Three Years Later...Still Alive!

Well, it's October and thus time for me to do my annual "I'm Still Alive" celebration. I've written about this many times before, but that's the whole point. You don't really appreciate life until you have a near-death experience. The problem is that gradually over time that appreciation begins to fade. So that's the whole point of writing the same story every year. I don't ever wanna forget.

The weird thing is that I've had several near-death experiences. Most of them were my own fault. Electrocuting myself once a week as a kid while trying to create a flux capacitor is just one example. Then the time I got that chemistry set from a yard sale without any instructions. Fun times...waking up twenty minutes later on the floor of the basement after mixing random chemicals together and then smelling the smoke coming out of the tube. And don't even get me started on the time I got hit by the same van twice in one week during two really intense games of roller skate tag (on a hill, no less).

But no, today's story is different. This one had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with a doctor who had the absolute worst bedside manner in the history of medicine. It's a simple story. I applied to be a cop. Figuring that I'd need to be in top physical condition if I was gonna catch bullets with my teeth like Bruce Leeroy, I got in shape. I lost 50 lbs in about five to six weeks. No weight loss pills, just a lot of running, bike riding and my patented Unemployment Diet. Can't eat what you ain't got! (That's copyrighted, too)

The cop physical revealed a heart defect which was quickly remedied by an 8 hour surgery during which my heart rate shot up to about 200 beats a minute. I woke up unable to breathe because they accidentally burned a little of my lung during the surgery, but that didn't stop me from taking advantage of the painkillers and singing to the nurses in between quoting The Godfather and eventually getting up and doing the Thriller dance...until the meds wore off and I fell back to the bed.

Not even getting turned down by every cab outside the hospital could kill my mood. I was just happy to be alive. I caught the Metro home after heart surgery and walked two miles to my house from the train with a little pep in my limp. But I'll tell you what did kill my mood: Getting a call saying that the blood work from the physical revealed abnormalities with my liver function. What sucked even more was the world's worst doctor calling me and leaving a message that said:

"Hey Mr Allen, this is ____ from the hospital. I looked over the scan and your liver is fine, but there appears to be a fairly large mass on your pancreas. I don't want to alarm you. It could be cancerous or it could be nothing, but we really won't know until we get you in for a CT Scan. I think you should get one of those right away so that we can get to the bottom of this. It's 4:55 Friday and I won't be back in until Monday, so call me Monday morning and we can discuss setting up a scan. Have a good weekend!"

That's kinda hard to shake off. I decided to just keep that one to myself. The wife cried enough before and after the heart surgery that you'd think I died on the table. So for the next week I just walked around wondering if I was gonna die. It was around the beginning of October that I got the news that I was fine. (knock on wood)

I just like to bring it up every once in a while to remind myself that half of this stuff really doesn't matter.