Thursday April 1st, 2021

 No April Fool

 “When was your last procedure?” asked the masked woman in scrubs with short brunette hair.

“Mmmmm, I think it was four or five years ago,” I said, trying to think past the present. “I was scheduled to come in last year, sooner than normal, but I didn’t want to because of the Covid ‘mystery’ all around us. I remember that.”

“Twenty-seventeen,” said what I thought a woman’s voice suddenly to my left.

“Yeah, I think it was,“ I said turning toward who it was I was talking, without discombooberating the IV connection in my arm.

“I’ve been stalking you,” the blonde short-haired masked woman joked, guessing my curiosity. “I know all your vital information.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I’ve been the target of many stalkers in my day and that admission makes you number . . .  Fifty-three.”

“Hullo,” said the salt and pepper-haired masked man with his arms crossed, who seemed to suddenly appear to the side of me. “I haven’t seen you for awhile.” I recognized this guy immediately and, in fact, had been expecting him.

“So far, so good,” I said. “I thought you had retired.”

“I tried,” he said, smiling over the top of his masked face. "You been well?”

“Yes, I've been, but I reckon this [gesturing with my free hand] will tell the real story,” I said.

This doctor, a decade or two younger than myself, had delivered my daughter over 30 years ago. He is one of those highly valued rural hospital doctors who could’ve left after residency, lived in a big city anywhere in the United States, and made more money and a big name for himself, but who chose to stay here; much to this bordertown community’s great benefit. His experience is a great confidence booster to anyone who comes under his care.

“How is your daughter doing?” he queried.

“Very well,” I said. “She graduated from Iowa State. Worked for an architectural firm in Iowa right out of school, for five years, before she got an opportunity to work in St. Paul, where she lives now with her husband and their infant daughter. She designs hospitals and health care facilities. Her husband teaches at a university down there.”

“Ooooo, I wouldn’t want to live in the Cities in this present climate,“ said one of the nurses out of my line of sight.

“This is nothing,” I said as I was directed to lay back on the examining table, a heavy deliciously warm white blanket laid upon my torso from feet to chin. “Just before she was to give birth -- in a new birthing room and wing she helped to design at that hospital -- the authorities had closed interstate I-35 and streets outside the entrance to that facility due to protesters blocking the lanes. Thanks to Covid -- and likely the social unrest outside, none of the family could be with them preceding or following the birth. It was a tough time for everybody. The baby was two months old before we saw her in person.”

I was directed to lay on my left side at that point, my open robe exposing my backside. But what of it? I’ve never been inhibited in a hospital. I realized years ago that there’s absolutely nothing new under the sun that doctors and nurses and staff haven’t seen before. Your body, whether it’s a specimen of sublime physical conditioning of early-to-many aged years, or ravaged by accident, addiction, brutality, weight, or age, is just another body, just another ‘customer’/client/associate/share-holder label.

And me, I’m just another old man body, with no butt, no muscle, a man-boob chest, a beer gut, wrinkly-old skin; just another bald, gray-bearded man with a pony tail, and no modesty. Next!

I had waited until 5:00 pm on Sunday, the day before the procedure to begin my role in the great adventure. I hadn’t eaten anything since 8:30 am Sunday morning, (a small bowl of cereal), which, I learned on Monday morning in the examining room, I was not to do. “Oops.”

Yet, I wasn’t apprehensive about anything because, “This isn’t my first rodeo,” I had assured one of the nurses who had called about it (and probably the call in which I glossed over the part of not eating --anything -- past midnight on Saturday night). I had undergone this experience three or four times earlier. It had never been an unpleasant experience before, which has always baffled me given other people’s horror about the procedure. They will do anything to avoid it; cancellation, after cancellation, right up to that latent cancer diagnosis and hearing a doctor say, 

“If only we could’ve caught this earlier . . .”

Just to reassure the fearful naysayers out there, despite what you’ve been lead to believe, the clinicians always use bulk lots of Vaseline on the camera end of the ten-foot long garden hose they use, (which you get to take home with you after the procedure as they only use half of it, so it’s a win-win, in my book). We can always use more hose around the farm. 

