumb!), missed, kept the needle in, and started chasing the vein around, working the needle like an old Atari joystick!

On my last day in the hospital a nurse came in to check my blood pressure.  It was still very high, but I was out of the danger range.  The nurse, who I shall refer to as Beelzebub, was pleased with how well I was responding to the medicine and told me Dr. Beelzebub figured a slightly bigger dose should do the trick.  My family was there with me and we were killing time watching Dog The Bounty Hunter (not ashamed – that show was awesome).  Slowly everyone started sounding farther away.  My vision got blurry.  Everything on my body felt heavy.  I started to talk to my wife and discovered I had developed a lisp.  I knew I needed help but all I could manage to say was, “Nursth!”  When the nursth finally came in she looked at my blood pressure and realized that when you come into the hospital at 280/190, maybe 80/60 was a bit too low to handle so soon.  She clicked her tongue and said, “Yeah, that’s a little too low.  We’ll back off the medicine and you just rest and keep drinking water.”  I said, “Thanksth” but was thinking how can I drink if I can’t move my arms?!!

I finished the day, got some more sleep at an hour at a time, and the next morning was given my pills (with applesauce of course).  My mother had bought me a huge purple stuffed monster from the gift shop (yup, a big plush buddy, applesauce with my pills, I’m a manly man) and my wife bought me a small pewter turtle that had tranquility written on it.  They were both trying to give me things that would keep me calm and keep my blood pressure down.

As we were waiting for my doctors to discharge me, I heard a nurse talking to the man in the room next to mine.  She told him she was coming back with his potassium pill and asked him if he wanted applesauce with it.  He replied, “No, just water.”  It might have been the medicine, or the stress, or the incredibly disappointing lack of Jello over the course of my stay, but I flipped out.  I started yelling, “No way!  You can’t just swallow that pill!  That guy is full of $&@*!!!  No one can do it without applesauce!!!”  My wife and parents told me to quiet down and I remember saying that he was probably sicker than I was so “I could take him” (my wife kept telling me to “rub my tranquil turtle”).  Yup, I was the guy who was challenging another hospitalized man to fight because of the way he wanted to take his pill…I’m that guy.

But before we left (which was a few minutes before the guy in the other room came in and tried to smother me with my blood pressure cuff), my mother and wife thought it would be funny to mark the occasion by setting up my stuffed monster in my hospital bed enjoying a cup of applesauce.  Hardy har har, ladies.

“You’re in pretty good shape for the shape you’re in.” ~ Dr. Seuss

The Twos Have Never Been Terribler

Posted on by JayWill

It’s only fair that I dedicate a post to my other child.  When my first child was born, most of my wife’s pregnancy problems were my fault but with the second child, it was all totally his fault.  Our first was a little soccer player inside mommy’s tummy; our second was reenacting Mortal Kombat.  The second labor was supposed to be significantly shorter, this one was longer.

We went into the hospital early on the morning of April 22nd.  We were very excited – Earth Day!  The battlecry of the day was “Earth Day Birthday!”  The nurses were all on board with celebrating the birth of our little hippie.  They needed to put a name on the board in the nurses’ station, but we weren’t revealing our child’s name until he was born – yeah, I know people say that’s a pretentious thing to do, but we weren’t being pretentious; I’d explain it to you, but it’s not something someone like you would understand – but to celebrate the big “Earth Day Birthday” my wife chose the first name Birkenstock and I christened our son’s middle name as Hemp Rope.  Sure enough “Birkenstock” appeared on the board.  Ironically, another couple was having a baby the same day who gave their child a temporary name:

0422131818

Little Birkenstock gave mommy an insanely difficult time.  He was barrel rolling and somersaulting in her belly the whole time and he was so stubborn he didn’t end up having an “Earth Day Birthday” and my wife, under the influence of pain killers and exhaustion changed his moniker to “The Little Turd on the 23rd.”  And he lived up to that reputation for the remainder of the birth – at one point things got so chaotic my mother-in-law yelled at us saying, “YOU TWO AREN’T HAVING ANY MORE KIDS!”  I totally agreed with her!  Best.  Advice.  Ever.

Not only did he live up to the “Little Turd” nickname on the day he was born – it has been his M.O. every day since then!  Don’t get me wrong, he’s not a bad kid.  He is one of the sweetest, most loving, imaginative, polite, funny, insightful toddlers you could ever meet.  But he is a mischievous little gremlin!  He’s a runner and a climber and, dear God, he’s a yeller!  Just like “Spinal Tap” this kid goes to 11!

