Hernias Anonymous

Gee, I wonder if MacSurfer will pick this one up.

Anyway, I just had an operation on Tuesday to repair a hernia. This was interesting on several levels. The first is that all my life I had heard about hernias, as in, “I can’t lift that, it’ll give me a hernia!” without ever knowing what one was. The second is that you never hear about people having this happen to them unless it happens to you and you talk about it, at which point it seems there’s no one around who hasn’t had a hernia. The third is that when the surgeon tells you, “you’ll be pretty sore for a few days,” he really means “it’ll feel like you’ve been impaled on a telephone pole and you’ll want someone to shoot you.” The fourth is that I have no medical insurance, which at the moment is the least of my concerns — and there’s actually a good side to this.

As an actual point of fact, there are over 800,000 surgeries to repair the type of hernia I had each year in the U.S. If you don’t know what a hernia is, you’re lucky. The actual condition doesn’t hurt a bit, either. It just feels weird, as if you have a belching squirrel in your peritoneum. This also occurs way down low, close to all the important stuff, and it’s why the doctor made you cough in phys. ed. Basically, it involves your guts migrating where they’re not supposed to be. [Has Tim deleted this post yet?] Makes a very strong impression on you that you need to get fixed, so I did.

Taos County is one of those places where I’ll bet more people are uninsured than covered, one of the reasons my surgeon has a discounted flat rate for the procedure. I paid in advance. The hospital bill for the few hours I was there will be much larger, but I’m sure I owe Visa more than that already, so Holy Cross will just have to stand in line with the others. It’s a great hospital, BTW. I paid for the pre-surgery EKG and chest X-ray in cash, and the hospital gave me a 12 percent discount. This is lots more fun than buying a car. I also have to say that paying cash and being done with it gave me a very good feeling: no worrying over whether the medical terrorists (insurance company) would agree that the tests were necessary, no resubmission of claims, no arguing, no evil middle man between me and what I needed. Gave me just a taste of what it must be like to live in a civilized country where people know their taxes will automatically pay for treatment, y’know?

As for the operation, I don’t remember a thing. Those drugs are GOOD, lemme tell you. I’m not kidding, I remember nada. Whatever they shot into the IV as I was being wheeled in must have taken about 30 seconds to shut me down, and the gas man was a real pro. So all that was great. It was only later that day, back in the ol’ hacienda, when I felt the telephone pole. Oh Lordy…

But sometime this afternoon, around two o’clock, I had the most amazing experience. Suddenly I could almost walk normally again. It was as if the pain had been dialed down to 10 percent, just like that. What in the world? I have never experienced any change in physical condition this drastic in my life. It just stopped. Well, mostly. So tomorrow I’ll have to shave and change my T-shirt.

My wife was an absolute angel throughout. I could have shot myself yesterday except for the love and steadiness she provided.

So now I can get caught up on all those software reviews and start writing again. That’s one thing I want the world to know. The other thing is that this can happen to you (guys, mostly), but if it does, you’ll get through it. Take whatever pills they give you and don’t struggle. The first 48 hours are a bitch, and then you’re born again.

No heavy lifting for about six weeks, but I can handle that.