Man walks into a doctor’s office…

…says “Warden, my brother thinks he’s a duck but we need the milk…”

So the Bone-Spur Surgery people finally contacted me today about tomorrow’s event. Now I know why they don’t call till the night before – so you only spend one night scared shitless.

What every other link in this month’s-long chain of increasingly pricey specialists has assured me is a no-big-deal deal has suddenly became this Major Deal involving six+ hours in hospital, ice-pack shoulder pads, post-procedure swelling so outrageous they promised to cut off my wedding ring if I didn’t remove it first (“Wouldn’t want you to lose your finger,” the nurse pointed out cheerfully), etc. and so forth.

I’ve been off the super-Advil for a couple of weeks now – so I don’t bleed out on the table, fussy buggers – and my shoulder hurts like the dickens and I’m still having last-minute jitters. Suddenly the method to their madness makes perfect sense.

Looking forward to my week off from work, though. Promised myself not to sweat whether or not the job’ll be there when I come back to claim it. If work hadn’t been such a massive stress-inducer these last couple weeks, the thing I’d be most looking forward to would be the pain meds; as it stands, my new addiction-in-waiting has dropped to a solid number two.

I expect I’ll be back to blog-silence for a while after this. The nice lady on the phone today painted me a lovely picture of not being able to do so much as scratch my own ass for a few days after the surgery, so I’m thinking, probably not so much with the typing or guitar noodling for a while. Thus that lovely week off of work.

I might have made a mistake when I bought “Dark Knight” tickets at the local IMAX for the night of the day after surgery, but I’ll burn that bridge when I cross it. I really wanted The Missus to see it first on the biiiiig screen, and I bought the first tickets for the show we’re going to (meaning optimum seats if you’re hip to the IMAX experience) so like it or not, I’m doing a rare night out the evening after. Fuck it. Fuck that. Fuck me.

(It’s amazing how liberating it is to be able to casually throw the F-bomb around; never knew how integral it was to my lexicon till The Boy started parroting every bad thing I say around the house and I had to put ‘Fuck’ on the shelf when he’s home.)

Anyhow, I’ve been keeping the whole surgery thing relatively low-profile, especially for a drama queen like me, at least partially because my fear expectations had been deliberately low-balled by the members of the medical community I’d been talking to about it. But I did share some of my concerns with my friend Cliz. After saying All The Right Things, she told me about a friend of a friend of hers who had some real medical problems, along with a request that I pray for him.

I’d love to help her in that regard, but scum like me recognize no God outside of our own self-absorption. Her story did touch my heart, though, black and shriveled from lack of use that it is. I hope she doesn’t mind if I share her plea here; if she does, it’ll probably be a few days before I’m physically able to take it down.

Anyone out there inclined to pray or think good atheistic thoughts relating to my recovery, I request you re-direct that positive energy in the direction of the man described below. I’ve only read one paragraph about him and already I like him better, and find him a more deserving recipient of well-wishes than your humble correspondent.

The note and the clip follow. He already sings like an angel, but he’s far too young to be singing with them.

I am writing to request prayer treatment for our friend and neighbor Stephen Bruton. He lives in [redacted for privacy reasons], but has kept an apartment in [redacted] for years and I have gotten to know him over the last few years whenever he was in town. He was diagnosed a while back with throat cancer which metastasized, but he beat it into remission. He was supposed to come back to town this month, but I found out that he went back into the hospital due to liver tumors. If you would say a prayer for him and his well being it would be most appreciated.