 😆 It’s always good to interject a bit of April Fools humor in describing such a dreaded procedure such as this. ( It’s really a 25-foot hose.)

I called the pharmacy on Friday morning to schedule pickup of the oral solution that a person has to drink the evening before the procedure. I asked to speak to a pharmacist.

“Yes, we’ve got the prescription your doctor ordered, but we’re temporarily out of the GoHEAVELY-brandname stuff, so we’ll have to substitute a local tried-and-true remedy called Old Norwegian Herbal Tea Concoction that you’ll have to mix-up at home.
 
O.N.H.T.C. Recipe: (8) Eight cups of Cascara sagrada: (a buckthorn bark herbal laxative); (16) sixteen tablespoons of Slippery Elm mucilage (which coats the GI tract); and (4) four tablespoons of Rhubarb, (that because of its tannin content acts like a antidiarrheal to limit the effects of the other two in case you mix too much of either.) We have all of the ingredients here. We’re sorry for this inconvenience.”

At this news, I was inclined to think that this time, prep for the procedure would be decidedly different. An Old Norwegian Herbal Tea Concoction of ground tree bark, muscilage, and rhubarb didn’t give me that feeling of confidence that GoHEAVELY, the regular oral solution had always provided. 

I couldn’t imagine putting into my body, a soupy brown sludge with fibrous chunks afloat in it that so closely resembled what it was I was trying to get out. At least quickly drinking an odd-tasting clear liquid, like GoHEAVELY, with polyethylene glycol 3350, sodium sulfate (anhydrous), sodium bicarbonate, sodium chloride, and potassium chloride in it, a person can least pretend they’re drinking city water.

A lot of people detest having to drink a whole four liters of the stuff, when a gallon should be plenty to clean out ten to sixteen feet of small intestine and five feet of large intestine. Then on top of that, drink it as an eight ounce glass of the ice cold stuff every ten minutes until it’s all gone -- and you have, too.

Now faced with the prospect of having to mix up the Old Norwegian Herbal Tea Concoction and its possibly inaccurate translation of ingredients, I just accepted my fate. After all, I’m more of an optimist than a pessimist in the long run, and if a bunch of old Norwegians could drink the stuff and live to make more, why everything was probably going to be okay, by Monday night. Or Tuesday. Wednesday, at the latest.

Arriving at the pharmacy, I walked to the service counter in the back of the store. There were number of customers ahead of me, but before too long a young person behind the counter motioned me over to where she was and asked if I’d been helped. I explained I had talked to a pharmacist that morning and I was there to pick up the Old Norwegian Herbal Tea Concoction procedural substitute for the GoHEAVELY-brandname oral solution.
 

And off she went cheerfully, saying aloud, 

“Yah, you betcha! We’ll get you going!”
And I replied, just as cheerfully, “I believe, that’s the whole idea.”

A pharmacist stepped away from the plexiglass-enshrouded high counter where all the pharmacists work, and walked to where I stood waiting patiently, with a tentative look on his face, then a smile, and said that just after he spoke to me on the phone this morning, a shipment of GoHEAVELY came in, if I preferred using it instead of the Old Norwegian Herbal Tea Concoction.

I could’ve embraced him heartily, but due to Covid restrictions, I smiled greatly above my mask using my expressive eyebrows and various facial muscles, and excitedly replied, “ABSOLUTELY!! I fairly danced from the store, my white paper-bagged parcel firm in my grasp. 

  Just as I arrived home, my cell rang. It was the pharmacist. He said he forgot to give me the NEW video portion of the GoHEAVELY prescription that others have reviewed and endorsed highly, and asked if I was interested viewing them after following all the instructions of the prescription; and began drinking the sixteen eight ounce glasses, one every ten minutes, until the contents of the jug was gone. He said I would get into the theme of the occasion quickly, especially if I turned the volume up.

 
Begin with Bolero Maurice Ravel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KsXPq3nedY
Add Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture with Cannons, Tower Bells and Fireworks:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUpuAvQQrC0&t=0s
Wrap it up with Riverdance 1995: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9KkbU4yStM