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"So you're a loyer?"
"No."
"No? But you filled this out and it says 'loyer' right here."
"No. That says 'law-yer.' I practice law, not loy."
I think that's where things went wrong. Never disagree with a doctor, especially a surgeon. Even if you disagree with
people for a living. The one who holds the scalpel is always right. (Oh, I forgot, that would be the nurse. Well, don't disagree with a nurse, either. Gloves and tape can be instruments
of torture in the hands of someone who has to spend all day with surgeons and has no one to take it out on except tranquilized loyers.) Anyway, arguing with a surgeon is like sending your
T-bone back to be cooked a little longer. When you see it again, all you can do is pass out the hankies, say a few comforting words, and scatter it to the wind. And you probably don't
want to eat the vegetables.
"Your appendix looks like a blowfish. It's gotta come out. You need to sign this, but don't worry, I know as well as you it would never hold up in
court." (He really said that. With witnesses standing around. (Not that he didn't say any of the other stuff - he didn't.)) (OK, he didn't say the part about the blowfish. That was
just for emphasis. Poetic license. Like a closing statement. Actually, I think it was a nurse that asked me to sign the form. The surgeon wasn't even there yet. The morphine makes it hard
to remember. My capacity hasn't been that diminished since college.
"Do you have a living will?"
"Yes, but I did it myself, so that probably won't hold up in court, either."
"Do you know where it is?"
"Yes."
"Are you an organ donor?"
"Wait a minute. Don't you want to know where my living will is? Don't you want to know if my wife knows where it is? Why do you care if I
know where it is? If we need it, it won't make a lot of difference whether I know where it is. If we need it, I'm not going to know where anything is. I hope."
"Are you an organ donor?"
"I keep my living will hanging on the wall in my office. I figure that's where I'm most likely to be found comatose. We almost needed it
during a CLE teleconference last Thursday - the finer points of title policy litigation."
"Are you an organ donor?"
I hesitated before answering. I am a
donor, but I don't think I want them to know. They might not give it their best shot. If I hiccup on the table, I want them working like their very Land Rovers depended on it.
"You can have my appendix."
"Are you an organ donor?"
"No, when I went to school there, we were known as the Ducks."
"Are you an organ donor?"
"Yes, now I only have the piano."
"Are you an organ donor?"
"I used to be, but my monkey ran away."
Just yesterday I heard somebody on the radio say the best reason to get as much education as possible is that you get more jokes. If you substitute "morphine" for
"education" that works, too.
The next thing I remember is waking up in the recovery room. Anesthesia is incredible. It really is. It's not like sleep. It's like nothing.
No dreams. No passage of time. No consciousness whatsoever. You meet the anesthesiologist (who is usually 11 or 12 years old - if you get an experienced one), you breathe deeply, and then
it's 2 1/2 hours later. It was like Civil Procedure as a 1L, or motion practice in bankruptcy court, or whole months of my first marriage.
Recovery from an appendectomy would be
easy if it weren't for one inescapable fact of life: you can have pain medicine, or you can have a functioning colon, but you can't have both. My advice - and I know it doesn't seem like
the thing to do at the time but you have to trust me - is to drop the pain meds cold turkey the first day. Otherwise, by the time you finally run out of them, well, think of your in-box
when you get back from vacation. And you don't really need the narcotics. 30 minutes of daytime TV has the same effect as 900 milligrams of Percocet. (Sadly, there aren't any studies to
back that up - the rats keep switching off the TVs.)
After a while the surgeon dropped by and we watched a few minutes of Sally Jessie Raphael. We commiserated about how tough it
is to find a malpractice carrier willing to overlook a few harmless blemishes. He asked how I felt. I said I'd never felt better in my life (I hadn't run out of Percocet yet). I asked how
the operation went. He said it was the easiest one he'd ever done. "Usually it's so hard to find what you're looking for - there's lots of stuff packed in there and it's all kind of
pink. But that's the great thing about operating on loyers - with no heart, no spine, and no guts to get in the way, you're in and out in no time."
I apologize for that last
sentence. Loyer jokes are in poor taste, and that one wasn't even original. (The editors made me say that.)
Eventually the hospital staff had their fill of my whining and sent me
home (I had a similar experience in law school that resulted in my graduation). Anyway, I'm doing fine and working my way up the waiting list until a suitable donor can be found. Many
people are able to lead virtually normal lives for a long time without an appendix, but I don't want to take chances.
My daughter studies biomedical engineering at the U and I'm
really proud of her (for lots of reasons) (that may be the only completely true statement I've written - you may have noticed these articles don't come with 10b-5 reps (neither do my
shareholders agreements, which would be one of the little blemishes the malpractice carriers seem to want to make such a big deal out of)). So I suggested that she might want to give some
thought to an artificial appendix program. I think there's a real gap to be filled there. She gave me the same look the nurses gave me when I asked if I could have the old appendix to
take home in a jar. They said that wasn't possible. That seems unreasonable. I might need it for evidence. When I get my car fixed I always ask for the old parts just so they'll think I
know what I'm talking about. (And you'd be surprised what people will buy on eBay.)
I wish I'd gone to medical school. Not because of the money or the image or the opportunity to
serve humanity (that's why I became a bail bondsman, but that's another story), but because doctors get to ask the really fun questions. Cross examination, even at its best, doesn't come
close to being able to ask a smart aleck loyer "Does this hurt?"
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