I'm trying to update this blog on a regular basis; posting something every Monday. Unfortunately this regimenting adds "writing in my blog" to the list of things I am obligated to do but loathe doing simply because I am obligated (waking up, driving with my eyes open, wearing a shirt, etc.) So instead of sitting down at my anvil of prose and hammering out some forged literary steel like the wordsmith that I am, I spent my afternoon sending harassing youtube comments to a Christian rock band[1]. Because of this, I will now plagiarize myself and lift an article I wrote for a punk-oriented music website. Just writing the words “punk-oriented music website” gave me more pain than what I am about to describe below.
If you have made it through any of the other postings here you realize that I used to play in a band. In case you haven’t; I used to play in a band. We used to tour like it was our job, which we convinced ourselves it was, although it paid very poorly and forced us into other menial jobs. It isn’t often you take a job to support your job, but the dead-end rock and roller does not see that as a problem. As a dead-end rock and roller I can tell you there are much bigger problems to contend with.
Bands age quickly, and my band, which was once an uppity foul mouth adolescent, was thinking about getting one of those mechanical chairs that takes you up and down the stairs so you don’t starve to death at the bottom of the staircase after you’ve fallen down and shattered your hip[2]. But, before we put ourselves in a home, we decided to have one last hurrah on that wild, Taco Bell lined, open road.
Now, there are a series of preparations and routine checks before heading out on any tour. Working van? Check. Back up guitars? Check. Absurd amount of t-shirts? Check. Directions to the shows? Check[3]. Non-inflamed Appendix? Eh...
Usually a finicky or totally non-functioning van sounds the death knell for a tour, not a tiny little organ no one even needs in the first place. But, on the way to the first show in New York, I was reminded that there are some things you just can't plan for, and sometimes they have to be surgically removed from your body.
Two days before we began the tour I started getting shooting stomach pains. I chalked it up to eating some bad food and a cramp I got the day before riding my bike. The pain was with me bright and early on Saturday morning and I decided that the food was really bad and the pain would make its exit once the food did. I tried to ignore it as best as I could. Sometimes it was fine, other times it felt like there was a boxcutter fight going on in my intestines, which is something hard to ignore especially when it's something you would want to watch.
Finally, on the way down to the show on Monday I did something that I inexplicably had not yet done; I tried to locate the pain by pressing on my stomach. This is when I brought a serious anatomical question to everyone else in the band: "Is this where my appendix is?" The spot where my hand was at the time was indeed where my rotten appendix was. It was also the spot that seemed to be where all the pain was coming from. Being the medical super sleuth that I am I started to put a few things together. The bass player called his mom, who works in a doctor's office, and she confirmed that I had the symptoms of having an appendicitis. I thought about brining a malpractice suit against WebMD because appendicitis was nowhere on the list of ailments it listed for me based on my symptoms, which included the Vapors, Whooping Cough, and GRID[4].
The band deliberated, "Maybe we should still go to New York, I bet there are good hospitals in New York." “Are you sure it isn’t gas?” "Maybe we should turn around and go home." "What does he do in the band again?" "Maybe it's gas? It could be gas." The bass player got online using his phone and found a nearby hospital. This was like living in some sort of futuristic wonderland, I wasn’t sure why the phone just couldn’t perform the operation on me, it was clearly the most intelligent thing, person or otherwise in our van.
My initial and lasting feeling, outside the shooting pain, was complete annoyance, which was just barely able to differentiate from my general malaise. It was obvious to me that my appendix was trying to secede from the union, and it could not have picked a worse time. We made it to the hospital after a seemingly endless eight mile drive. We contemplated saving time and money by stopping at the Veterinary Hospital a few miles before our actual destination. While sitting in a parking lot across from the hospital, somehow we missed the actual parking lot; the guys prepped me for going inside: "You're not wearing your bullet belt right?" "You're not wearing a sketchy shirt are you?" These would prove to be worthwhile precautions as we were assumed to be urine swapping junkies once inside the Emergency Room.
