Perdition: Thy Name is Hernia - Part Nine

Lunch time. Today it was to be pulled pork on garlic bread (or garlic toast as they call it these days) and now I was part of the ‘Shuffler’ post-op veteran group. At the table, I was alone, for a short while, until a chipper 40 something banker, who probably went to Western for economics and then to a local branch, until the majestic MBA was earned from Queen’s, and then he worked on the 28^th floor (out of 60) in the Red tower on Bay. He was on his way, as it were. He was earnest, tall, with long fingers, but he had a profound dullness in his smallish grey eyes that told me on the 28^th floor he would remain. Tactically competent, amiable, but ultimately without guile and ingenuity, he would remain pliable in the machinations of the wolves on the 32 floors above. The Top Floors: Where problems were solved, where the counsels and the investors and the preferred stock-changers and the moneyed descendants of the family compact sat in the drammed infused warm edifice that looked out into the beige-soot smeary smog horizon over Lake Ontario. The Top Floors: Where the sky remained a horizontal abode for those who rarely, if ever, had to look down, and surely never had to look up. But the Oakville banker was unaware of all of this; he merely wanted to ask me about the ‘procedure’.

“Well”, I began, “its OK, they drug you, they bring you downstairs, you lie down for a while, then they fix your hernia … it should take less than three hours in total.” …

“They said only about 45 minutes.” He replied.

“You mean the actually surgery, I meant the whole routine, you know, waiting, drugging, fixing, stitching and wheeling takes three hours.” I tried to explain.

“Ok, huh, so three hours and then you are up?”

 I realised I had made a mistake for changing the accepted parameters of discussing the time frame for someone who lacked a certain touch of mental elasticity, a trait common in everyone who want to conform the world to their narrow minded set piece vision, rather than understand the world for what it is: an impossibility that we must adjust to. So instead of interjecting that actually one must add four hours of lying down to the three hour actual operation procedure, I simply replied: “Yes, just the three hours.” He was somewhat mollified but I could sense that he was repressing anxiety under that visage of a man who wanted to be back in Oakville with the sales-guy neighbour, with ribs and beer.  I wanted to be in Guelph, with the sales-guy neighbour, with ribs and beer, but through the haze I knew it would be another 48 hours until my first taste of salted pork and the gallons of hops that followed. We continued, or he mainly, continued the conversation about how one got one’s hernia. He exclaimed he saw a young guy do a ‘lift and jerk’ weight lift and wanted, in a pique of middle-aged anxiety, to emulate the motion. He managed only to place a weight on one side of the bar, and as he tried to pick up the cylindrical weight for the other he felt a terrible tear on his right side and wham! He was brought back to the fact that he was 45 and not on Daytona Beach back in that glorious February of ’89, with Poison blaring in the background and gyrating in front of that good lucking, if somewhat slutty American girl from Akron in the High Hip bikini bottom and the midriff exposed “Ferris Bueller” promo-t-shirt…with Budweiser in hand (or was it Coors light? Jeez, such a long time ago)…and then the horrific realisation came to him that his 14 year old daughter was sexting during spare and perhaps was not actually going to Hot Yoga at night, but somewhere far more nefarious, something he caught a glimpse of through the light blue glow of the device his daughter clanged on incessantly: “meet me with the others at night-stream… we have all the snappies… the Blazer with the whippets are go…u down for it Madison?” or some approximation of the illiterate nonsense that the jacked-up, brainless, sociopathic and narcissistic little punks use throughout their insipid young lives as their parents rogue ahead, so self-involved that they don’t notice the pimples that are not pimples, they don’t notice the empty gaze, they don’t notice that they don’t notice that their kids don’t notice that their teacher’s don’t notice the world collapsing all around us. Lunch was over, and I got up and said “Good Luck” (as if he or I have any input regarding the outcome of the surgery) to the Middling Banker, and I passed the glowing screens of the one’s who will ‘work through’ their stay at the Hospital in the Lounge and up, slowly, painfully, the stairs to the third floor lounge.

            I went back to my room as it was now the time for the first set of metal clips to removed from our wound. I had not yet looked at the gash on my right side for it was too painful to lift, or drop, any part of body without reason to. But, a very large (Height, structure, not Fat), and very good looking nurse, who’s descendants I would argue came from the Gold Coast of Africa implored me to “Drop it like its hot” and I gladly obliged. Upon first looking at my wound I was actually bemused, it was ugly, it was Ugly, and on the ridge were the clips (12 of them) of which 6 were to be removed by the obliging Doctor who was to come soon.

“So, this is fine?” I said to the nurse.

“Oh yeah, no big deal, you are coming along well Mr. Goodwin”.

Then, Doctor so and so came in and removed half of the metal clips and immediately I felt better and the tearing sensation that accompanied every movement began to abate. Lying in my increasingly sanguine mindset, I heard a small commotion, merely a disagreement over procedure, emanating from the room across the hall. A young chap from Alliston was telling his surgeon that: “Hey, this cut is going pretty close to my ‘area’, you know what I mean, what the hell is this??” ..  to which, the surgeon, with a great Indian accent coupled with the dismissive verbal delivery that only a snobbish MD can deliver, replied: “Well, obviously the hernia was slightly larger than you claimed, therefore we made the appropriate adjustments and had to cleave the incisions longer than the length initially scaled, it is of no real concern”.

“Oh really?” came back the young man, “it’s gonna be a concern when I can’t get it up, or can’t have any kids, how do I know that it isn’t [messed] up?”

 “Please sir, we have made all the correct accommodations for your procedure, you will be healed and will continue with your very normal life”

 “What is that supposed to mean…ouch, watch out with those clips eh?”

 At this point, I was trying not to laugh, the interaction was amusing but laughter was an unacceptable outlet because the pain was too great…but at this point, the unthinkable happened, to manoeuvre the discussion beyond simple disagreement over bed-side manner into the realm of absurd hilarity. The poor chap from Alliston sneezed in the midst of his complaints and semi-valid concerns. The scream that followed the sneeze would fit nicely on a scratchy old Halloween sound effect 45, then, as if it was meant to happen, the young bogan punched the wall. I had tears of laughter and lunacy running down my gaunt and black-ridged face and eyes. I heard the doctor leave as the nurse from Cote D’Ivoire soothed the poor Alliston boy across the way. “Fking C—ks—cker!!” was the last missive I heard from him.