Tummy Tuck?

Tummy tuck?  No.  Did I finally got that prosthetic cotton belly-button that I have always been craving?  No.  A double C-section?  No.  Triple hernia surgery?  Yes.  The surgeon went in and found two more than he was expecting.  They knew that I had an umbilical/belly-button hernia, but when they got in there they found two more hernias.  After an 'Air Mishap' that occurred six weeks ago on a flight from Minneapolis to New Orleans as well as countless flare-ups over the years, I knew I had hernias that eventually needed to be fixed.  I have complained about it at every routine check-up for the last 30 years.  After years of turning my head and coughing while he/she plays with my balls though, they still always told me that I did not have a hernia other than in my belly-button.

It all started in about 8th or 9th grade.  I was participating in the Presidential Fitness Challenge at school where you had to do a series of events in gym class like push ups and pull ups and running and stuff.  When you reach certain goals you get points, with the eventual goal of getting the Presidential Physical Fitness Award patch.  One day in gym class I was doing the sit-ups test when suddenly I felt a weird pain down in my gut.  I lifted my shirt up and there was a golf-ball sized lump sticking up out of my stomach!  What the hell?!  I took a quick look around to see if anybody noticed, and then pushed it back in.  I was embarrassed and thought I was some sort of a freak.  I had no idea what had happened and did not tell anybody about it.

The last straw (we'll call it 'Air Mishap #7') was Friday, 1/17/14 while on board a flight from Minneapolis to New Orleans to see my favorite band the Radiator's now-annual anniversary gigs at Tipitinas.  As a private pilot I am of course fascinated by flying and always have to have the window seat.  So we were rolling down the runway on take-off and I was the third seat in sitting next to two strangers.  I was leaning forward looking out the window when suddenly it happened...a hernia on my left side popped out.

Normally when that happens I just stand up, arch my back as much as I can, push the thing back in my stomach and I'm good.  But this was not normal.  I was in an airliner lifting off the ground at 160 mph, my seat in the forward-upright position and the overhead bin directly above my head.  I could not stand up or arch my back, so I just pressed on the bulge and hung on for dear life.  The pain was immense.  It felt like someone's fist was in my stomach grabbing and twisting my intestines.  I could feel the muscles moving around and when I lifted my shirt to look I could see my skin rippling and undulating.  It looked like there was an alien in me trying to claw it's way out.

For about 5 minutes I fought with the hernia and stared at the red flight-attendant call button overhead.  Was my hernia strangulating?  Was I going to have to make the plane turn around and land back in Minneapolis?  Would I be on the news?  Could I do that?  There was no way I could endure this for 2 hours.  Sweating and gritting my teeth and wondering what I should do, it finally stopped all of a sudden.  Phew!  No more leaning forward to look out the window for the rest of the trip...and I knew I had to get this thing fixed soon.

The surgery was set for Friday morning, 2/21/14, and I had to be at the hospital at 6:10am.  Due to the blizzard that Minneapolis got hammered with the previous 16 hours, I got up at 4:30am to blow the 12" of fresh snow out of my driveway so I could get to the hospital.  It was actually several feet deep over much of the driveway due to the high winds and drifting snow.  I threw out my back in the process but managed to finish by 5:30am, leaving just enough time for a quick shower and off to the hospital.  I was not supposed to eat or drink anything before the surgery, but I drank some shower water without thinking.  Habit.  On the third big gulp though I remembered and spat it out.

I could barely walk due to my bad back, but I shuffled into the hospital and began the process.  I got naked, donned the blue paper dress, had meetings with nurses, vital signs taken, belly shaved, met the anesthesiologist, IV installed in my hand, doctor came in and drew circles on my stomach, and then they finally led me to the operating room.  I was actually looking forward to the surgery so that my back could get some relief from the follow-up pain meds.  They strapped me down on what resembled a cross and the next thing I knew it was a couple hours later and they were waking me up.  Very strange losing time instantly like that.  I thought about my anesthesiologist friend Cire Wonhsak.

That was a week ago.  The pain pills helped for the three days that I stayed on them, but the back pain is still there and my front side feels like the Minnesota Vikings have relocated their new stadium site to my stomach and have started construction on it.  Also, after a couple of days the bruising and blood in my abdomen began migrating south to my nether regions.  Yes, my penis and balls are purple and swollen.  Normally I wear boxers, but I needed more support so I had to send my wife Nadia out to the store to buy me some Fruit Of The Loom briefs.

I went to lunch with Mitch Marshall and Ted Booker yesterday at Joey “mother*cking” D's.  It is a greasy Chicago-style hot dog/pizza joint on the south-side of Minneapolis.  With the abdominal bloating and constipation I figured their food would clear me right out.  I have seen better men than me taken down hard by Joey D’s though, so when it came time to order I chickened out and just went with a bland burger and fries.  It was great seeing my best buds, except hanging with those two always means a lot of laughs which kills a guy with stomach stitches.  Love hurts.

All in all though surgery is not so bad.  No more hernias I hope, and now I need to decide what to fix next.  The nerve damage in my left elbow from a drinking accident that leaves my fingers numb whenever I bend my arm for very long...or the torn rotator cuff and labrum in my right shoulder I got from playing softball...or the torn lateral meniscus in my right knee that I got from playing kickball.  It's hell being 47 years old and falling apart.  But maybe if I hold out long enough I can get some bionic parts!  I loved The Six Million Dollar Man when I was kid...so awesome...I always wanted to be that man, going on OSI missions with Jaime Sommers and hanging with our bionic dog Max.