I hobbled up to the front desk and gave the receptionist my name, something I would do about fifteen more times before I could sit down, and told her I was pretty sure my appendix was going out, Bonnie and Clyde style. She gave me a sealed plastic bag containing a plastic jar for me to pee in. "They'll want that" she said as she handed it to me. Of course they would, who wouldn't? We sat, waited, leafed through gardening magazines and pamphlets about ovarian cancer, and then I was called in to see a nurse. She took my blood pressure, temperature, I reeled off my symptoms for her and gave her the coveted plastic jar, now full. She called me buddy and sent me back to the waiting room.
When I had gone into the bathroom to dish out the goods, the tech-wizard bass player waited outside so he could give me a few reassuring words upon my return. Looking like the suspicious ruffians that we were, some voyeuristic staff member saw him outside the bathroom and assumed that he came in with me. I can only imagine that this misinformation was given to my nurse in some Emergency Room pass-it-along game. The nurse came out into the waiting room holding my sample in its sealed bag and looking at the four of us angrily. "I'm throwing this out." She declared to us. Maybe she was just sick of her job. I would have thrown it out too, I mean, it was piss. "Whose is this?" She asked indignantly "Who was in there with you?" She was holding the bag by its corner between her thumb and index finger like an angry mother who just found a joint or a stained JUGS magazine in her child's room, too furious to really touch it. I could picture her saying "I did not raise you to smoke marijuana cigarettes, read JUGS magazine, and swap your urine!"
We were all completely baffled for a moment, but I spoke up letting her know that the juice was 100% mine and that I would have "signed off on it." Once it was all cleared up that I wasn't on so many drugs that I would swap my urine in a paranoid bout to avoid being caught with a dirty stream, they took my piss and we resumed waiting.
After a little while I was brought inside the ER. I abandoned my clothes for a very revealing johnny and started making friends with the staff. One of the most enthusiastic people I have ever met came in just as I was getting situated. Her enthusiasm was only matched by her desire to find out whether or not I had insurance. I had my suspicions that had I been uninsured she wouldn't have been the bouncing ray of sunshine that she was, but who can say really. After this, the folks from the ER showed me a thing or two about who was and wasn't on drugs by pumping me full of so many painkillers that too this day I am not allowed to operate heavy machinery. I could feel my arm going numb right where the IV needle entered my vein and the feeling traveled up to my brain rendering me completely useless to all the people who had to harvest information out of me about my symptoms, health history, and allergies. In a drug induced stupor I thought the drummer of my band came to tell me that his cat had won a prize and would be featured on a $1 scratch ticket called Cat Scratch Fever. This turned out to have actually happened; amazing.
After this I spoke to a doctor. What I learned from him was that I needed to have a CAT scan and that he was going to google my band and see if his blink182 loving son was into us; I assuredly told him "He probably is." After the CAT can, which confirmed my suspicions of my defecting appendix, I sent out text messages to everyone I could letting them know that we wouldn't be coming to New York. Being someone who constantly makes shit up no one believed me, but the truth was my appendix had failed me and it was time to go under the knife. My bandmates came in and wished me the best; that is what my fogged mind could ascertain anyway, they could have all quit the band but I was so doped up I was fairly sure I was in a hot tub in Heaven and was waiting for God to get back with a hoagie.
On my way to get gutted the people from the OR told me how the people from the ER are always stealing their gurneys. Jerks. One of my last thoughts was the scene from the Simpsons episode "Boy-Scoutz 'N the Hood" where Dr. Hibbert takes out a guy's appendix on the street after proclaiming "this man's appendix is about to burst" then hucks it off camera where it explodes like a grenade[5]. It was a good thing I had such a solid understanding of what was going on grounded in stark reality. I was laid on the operating table, given anesthesia and the next thing I knew I was in a hospital bed. I no longer had an appendix.