I guess the best story to encapsulate this unique little munchkin happened a few months ago.  Long story short: he’s a climber – he’s not supposed to be a climber – he climbed – he fell – he got an “I told ya so” and a trip to Urgent Care.

Short story long: he decided the best plan for his Thursday evening was to climb the swiveling office chair as quickly as he could.  Lo and behold it swiveled, go figure: birds gotta fly, swivel chairs gotta swivel.  Before any of us could rush to stop gravity from doing what gravity does best, the little monkey took a header over the arm of the chair and instead of taking the fall with his whole body (like his ninja training has taught him) he made a rookie mistake and put his hand out to catch himself.  KER-SNAP!  His big brother has made it over a decade without a trip to the ER and I didn’t break a bone until I was almost in high school – but here’s our little two-year-old getting x-rays at Urgent Care.  When they examined him they thought his right elbow might be dislocated or possibly broken.  But they didn’t know what little Birkenstock was capable of because upon looking at his x-rays we discovered that he had dislocated his elbow AND broke it!  Because why settle for just one?

***On a side note, if you ever find yourself in this situation and they ask if you want to see the x-rays, say “no.”  I didn’t, they showed me, holy crap!***

Because of the nature of the injury and his age, they were not equipped to deal with our little guy so they sent us to the ER.  Once there they needed to take more x-rays…he decided this was not going to happen without a fight.  The radiologists took him back and he began pushing them away…with his right arm!  He fought them off so hard with his broken arm, they needed to call the ER station because they didn’t believe that his arm was broken at all!  But, oh yes indeed it was!  Trust me, I saw the x-rays!

***Seriously!  There was his hand, wrist, forearm, a tiny nubby piece of the elbow THEN A BIG BLACK SPACE, then another little elbow nubby POINTED THE WRONG WAY, then the rest of the elbow, then upper arm.  NOT PRETTY!  CANNOT UNSEE!!!***

Once those were shown to the doctor, he put his finger on his nose and said, “Not it!” – okay, maybe he didn’t, but it would make for a better story – and told us to go home, get some sleep, and go to a pediatric hospital two hours away in the morning.  So we took a two-year-old home WITHOUT AN ELBOW!

We got up early the next day (Friday), drove out to the hospital, got more x-rays (he fought those radiologists, too), and met with the specialist who said that this is one of the most common injuries for small children due to: bounce houses, trampolines, and monkey bars.  We asked about desk chairs and, of course, our little guy might have been the first recorded case of that.  Unfortunately, the poor little guy needed pins to put his arm back together and so he was scheduled for surgery on Monday morning…Monday…MONDAY!  So we drove back home so our son could relax for the weekend WITHOUT AN ELBOW!  Strangely enough, he was fine.  A little Tylenol here and there and he had no complaints.  He’s a tough little booger.

Finally, the big day arrived and we drove back to the hospital; he was prepped (fought those nurses), taken back for anesthesia (fought those nurses), and my wife and I went into the waiting room where we watched this little digital board that told us where our child was (kind of like the flight status board at an airport).  We watched his patient number’s label change from PREPARING to IN O.R.  And we watched, we waited and we held hands and we prayed and we got Tim Horton’s…hey, don’t judge, their coffee is really good…and we went back and waited some more until the doctor came out and told us everything went perfectly.  In a few minutes they were going to take my wife back to O.R. Recovery to be with him when they brought him out of anesthesia.  Then, when he was fully awake and ready to move to Outpatient Recovery, they’d come and get me and we’d all go up there and wait until it was time to go home.

A nurse came and took my wife back.  I watched the board and my son’s patient status changed from IN O.R. to O.R. RECOVERY.  And I waited.  And waited.  And waited.  And waited?  And waited!  It was taking forever – almost as long as the whole prepping and surgery ordeal leading up to that point.  Finally, my wife and a nurse showed up looking like they had just survived a war (which, unbeknownst to me, they had) – their hair was messed up, they both looked sweaty and flushed, and they were hugging and congratulating each other.  All the while, curled up in my wife’s arms, was this sweet, innocent, bandaged, groggy little angel.

And, like Paul Harvey, I heard the rest of the story.

