I'm Back Around With No Hospital Gown

The Old Man has seen a few of these in the past couple of months. It started simply enough with what the old folks liked to call a "sinking spell". In a restaurant at the coast one morning, the room started to close in on me and it sounded as if everyone was speaking to me from the back room. Head between my knees and an ice bag to the back of the neck and I was as good as new in a few minutes. I pretty much figured it out; 5 days earlier passing of a kidney stone, facing eye surgery the next day, and listening to friends describe some horrible stuff going on in their family....body just said "Enough! I'm shutting down for a while". There's an official 'doctor name' for the phenomenon; vasovagal syncope. A fancy way of saying 'faint'. I happened to casually mention this to my doctor on a kidney stone follow-up visit. Intellectually very smart, emotionally not so much.

In an effort to figure out 'faint', over the past 12 weeks the medical community has harvested some shekels thanks to an MRI (which I'm sure is an acronym for Miserably Rattling Interior), a sonogram on my heart, a sonogram on my carotid arteries, a sonogram on my thyroid, two cataract surgeries, and the creme-de-la-creme, a needle biopsy of a thyroid nodule. Throw in a couple of dentist visits and an annual exam by my dermatologist and my absence from the blogging world becomes understandable. The journey is not without merit for through this all, I've come to note some degree of "nuttiness" which, as you have learned, always intrigues me.

I advised my doctor that I was somewhat claustrophobic and felt I might need a little help on the day they were scheduled to load me in the cigar tube. "No problem, I'll call something in for you". I picked up 5 Valium tablets. Doctor man said, "Take one an hour before the procedure and then if you need it, take the second one an hour later". Wait a minute. An hour later and I would be in the culvert. I took both of them and pitched the car keys to Miss Martha. "Drive on", I said. Both of those little beauties kicked in about time I checked in at the front desk. I had a little bit of trouble finding my insurance cards, but hey......"No problem, dude".

By the time they got me ready, they could have crammed me in a garden hose for all I cared. I was in the machine for about 45 minutes. Most of the time I was enjoying the colored light show going on behind my eyelids. Operator said something. I remember replying "I can't hear you". She said, "I guess the ear plugs are working". All in all, not a bad experience thanks by and large to my two little friends. One benefit, since this was to determine if I'd had any sort of stroke issue, I was happily able to tell everyone, "They tested my head and found nothing".

So, on to the cardiologist for a consultation. He determined that since my EKG was perfect, I needed an ultrasound of both my carotid arteries and my heart. Okey-dokey. Very harmless procedures where they slap a little Wesson Oil or such on and slide the sonogram do-hickey around, all the while going, "Hmmmmm". All turned out to be letter perfect but for one small fact. The carotid-gram ratted out a nodule on my thyroid, so it was back to the Wesson Oil again. Doctor-man decreed we must do a biopsy. "Biopsy" is probably the scariest word in the English language other than the combo, "nuclear attack", or "I can't go to the prom with you because I am pregnant".

The big mistake was explaining the procedure to me. "We will take some very fine needles and harvest samples from the nodule for analysis to be sure they are benign". What! Needles? "Harvest samples".....sounds like Venusians are going to body snatch. All I could think of was these long hat pins my grandmother used to hold her hair in a bun. Enough Lidocain made the procedure tolerable and then the real "fun" began; the 5 day wait while your mind goes on a number of terrifying journeys no matter how hard you fight that.

Intellectually I'm happy to know that all is well from top to bottom. Emotionally it's been Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

I'm back.

I only have one unanswered question: If 90% of what medical personnel need to look at is in front, why do those goofy gowns open in the back?