I did have ten staples and more IVs which I took as a fair trade. Everything that happened afterwards was pretty boring unless you think the chronicles of someone doped on morphine watching VH1 all day and struggling to pee in some thermos-looking container are interesting, and if you do I'm confident that there is a website out there offering videos and photos of that very thing. I am not going to find it for you though.
Now, there are a series of preparations and routine checks before heading out on any tour. Working van? Check. Back up guitars? Check. Absurd amount of t-shirts? Check. Directions to the shows? Check[3]. Non-inflamed Appendix? Eh...
Usually a finicky or totally non-functioning van sounds the death knell for a tour, not a tiny little organ no one even needs in the first place. But, on the way to the first show in New York, I was reminded that there are some things you just can't plan for, and sometimes they have to be surgically removed from your body.
Two days before we began the tour I started getting shooting stomach pains. I chalked it up to eating some bad food and a cramp I got the day before riding my bike. The pain was with me bright and early on Saturday morning and I decided that the food was really bad and the pain would make its exit once the food did. I tried to ignore it as best as I could. Sometimes it was fine, other times it felt like there was a boxcutter fight going on in my intestines, which is something hard to ignore especially when it's something you would want to watch.
Finally, on the way down to the show on Monday I did something that I inexplicably had not yet done; I tried to locate the pain by pressing on my stomach. This is when I brought a serious anatomical question to everyone else in the band: "Is this where my appendix is?" The spot where my hand was at the time was indeed where my rotten appendix was. It was also the spot that seemed to be where all the pain was coming from. Being the medical super sleuth that I am I started to put a few things together. The bass player called his mom, who works in a doctor's office, and she confirmed that I had the symptoms of having an appendicitis. I thought about brining a malpractice suit against WebMD because appendicitis was nowhere on the list of ailments it listed for me based on my symptoms, which included the Vapors, Whooping Cough, and GRID[4].
The band deliberated, "Maybe we should still go to New York, I bet there are good hospitals in New York." “Are you sure it isn’t gas?” "Maybe we should turn around and go home." "What does he do in the band again?" "Maybe it's gas? It could be gas." The bass player got online using his phone and found a nearby hospital. This was like living in some sort of futuristic wonderland, I wasn’t sure why the phone just couldn’t perform the operation on me, it was clearly the most intelligent thing, person or otherwise in our van.
My initial and lasting feeling, outside the shooting pain, was complete annoyance, which was just barely able to differentiate from my general malaise. It was obvious to me that my appendix was trying to secede from the union, and it could not have picked a worse time. We made it to the hospital after a seemingly endless eight mile drive. We contemplated saving time and money by stopping at the Veterinary Hospital a few miles before our actual destination. While sitting in a parking lot across from the hospital, somehow we missed the actual parking lot; the guys prepped me for going inside: "You're not wearing your bullet belt right?" "You're not wearing a sketchy shirt are you?" These would prove to be worthwhile precautions as we were assumed to be urine swapping junkies once inside the Emergency Room.
I hobbled up to the front desk and gave the receptionist my name, something I would do about fifteen more times before I could sit down, and told her I was pretty sure my appendix was going out, Bonnie and Clyde style. She gave me a sealed plastic bag containing a plastic jar for me to pee in. "They'll want that" she said as she handed it to me. Of course they would, who wouldn't? We sat, waited, leafed through gardening magazines and pamphlets about ovarian cancer, and then I was called in to see a nurse. She took my blood pressure, temperature, I reeled off my symptoms for her and gave her the coveted plastic jar, now full. She called me buddy and sent me back to the waiting room.