As he was coming out of anesthesia, they gave him a tiny dose of morphine to help him cope with the pain.  They told my wife that the morphine was going to keep him pretty sleepy for the rest of the day.  That’s when his eyes popped open like the Bride of Frankenstein after getting a jolt of lightning!  He must have heard a boxing ring bell because IT WAS ON!  He tore off the oxygen and the heart monitors and he started ripping at his IV until he was restrained – but then he started taking it out with his feet.  The nurse decided to get the IV out of him and that’s when she got spit on and sworn at in toddler gibberish (many times we heard him say things to medical professionals that made no sense, but you could tell it wasn’t good).  When we got up to recovery, they tried taking his vitals again so that he could be discharged, but when he started getting ready for Round 2, the nurse decided that he was most likely okay so we should go home.

It was the same story every time we went back for check-ups and x-rays during the six-week ordeal.  Fighting.  Growling.  Wailing.  Once he turned a bribery sucker one nurse gave him into a projectile used on another nurse.  When it came time to take the pins out – he almost did it himself!  My wife and I, with the help of TWO nurses, finally got the cast off and pins out.  A very simple procedure that he turned into such an incredible melee that the doctor came running back in to see what happened!

Upon the completion of this last bit of medical business, he was cleared to leave (to everyone’s relief) and he made sure to sheepishly say “sorry” to everyone we passed on the way out.  I just hope he doesn’t get hurt again because I think he is the first child to ever be banned from a children’s hospital!

“Raising kids is part joy and part guerilla warfare.” ~ Ed Asner

A Pain in the Ice

Posted on by JayWill

I was fortunate enough to go to a Buffalo Sabres game recently.  It is easily one of my favorite sporting events to attend.  It’s faster moving than baseball, the fans aren’t as rowdy (a.k.a. drunk) as football fans, and I’ve never gotten clocked in the cajones like I did at an NBA game.  But it still has all the amazing foods and smells, the electric atmosphere, the team camaraderie, the music, and everything that all those other sports have.

It was an awesome night.  Besides watching our team capture a commanding victory, I got to challenge my ears a bit whenever there was a penalty because the head official had such a thick accent, no one had a clue what he was saying.  One penalty had so many “d” and “f” sounds in it, it seemed like the game was being officiated by the Swedish Chef.  The whistle blew, he skated to center ice, addressed the crowd, and informed us, “Nudderffy ferddy doomiffiddy ferrdy fer.”  Since he called the penalty on the opposing team, I heard a guy call out from our section, “We have no idea what you said, but we agree!”  Later, we weren’t entirely behind him because I’m pretty sure he gave one of our guys “2 minutes for indifference…”  Is that a thing?  Sure sounded like it.

After the end of the second period a commercial popped up on the scoreboard.  Check it out before I continue:

First of all, I would never, EVER make fun of Roswell Park – if you haven’t given a donation to them, please do (here, let me help: https://www.roswellpark.org/giving).  Second, I would never, EVER tell men to take their prostate screening lightly – do it!

However….

This ad just hit my funny bone too many times!  Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?  Right off the bat I can’t help but picture Mike Robitaille in those old school short shorts.  You know the kind that men would wear back in the 70’s; so short they allowed you to check their prostate without them even taking the shorts off.

Next, this is a Sabres meet-and-greet with a tour of their locker room to go along WITH the prostate screening?  JUST HOLD THAT ROTARY PHONE!  Is this all happening simultaneously?!!  “Welcome to our locker room, fellas!  Drop ’em and grab the bench!” Do the Sabres alumni wait until the screening is over before they come in and say hi or do you get to shake hands with the hockey players with the northern half while you shake hands with the doctor in a southerly fashion?  Or is it a “two birds, one stone” situation and they have the Hall of Famers doing the exams?  If so, request Danny Gare, he seems like a guy with smaller hands.  Even if this is all done separately, as important as the screening is and as much as I’m willing to do it when my time comes (and I’m bringing flowers to my doctor so that it can be just as awkward for her as it is for me), this is not the time I would like to meet new people.

And did he say, “There’ll be all kinds of fun surprises,” at one point?  NO, THANK YOU!  What is this a carnival?!  Are they going to have a doctor who moonlights as a magician so he can pull out a rabbit?!  This is not a time in my life when I want to worry about door prizes and balloon animals!  And please, for the love of Tim Horton, do not have anyone come running in and yell “SURPRISE!” while the doctors are doing their thing!  One “fun surprise” mixed with a jumpy doctor and some poor guy gets turned into a Muppet!

Some things just don’t mix: toothpaste and orange juice, Bieber and music, and prostate exams and hockey sticks just to name a few.

So, gentlemen, PLEASE get screened.  PLEASE support Roswell Park Cancer Institute.  PLEASE enjoy hockey.  PLEASE keep reading, liking, sharing, and subscribing to my blog.  But, PLEASE do all of these things separately.