Air Mishap #6

As some of you may remember from my earlier blog entries (‘Air Mishap #’s 1 through 5’, dated 8/16/11 through 2/17/12) for better or for worse I have my pilots license and have had a few ‘incidents’ in the air.  Although all of those incidents that I wrote about happened while I was piloting the plane, a recent incident I had while flying with the good people of AirTran got me thinking about other incidents in the air while flying commercial.  I will tell you about a couple of them…mishap #6 in this blog entry and #7 in a future entry.

Air Mishap #6 occurred on a Monday morning, May 4^th, 1998.  My girlfriend at the time Mugsy and I had just seen our favorite band the Radiators five nights in a row in New Orleans, as we were down there for the great annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.  We saw the Radiators three nights at Tipitinas, then Saturday night at the House Of Blues, and then finally in their traditional Sunday evening spot closing out Jazzfest on the Polaroid Stage.  As I learned over the years, Jazzfest is a marathon not a sprint.  The tendency when you get down there all excited for the festivities is to hit it hard right out of the gate, but you have to pace yourself.  After years of practice I had settled into the following routine:  Wake up at 11am and head to the Jazzfest fairgrounds for a day’s worth of incredible local and national musical acts on the dozen or so stages scattered around the racetrack while drinking tons of water and stuffing myself silly with local fare from the hundreds of awesome food booths.  Deep breath.  Head back to the hotel at 7pm.  Sleep till 10pm.  Then head out for the nighttime activities which consists of more incredible music at all of the clubs around town.  Get back to the hotel at 6am.  Sleep till 11am.  Repeat.

So Mugsy and I had run the musical gauntlet and survived a week in New Orleans.  It was time to drag our wearing bones on to our Northwest Airlines flight and head back home to Minneapolis on the other end of the Mississippi River.  We got up Monday morning, took a cab from our hotel to the airport, and we were running late so we pulled an O.J running through the airport.  Remember when “pulling an O.J.” meant running through the airport jumping over people’s luggage trying to make your plane?  “Go O.J. go!”  Now it means to viciously murder someone.  Ahh how times change.  Anyways, we had not had time for anything to eat so on the way to our gate we quickly stepped in to a magazine store and grabbed a Nestle Crunch candy bar.  Our flight was already boarding when we got there so we jumped in line and made our way to our seats.

We were on the left side of the plane, halfway back, in seats A & B with the aisle next to us.  I had the window seat and Mugsy the aisle seat.  Mugsy peeled open the wrapper on the Nestle Crunch bar and placed it on the armrest between us.  It was already broken into a bunch of small pieces.  As the plane taxied to the runway we watched the flight attendant explain to us where the exits were and how our seat belts worked while we took turns reaching down and grabbing chunks of the candy bar.  Eventually we were cleared for takeoff and started to accelerate down the runway.  I was intently watching out the window and munching on a bite of the candy when suddenly I felt Mugsy violently jabbing my arm.

“What the hell?!” I said, and turned around to see her muffling a scream with one hand and pointing down to the Nestle bar with the other.  I looked down at the chocolate and wrapper.  The two of us had eaten most of the candy bar, but what was left was writhing with half-inch long white maggots.  My stomach flipped in revulsion, first at the sight of the maggots and then at the realization that we had probably eaten a bunch of them along with the chocolate.  Come to think of it, it did taste a little funny but neither of us had noticed at the time as our attention was elsewhere while we were eating the chunks.

The plane was just lifting off and Mugsy quickly unbuckled her belt with no problems, thanks no doubt to the thorough instructions she had just received from the stewardess.  With one hand still over her mouth trying to hold back the puke, she began running down the aisle heading for the bathroom in the back of the plane.  She got about halfway there when a stewardess stood up and loudly yelled:  “Miss!  You have to take your seat!!”  Everyone in the back half of the plane was staring at her but Mugsy kept on running for the bathroom.  She almost got there when the stewardess intercepted her, blocking the aisle and demanding she go back to her seat.  Mugsy shouted:  “You have a choice!  I’m either going to puke on you or in the bathroom!”  The stewardess quickly stepped aside and Mugsy made it just in time, puking her guts out in the toilet.

While this bit of drama was going on I grabbed the pile of wrapper, chocolate and maggots and rolled it all up into a ball and stuffed it into a barf bag.  I too felt a bit queasy but managed to keep everything down.  The stewardess ran to my seat asking what the hell was going on and I thrust the barf bag at her and told her to throw it out.  She grabbed it and I explained that it was full of maggots, and then she looked like she was going to puke.  Mugsy came back after a bit, pale and shaken and we sat there trying not to think about the maggots.  The rest of the flight though I kept picturing myself reaching down, grabbing a maggoty chunk of chocolate, placing it in my mouth, slowly chewing the chocolate and maggots into mush, and then with a swallow introducing them to their grave that was my stomach.

If any of you know Mugsy, you know that she was not one to take things quietly and rationally.  When we got home she wanted to call the newspapers, the TV stations, the President of the United States if need be and demand justice.  She wanted to sue Nestle for hundreds of millions of dollars for emotional damage.  Irreparable pain and suffering.  I thought it was kind of cool that we had eaten maggots and lived, but Mugsy was out for blood.  So I called Nestle and tried to explain what it was like living with an angered Mugsy.  Living with a happy Mugsy was hard enough but the alternative was a very hard cross to bear.

After many phone calls and hours of being on hold and days of negotiating with them, we finally came to an agreement whereby they would refund us the cost of our airplane tickets.  It was not hundreds of millions of dollars, but I got Mugsy to agree to the $250 that we would each get.  Even though I had paid for both tickets, I gave her $250 out of the $500 that we received from Nestle so she could have some semblance of satisfaction.  I was amazed that we received even a dime, so I was more than happy to get $250 out of the deal.  I would eat a pile of maggots for $250 any day.   On that note, lesson learned:  always look before you eat.