The Fruits Of My Labor, Or Congratulations, You’ve Got A Hernia

I had had my fill of welding and transferred to a different job.  I was working in the storeroom at the time of this incident.  It was the first job that I held at P&H that didn’t require sucking smoke and getting burned.  It felt weird to not be a welder, unfortunately, my career as a non-welder was to be short-lived. 
I had to do a lot of lifting on the new job, but I was young and strong, so I didn’t mind.  I found out (the hard way, of course) that how much you could lift wasn’t as important as how you lifted it.  One day I lifted a box that contained a small electric chain hoist.  It weighed somewhere around sixty to seventy pounds.  I had picked up those hoists dozens of times, it was no big deal, but I wasn’t well versed in the wrong ways to pick them up until I did it the wrong way.  When I picked up the box, it felt like someone had stabbed me in the guts with a steak knife.  I dropped the box and doubled over clutching my wound.  I went to the men’s room and inspected myself for any signs of damage.  I had a small bulge on the left side of my lower intestine.  The pain was horrifying; I was in trouble and I knew it.
I went to see the company doctor and he confirmed my fears; I had a hernia, but he assured me that it was a small one and that I could continue to work as long as I was careful.  He confessed that someday I would have to have it fixed, but that I wouldn’t have to worry about it for a long time.  I left the medical department, went back to the men’s room and locked myself in one of the stalls.  I sat on the pot and had myself a good cry, then pulled myself together and went back to work.  I gradually found that I could not take it easy enough to avoid the searing pain that had quickly become my constant companion.
I didn’t know anything about hernias, but after two weeks of being the proud parent of a bouncing, baby hernia, I made a couple educated guesses that led me to go shopping for a surgeon.  I decided that, like a real baby, it wasn’t going to go away, and also like a real baby, it was only going to get bigger, not smaller.  The company nurse had told me that sometimes we have to learn to live with pain; I thought, yeah, right.  In retrospect, I found out that she was right because I have learned to live with pain, but you don’t have to learn to live with a hernia.  I found a surgeon who had an impressive record of repaired hernias to his credit and set a date.  Of course, P&H wasn’t happy that I was having surgery because there was no way they could deny that it was work related.  Maybe they were hoping I would put it off long enough for the statute of limitations for the workman’s compensation claim to run out.  They also weren’t happy that I waited until just before I was to be laid off to have the surgery.  Oh well, you’d think they would have been a little appreciative of the fact that I had worked in pain with my guts bulging out, but I guess that was too much to ask.
I passed the pre-op physical and checked into the hospital.  I was very apprehensive about what was going to happen to me the following day, but that night, a nurse came in and allayed my fears.  When she came in, she saw that I was watching M A S H on TV.  Both of the doctors were splattered with blood and up to their elbows inside a patient’s guts.  “Don’t worry,” she said, “it won’t be like that.”  Wow!  That was a relief!
She asked me a bunch of stupid questions that I was sure someone there must already know: like, are you married, what’s your wife’s name, how old are you.  I told her this wasn’t top secret information and that someone, possibly everyone there already knew the answers.  She told me she was the head nurse in the recovery room and would be asking me those questions again.  She said I would be out for two or three hours and when I answered them correctly, they would know that I was recovering normally from the anesthetic. 
The next morning a nurse came to prep me for surgery.  Her first task was stuffing a catheter into the back of my left hand so they could pump drugs into me.  Did I ever mention how much I hate needles?  No?  Well, I’m sure I will again.  So, being the man that I was, I looked away and let her have her way with my hand.  I grimaced and squirmed at the pain and things were going tolerably well until she said, “Rats!”  I’m not very savvy at medical terminology, but that didn’t sound too professional and I resisted the urge to not look.  Blood was spurting out of a vein and shooting several inches into the air.  I learned a valuable lesson that day: whenever a nurse says RATS, don’t look!
She managed to not let me bleed to death and got the stupid catheter in and taped down.  The next order of business was squirting in some drugs.  The first one was to dry me up so I wouldn’t gag on my own spit (she worded it differently), the next one was Sodium Pentathol, which was supposed to ease the pain and prepare me for the anesthetic.  I was all for easing the pain, which she had just caused, mind you.