“The remedy now is two scotches and an aspirin, I think.” ~ Former Bruins GM Harry Sinden (this quote could work for after a hockey match OR after a prostate exam)

Just Breathe

Posted on by JayWill

Nine months passed and my wife asked many people the exact same question, “How will I know when I go into labor?”  The answer was always the same, “Don’t worry, you’ll know.”

We had just gone to our latest doctor’s appointment and we had planned for the inevitable day – we even set the day to be induced if the inevitable didn’t happen on its own.  It was all just a matter of time now.  Before we left that appointment, my wife asked one more time, “How will I know when to come in?”  Once again, our doctor told her not to worry, she will surely know.

We got home from our appointment and my wife went to lie down on the couch.  I went upstairs to paint the nursery a bit more.  The nursery project became a huge ordeal because we can never do anything simply – my wife and I couldn’t decide on what theme to put in the baby’s room so, naturally, we decided we would choose all of our favorite childhood characters from EVERYTHING and create a 360-degree mural with literally hundreds of characters hand drawn and painted (don’t judge, you know that sounds awesome).  Here’s a small sample:

1909856_7714070409_4241_n

Anywho, I came downstairs after a little while and my wife said she was feeling weird.

“Like labor?”

“No.  I don’t know.  I don’t think so.”

We had some dinner.  She kept feeling strange; still unsure whether or not she was in labor.  So we decided to call our doctor.  She said since she just saw us, she doubted my wife was in labor.  PLUS, my wife was unsure and she would definitely know if she was in labor.  But she thought this would be a good opportunity to practice – don’t worry about bringing all of my wife’s stuff with us, she’d meet us at the hospital, check my wife out, and then send us home.

On our way out of the house we passed my father on his way in to help me paint some of the nursery.  I told him to start painting the gray sections and we would be back home soon.  We drove to the hospital joking and laughing, because it’s not like this was the real thing, right?  ***You see where this is going, don’t you?***

We get to the hospital and our doctor meets us and walks with us into Labor & Delivery.  Once again, she tells us that since she just examined my wife, this is probably nothing, but she’ll go through the motions just as if it were the real deal.  So my wife changed into a hospital gown, they hooked her up to the monitors, and the doctor examined her again.  The doctor raised her eyebrows, gave a little laugh, and said, “You’re in labor!”

Holy crap.

I sprinted out of the hospital, back to the car, and drove back home to get everything we left behind.  I pulled into the driveway and burst through the door of my house and almost right into my father who was standing in my kitchen holding my cat like baby Simba from The Lion King.  What was really strange was my father and my dangling cat were both looking at me with the same guilty expression.  My mind cleared from baby-shock enough to focus on the cat hanging from my dad’s hands and I noticed that one of her paws was wet and gray.  I then looked at my carpet and noticed a tiny gray footprint every couple inches.  My father said, “We were going to have it cleaned by the time you got home.”  I don’t know what was funnier, the fact that my father didn’t throw the cat under the bus for being the sole culprit or that he included her in the plan to clean up the mess.  In either case, I informed both of them about what had happened at the hospital, grabbed everything I needed, made a few phone calls, and raced back to the hospital.  I was so afraid that I was going to miss the birth of my son…yeah, I know now that was silly to worry about that, but back then I had no idea that I had another 20+ hour wait ahead of me.

As soon as I went back into my wife’s room my uncanny gift of saying stupid things returned in full force.  Gentlemen, let me help you out a bit:

  • Never “Thank God” that you missed them putting in the IV because needles gross you out.
  • Never drum along with the contraction monitor.
  • Never justify the drumming by telling your wife the baby’s heartbeat is “funky.”
  • Never keep track of the intensity of the contractions to let your wife know when she had one that beats her previous record.
  • If she does not beat her previous record, never tell her that the contraction “wasn’t that bad.”
  • When your wife says she is “so uncomfortable,” never compare it to how hard it is for you to sleep in the hospital chair.
  • Never remind her how long this “birth thing” is taking.
  • When the really heavy labor begins, saying things like “You’ve got this, piece of cake” is not a smart thing to say.

Eventually, the baby’s head was visible…at least a small part of it.  I told my wife the baby’s head was almost out.  The doctor said, “No it isn’t.”  I saw more of the head emerge.  I told my wife the baby’s head was almost out.  The doctor said, “No it isn’t.”  I saw more of the head emerge.  I told my wife the baby’s head was almost out.  The doctor said, “No it isn’t.”

  • Never ask how big the baby’s head is with a surprised expression in your voice.

