Heads, Snip, Kaboom

As a resident of the hoosegow (word nerd alert: from the Spanish juzgado, court), I've been doing a lot of things I normally wouldn't for the past six-and-a-half calendars. Number one, naturally, is spending 100% of my time in the company of men. As a species, I find humanity just barely tolerable anyway, and anyone who voluntarily spends any more time than is absolutely necessary in any exclusively male setting should have their head examined. There are many good reasons for women, not least of which is to save us from our idiot selves. Left to our own devices, we will just start wars and compete to see who can fit the most stuff in our mouths and butts. Only when there are women around to impress do we accomplish interesting things like designing Eiffel Towers and wrapping beaches in fabric.

Another is doing what should be Man's most private and solitary act right out in front of God and everybody. Without going into too much disgusting detail, I'll just say that the toilets are all in a row, unenclosed by barriers of any kind, and close enough together that there is a real danger of brushing up against your neighbor if you're not careful. As an intensely private person, I find this difficult in the extreme. Under normal circumstances, that is, not in prison, I don't even feel 100% comfortable doing the deuce when there's someone else in the house, much less in a group synced up like line dancers. If I were a rich man I'd have a whole separate house built strictly for my own excretory purposes. In fact, I would consider that the pinnacle of personal achievement, to build and maintain a fully furnished house complete with landscaping and lawn furniture dedicated solely to taking a private and satisfying dump. Wasteful? Perhaps. Worth it? Indubitably.

The third thing, and this is directly related to the first two, is becoming familiar with a lot of magazines I normally wouldn't read. Gossip rags, lifestyle guides, fashion slicks, design showcases, sports compendiums, abridged Americana, gender-specific instruction manuals, etc. etc. This vast panoply of periodicals accompanies me into the rear as I attempt to construct figurative walls of glossy paper and lose myself in Red Carpet Showdowns and holiday mojito recipes and 12 weeks to rock-hard abs.

There are a couple of things I’ve noticed about these mags. One is that even the few pages that aren't ads are actually ads, and the other is a predominant theme running through their reportage of people overcoming hardship and triumphing over seemingly impossible odds. In these uplifting accounts you will read, inevitably, the sentence The doctors all said (I, he, she) would never walk again. Read on, and you will discover that not only did they walk again but they went on to lead the league in rushing, or roller-skate up Mt. Kilimanjaro, or win Dancing With The Stars, or do some other amazing thing requiring not only functional but exceptionally strong, flexible, and nimble pins. I'm skeptical, and my question is, who are all these doctors out there flubbing their prognoses and making these dire, definitive pronouncements? Have you ever tried to nail a doctor down to any certainty? It can't be done, not in my experience. They will always leave themselves wiggle room to account for the extremely unlikely, because if there is one thing a doctor cannot be, it's wrong. You could be lying there in two separate and distinct pieces, bisected transverse to your central axis in a sawmill accident, vitals all right there on display, and ask the doctor with your few remaining breaths, "Am I going to die?"

"A lot of it is up to you," he'll say. Two seconds later when you expire he'll turn to the nurse and say, "He just didn't want it bad enough."

Or conversely, having had some minor injury stitched, taped, bandaged, or otherwise ameliorated, ask the croaker whether he can absolutely guarantee a 100% recovery and he will enumerate the various infections, blood clots, and rogue germs that may yet kill you. In fact, every time you leave the emergency room they make you sign a piece of paper that states a) here's what was wrong with you; b) here's what we did to you; c) you still might die; and d) if you do, it's your fault.

I find it highly suspect that any doctor anywhere would say you're "never" going to do anything again, unless it's "be able to pay your rent after getting our bill.” Hell, their waiting rooms are filled with the exact sort of magazines trumpeting these miracles of the indomitable human spirit. Surely they, too, know that somebody is lying in these stories, either the author to maximize drama or the subject to accentuate his heroism; saying someone would never walk again would be tantamount to admitting limits to a doctor's knowledge and abilities. As omniscient demigods, that would be unacceptable, and I therefore call shenanigans on these magazine articles and their outrageous claims.