They wheeled me into the operating room.  It seemed like they pushed me forever, but I didn’t mind because I was feeling no pain, as a matter of fact, I was feeling pretty darned good, heck, I was feeling great!  Isn’t Sodium Pentathol also called truth serum?  I would have confessed to being on the grassy knoll if they would have asked.  I was flying high and talked a mile a minute.  I thought the stuff was supposed to make me sleepy.  Anyway, I was surrounded by all kinds of nurses and assistants when the Doc came in.
I said, “Hey Doc, remember which side it’s on, okay.”  He assured me that he’d figure it out, then I said, “I just wanted to make sure because I heard about this guy who had surgery because he had a bad testicle and the doctor cut off the wrong one.  Now he’s singing soprano for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.”
The anesthesiologist was an old Polish woman (don’t ask me her name.  I couldn’t pronounce it then and I can’t remember it now), she said, “It’s time to go to sleep Dah-nny,” and tried to put the gas mask on my face but I dodged my head to the side and kept talking.  “It’s time to go to sleep,” she repeated, but I swerved the other way to avoid her once again.  Then someone grabbed my head and she clamped the mask over my face as I talked.
I woke to the sounds of a woman moaning and crying.  It was pitiful sounding; it was down right pathetic.  I was actually getting ill listening to her.
“Nurse!” I shouted.  She hurried over and asked what I wanted.  I told her I was ready to go back to my room.  I think I said something like “Get me outta here!”
She checked me over and decided I was sufficiently recovered.  I asked her why she hadn’t asked me those stupid questions and she informed me that she had, and I answered them all correctly.  On the way back to my room, I realized that the plumbing on the back of my hand was hooked up to a bag of glucose.  Why couldn’t they make up their mind?  First they give me a shot to dry me up, then they pump liquid into me.
After they got me settled into bed with my sugar water supply, I realized that I was experiencing something which I quickly identified as pain.  The drugs must have been wearing off.  A short while later, a good looking blond nurse came in and told me to roll over.
“What for?” I asked as I eyed the needle she was holding.
“It’s for the pain,” she said.
“I’m not in any pain.”
“But the doctor ordered it.”
“Who knows better if I’m in pain, me or the doctor?”
“But, the…”
“Nope.”  She left my room with a sad look on her face and a full hypodermic in her hand.  I think she wanted a shot at my butt in more ways than one.  I didn’t care if she was Miss Universe and the Queen of Sheba rolled into one, she wasn’t sticking that needle in my butt.
The next intrusion to my misery was a nurse who informed me that the doctor wanted me to get up and walk around so I wouldn’t stiffen up.  Then another nurse came in; they hooked up my dinner bag to a stand on wheels and helped me out of bed.  One nurse led me into the hall and said they would change the sheets on my bed while I was up.  They yakked up a storm as I stood in the hall hunched over in pain clinging to my meal-on-wheels.  What was taking so long?  That’s it.  I had enough of waiting.  I took myself for a walk.  They could come and find me.  I strolled off at a leisurely snail pace.  They must have freaked out when they realized I was gone.  I made it all the way to the other side of the hospital before they found me in the cancer ward.
Later that day, a nurse came in and informed me that I hadn’t urinated since the surgery.  So what?
“You’ve had five units of glucose.  You have to urinate.” She said.
“Look,” I said, “I have a bladder the size of a football.  I don’t have to pee yet.”
“If you don’t go by tomorrow,” she warned, “we’ll have to insert a catheter to drain you.”
Yeah, right, I thought, you and what army?  There was no way that was going to happen.  Well, as luck would have it, it wasn’t necessary.  Around midnight, I woke up and thought, oh-oh, time to go, and pushed the buzzer to call the nurse.  A male nurse was on duty.  He was a cool black dude that I really liked.  I told him it was time to get me into the bathroom on the double.  He looked at all the junk I was hooked up to and asked if he could bring me the jug to pee in instead of going through all the—“Yeah,” I said, “Just hurry up, man.”  He brought me the jug and I peed; and I peed; and I—oh man, I overflowed the darned jug!  The poor guy had to drag me out of bed with all my wires and hoses to change my sheets.  Sorry man.