Finally, my son was born.  It was honestly the most amazing thing I had ever experienced in my life.  They moved so quickly, gave him to my wife, his color instantly changed from that gross lizardy gray, to a perfect pink.  I cut the cord…dear Lord was that gross…I had heard about it and I just figured it was a snip and go kind of deal.  Geez, this was like trying to carve a sausage with safety scissors!

The most magical part was that my son cried until I spoke to him for the first time.  He instantly stopped and looked toward the sound of my voice.  Cool.

He was so small.  So innocent.  And the best thing?  It would be a long, long time before he was old enough to understand that the things Daddy says are usually really, really dumb.

“Actually I don’t remember being born, it must have happened during one of my black outs.” ~ Jim Morrison

 

A Bum Knee is Better Than a Kneed Bum

Posted on by JayWill

I am hurting today!  I had a really awesome karate class yesterday with hip tosses and flipping your opponent.  SO COOL!  But, today I am paying the price.  My knees are killing me!  Of course, I have earned every bit of this knee pain over the years through gross amounts of stupidity.

It all started back in high school; back when I started having a life outside of my normal activities with my family.  Before I left the house my father’s famous advice for me was, “Don’t get stupid.”  Most nights I would come back in time for curfew and I could walk by my father with my head held high, confident that I had a stupidity-free night.  Other nights, though, I went and got stupid.

One night in particular I got stupid enough to experience a whole new world of pain.  It was at a dance and, incidentally, a first date (boy, would I impress her).  First of all, I cannot dance.  Furthermore, I do not like to dance.  Not my thing.  I mean, I can slow dance decently, but anything upbeat that takes any sort of rhythm – no thanks.  But, this was a high school dance in the 90’s and we had a DJ who had a thing for the Spice Girls and the Macarena and Cotton Eyed Joe and the dances were pretty upbeat most of the time.  Yippee.  Now, just like any high school kid, I had a circle of friends and this circle of friends brought the dumb out of each other.  One of the less-than-wise things we frequently did was to jump up into each other’s arms (like a groom carrying his bride across the threshold).  I don’t know why!  It seemed pretty harmless at the time, but I soon learned that this was an example of what my father warned me about.  My friend jumped and I caught him, then something went wrong.  Allow me to illustrate with letters: my left leg should have been like an “I” when I caught him, but for some reason it was pointed out like a “/” and when both of our full weights landed on it, it made my knee look like “>” and I said, “*&$#!”  I knew right away that my knee was dislocated.

It popped back in before the doctors at the hospital could see it.  So they braced me up, gave me some ibuprofen, patted me on the head, and sent me home (okay, so there were no head pats, but wouldn’t it be nice if that was part of the treatment?) to rest my leg for a while.  The real bummer was, from time to time, that knee would randomly pop out of place and I would be braced up again.  It was still giving me problems in college – it popped out once and I had to drive myself to the medical center (it was a real hoot trying to drive a stick shift with one leg that wasn’t entirely attached the way it should have been) where the campus doctor/nurse/shaman squeezed it (ouch), told me it was dislocated, gave me Tylenol, patted me on the head, and sent me back to my dorm.

Over the years, I learned how to put it back in place myself – yeah, I know, I know, another example of “getting stupid.”  But, in my defense, the first stupid is what wrecked my knee, the second stupid fixed it.  Therefore, two stupids make a smart.  It wasn’t a frequent problem though; it slipped a bit occasionally, but nothing too concerning.

And then came my wedding day…

As stated above, I don’t dance.  I dislike it.  Not my thing.  But it is my wife’s thing and it was our wedding and I was determined to make the most out of every second of that special day (tune in tomorrow for the rest of that tale) and if my wife wanted to dance then, by golly, I would dance.  And I danced with my wife to our song, and I danced with my mom, and I danced with tons of guests for the dollar dance, and, yes, I even danced to the fast stuff and our DJ played all the typical wedding stuff.  For a while, I was actually starting to forget how much I disliked dancing as I busted out my best ChaCha Slide moves…in treadless tuxedo shoes…on a hardwood floor.  The good news is I only slipped with one leg, the bad news is the leg that stayed in place looked like a “<” and the worst news of all…it was the other leg.

That’s it.  No more dancing.  Karate and bodyslams, sure.  But, dancing?  No.  My dad told me not to “get stupid!”

“The Rolling Stones set the bar to where I look to as a band.  But I don’t envision myself touring in the way they do.  My knees won’t hold out.” ~ Jon Bon Jovi