When I had gone into the bathroom to dish out the goods, the tech-wizard bass player waited outside so he could give me a few reassuring words upon my return. Looking like the suspicious ruffians that we were, some voyeuristic staff member saw him outside the bathroom and assumed that he came in with me. I can only imagine that this misinformation was given to my nurse in some Emergency Room pass-it-along game. The nurse came out into the waiting room holding my sample in its sealed bag and looking at the four of us angrily. "I'm throwing this out." She declared to us. Maybe she was just sick of her job. I would have thrown it out too, I mean, it was piss. "Whose is this?" She asked indignantly "Who was in there with you?" She was holding the bag by its corner between her thumb and index finger like an angry mother who just found a joint or a stained JUGS magazine in her child's room, too furious to really touch it. I could picture her saying "I did not raise you to smoke marijuana cigarettes, read JUGS magazine, and swap your urine!"
We were all completely baffled for a moment, but I spoke up letting her know that the juice was 100% mine and that I would have "signed off on it." Once it was all cleared up that I wasn't on so many drugs that I would swap my urine in a paranoid bout to avoid being caught with a dirty stream, they took my piss and we resumed waiting.
After a little while I was brought inside the ER. I abandoned my clothes for a very revealing johnny and started making friends with the staff. One of the most enthusiastic people I have ever met came in just as I was getting situated. Her enthusiasm was only matched by her desire to find out whether or not I had insurance. I had my suspicions that had I been uninsured she wouldn't have been the bouncing ray of sunshine that she was, but who can say really. After this, the folks from the ER showed me a thing or two about who was and wasn't on drugs by pumping me full of so many painkillers that too this day I am not allowed to operate heavy machinery. I could feel my arm going numb right where the IV needle entered my vein and the feeling traveled up to my brain rendering me completely useless to all the people who had to harvest information out of me about my symptoms, health history, and allergies. In a drug induced stupor I thought the drummer of my band came to tell me that his cat had won a prize and would be featured on a $1 scratch ticket called Cat Scratch Fever. This turned out to have actually happened; amazing.
After this I spoke to a doctor. What I learned from him was that I needed to have a CAT scan and that he was going to google my band and see if his blink182 loving son was into us; I assuredly told him "He probably is." After the CAT can, which confirmed my suspicions of my defecting appendix, I sent out text messages to everyone I could letting them know that we wouldn't be coming to New York. Being someone who constantly makes shit up no one believed me, but the truth was my appendix had failed me and it was time to go under the knife. My bandmates came in and wished me the best; that is what my fogged mind could ascertain anyway, they could have all quit the band but I was so doped up I was fairly sure I was in a hot tub in Heaven and was waiting for God to get back with a hoagie.
On my way to get gutted the people from the OR told me how the people from the ER are always stealing their gurneys. Jerks. One of my last thoughts was the scene from the Simpsons episode "Boy-Scoutz 'N the Hood" where Dr. Hibbert takes out a guy's appendix on the street after proclaiming "this man's appendix is about to burst" then hucks it off camera where it explodes like a grenade[5]. It was a good thing I had such a solid understanding of what was going on grounded in stark reality. I was laid on the operating table, given anesthesia and the next thing I knew I was in a hospital bed. I no longer had an appendix.
I did have ten staples and more IVs which I took as a fair trade. Everything that happened afterwards was pretty boring unless you think the chronicles of someone doped on morphine watching VH1 all day and struggling to pee in some thermos-looking container are interesting, and if you do I'm confident that there is a website out there offering videos and photos of that very thing. I am not going to find it for you though.
[1] I know it’s juvenile but watch the video and tell me they don’t deserve it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnnnlkIiqsM&feature=related Also, look at that guy’s socks. THERE IS NO GOD
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy--coXgNWE&feature=related You just know the chair eventually goes all 2001: Space Odyssey on those poor old people.
[3] This was before the ubiquity of GPS. On the first tour I went on we had an atlas, an atlas! We went around Cape Horn like three times before we got to the first show. We brought back many spices from the Orient.
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay-related_immune_deficiency Oh scientific medicine, you silly bigot you.
[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYRAVw8Op8Q This is pretty much exactly how my operation went.