Not too much longer after that, I was deemed healthy enough to be released. I guess peeing is a sign of recovery and they must have figured I was very, very recovered.  So Cindy shuttled me home and I settled into my life of recuperating. 
The first time I looked at the Doc’s handy work, I almost gagged; it was gross.  They had shaved me bald down there (I thought about all the nurses in the operating room and wondered who got stuck doing it) and I had twelve stainless steel staples holding my guts together.  It was all red and looked just as painful as it felt.  The Doc had told me that the muscle had separated, not torn, and the intestine was poking through.  It had only taken six stitches to patch me up inside.
I went through a cornucopia of various pains as I healed.  The itch was maddening as the hair grew back.  I scratched one side, but didn’t dare on the other.  Why couldn’t they have only shaved the side they were operating on?  And why didn’t they warn me about the dreaded bowel movement?  I found out that anesthesia binds you up, but don’t bother telling the patient, just let him find out the hard way.  And I do mean hard.  I strained for all I was worth and almost blew the staples right out of my body.  Thanks a lot!  And speaking of staples, my insurance had to pay for this weird little staple remover and when the time came for them to come out, the Doc didn’t even use it.  Maybe I had loosened them up with my BM’s.
I had this thing growing inside me, right under the incision.  It was scar tissue and felt like a pencil.  In time, it disappeared and I felt confident that the Doc hadn’t misplaced any of his tools.  Five years after the surgery it still hurt when I ran or strained myself, but now it’s almost good as new, well actually, nothing on me is as good as new anymore, but I’m grateful that the Doc did a good job and remembered which side it was on.
Eight weeks after the surgery, I returned to work and was immediately laid off.  They gave me an extra eighteen months to recover—without pay, of course.  I didn’t sit around vegetating; I finished my night school classes, earned two degrees and went to work as an electronics technician.  I’ll tell you about that later.  When I got called back at P&H, I had no choice but to…
(can you guess?)
(Yup, you’re right.)
…be a welder again.

Oh, this story isn’t over yet, I forgot to tell you about my car.  I was in my backyard, recovering from my surgery, on a lawn chair with a book, when I heard this loud metallic crash.  I said to myself, that was my car.  I got up and hobbled into the front yard to find my car, which was parked on the other side of the street, had been plowed into by an old beater pickup truck.  The dude that was driving was a young kid, who, as fate would have it, had just married my next door neighbor’s daughter.  Well, I felt sorry for him (I always end up regretting these momentary signs of weakness) and said I wouldn’t call the cops.  I asked if he had insurance and he said yes, so we exchanged phone numbers and I told him to have his insurance call me.
A couple weeks came and went without hearing from his insurance, so I called the kid and asked him what was up with his insurance.  He told me that they said they weren’t going to pay for the damage to my car.  Oh, really?  I got the name of his agent and gave them a call.  They asked me the date and time of the accident.  When I told them, they said the kid had come in and got insurance about an hour after the accident and they wouldn’t cover it.  What a knuckle-head.
I called him and said that he was going to have to pay for the damage himself.  He said he didn’t have the money and wasn’t going to pay.  Oh, you’re going to pay, I told him.  I informed him that I would go through my insurance and they would pursue him through the courts.
“Go ahead and sue me,” he said brazenly.
“You misunderstand,” I told him, “I’m not going to sue you, my insurance company is going to sue you, and they don’t lose.” 
Well, he wasn’t going to be intimidated by me or my insurance company threat, so I went through my insurance and had my car repaired.  The part that bugged me was that I had a two hundred dollar deductible that had to come out of my pocket.  My insurance company hauled him into court and to my surprise, after they squeezed the first two hundred bucks out of him, they reimbursed me.  I’ll bet that knuckle-head was paying for that stupid stunt for many, many years.  His payments probably lasted longer than his marriage.