I am reminded, painfully so, of a diagnosis and prognosis conferred by an ER doctor at Mendocino Coast District Hospital following a grievous facial insult suffered at the hands of an ad hoc vigilante committee formed in the wake of a missing-bicycle furor, which group violated pretty much every single one of my guaranteed Constitutional protections in their rash and headstrong pursuit of "justice." and smacked me in the face with a Jager bottle to boot. Incidentally, should you ever find yourself facing a rapidly oncoming square green bottle — or indeed, one of any shape or color — I recommend interposing something of a deflective nature into its path, that or get the hell out of its way, as it bloody hurts.

Once the stitches came out, the swelling went down, and my face had returned to more or less its original configuration, albeit with a few extra colors, there remained a troubling consequence of the assault, being an absence of sensation on the left side of my face from below the eye to my lower jaw. I returned to the ER, described my symptoms, and after a thorough examination conducted from several yards away (really), the doctor concluded that a facial nerve had become compressed or perhaps severed, hence the loss of feeling.

He seemed to feel that he'd satisfied his Hippocratic obligations in imparting that news, but I was not so easily put off. "But Doc," I said. "I feel like feeling in my face is something I'd like to have. I mean, I've had it all these years, it'd be a shame to give it up now, right? What I'm getting at is, when can I expect it to return?"

He looked at his watch. "Maybe tomorrow, or it could take up to a year. Maybe never, it all depends."

"On what?" I asked, hoping there was something I or medical science could do to speed things along.

"On whether the feeling returns or not," said all those years of rigorous study and training. "Ice for the pain."

"Pain's not the problem, Doc," I yelled at his receding form.

Now, I'm no doctor, and I'm certainly no genius, but I believe I could have arrived at that conclusion independently. I may not have used the word “compressed” — I would probably have used “damaged” — but I know it's nerves that transmit sensation to the brain, one or more of them was not doing its job, and it would either get better or it wouldn't. I know that as a broke, uninsured fringe citizen I was entitled to little more than basic lifesaving procedures, but I still felt slighted.

As things turned out, it took about three months for full feeling to return, which made the doctor… right? He did cover every base with his “handful of pebbles” prognosis. (It's tough to hit a small, distant target with a single rock, but if you chuck a handful of pebbles at it you're bound to nail it.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again — when it comes to strictly mechanical procedures, sewing up cuts, setting bones, removing malfunctioning organs, and the like, I'll take a doctor every time, but in the event that your problem is not visible to the naked eye or an X-ray, you may as well consult with an accountant or flooring specialist. The only thing doctors can do that they can't is legally throw pills at the problem, which is a blessing if you investigate the possible side effects of most medications. I'm sorry, but the possibility of gaining temporary relief of my moderate-to-severe whatever does not justify the risk of an exploded ventricle or melted spleen.

As doctors, or indeed any, fools know, one of two things is going to happen if you get sick. You're going to get well, or you're going to die. Go to the doctor, don't go to the doctor, it's all the same. The human body is the ultimate in self-regulating systems. That's why they have to use immune suppressors when introducing foreign material into someone. That's the body saying, Dude, we got this. Kick rocks. Anyway, because they have no more concern for our privacy than a farmer for livestock, probably less, I now know the names of every single member of the Pitt-Jolie brood, information which is not only useless but potentially dangerous given what I must suppose is the finite storage capacity of my brain. I can envision a future in which I must make some crucial, life-saving decision dependent on recovering a stored memory — was it the red wire, or the blue one? — and receiving an error message saying, Sorry, due to memory constraints that information is unavailable at this time. Would you like instead some holiday decorating tips for fall? I can show you the proper form for a kettlebell swing, if you think that'll help. How about some deeply philosophical advice from a 22-year old ingénue? Fly­tying instructions? Relative fuel-economy ratings for the '18 SUVs? Razor comparisons? No? Alright, I'll flip a coin for you. Heads, snip, kaboom.