Kobayashi Maru

On Wednesday I go to the doctor for one of those routine visits. She’s a swell lady who got her degree in Scotland and is the stereotypical Scot. Which is good for me cause they are “call a spade a spade” type folks, much like me. Though I am not aware of any Scottish roots in my family. Though lets be honest, after you go back a few generations - you really have no idea. Sure some folks trace lineage back to Adam (or cro-magnon man in some people’s cases. Though in yet another fit of politically correctness we no longer use the term Cro-Magnon, we now use the term ‘anatomically modern humans‘. I can only figure that this is a direct result of a lobby group that sprung up in light of the insurance commercials.

Where was I? Oh yes, genealogy. I know for a fact who my parents were (at least they have convinced a lot of people of it and forged some good documentation if they are fooling me - though at times I do question if Marvin and I are actually blood related…) and based on that assumption of truth, I know who my grandparents and even my great grandparents were. After that though, you are really just taking stuff on blind faith. My wife and her sister once got into the whole genealogy thing. They traced their lineage all the way back to Robert the Bruce - King of Scotland:

Personally, I want to go on record that I see no family resemblance at all. But, that not withstanding, they got to acting all pretentious that they were of royal blood. It was at this point that I felt compelled to save them from the impending, disastrous ending of relationships with all their friends that this would cause, by gently pointing out that just because an early king of Scotland, whose legal and moral claim to the throne was tenuous at best, got sauced one night and knocked up some waif woman behind the tavern who then gave birth to one of his potentially many bastard sons and that spawn of a drunken roll in the hay is related to you after dozens of generations does not make you royal. In fact, it’s a pompous way of relating the age old reasoning behind the “friends don’t let friends drive half naked, post-pubescent ragamuffins home in their horse drawn carts drunk” advertisements that were posted all over the late middle ages in greater Saxony. There, now that I have confessed to the world about my wife’s illegitimate great great great great grandfather, I can go on. At least with this post.

As I was saying, my doctor is Scottish. She calls a spade a spade.

This is a spade:

Of course this is also a spade:

As is this:

So maybe there is something lost just in calling a spade a spade, but that’s what she does. And when I went to see her on Tuesday, she looked at me and said, “Why don’t you lay down so I can surgically remove that from your nose.” Which is about the emotionally sensitive equivalent of Uncle Buck’s famous line - “Take this quarter, go downtown, and have a rat gnaw that thing off your face! ”

But, being the semi-obedient person I am…at least towards people in authoritative positions who speak with forthrightness while holding a razor-honed scalpel in their dominant hand…I laid down and then asked, “what are you talking about?” To which she replies, “Well, that’s a cancerous growth and I am going to get rid of it as it’s dumb to die of things that are treatable.”

Now, I do want to say that her logic is sound there, and while I understood what she was saying, I am not entirely sure that she realized what she had said. And while under normal circumstances, I am one of the first to sit up and nit pick the improper usage of English, I was not entirely sure that she didn’t realize what she had said, AND I gently remind you of the aforementioned scalpel. Therefore, I stay in the prone position and kept my smart ass comments to myself, figuring that worst case scenario I could at least share them with you my loyal reader(s).

She then step up to the plank of wood with issue paper on it that she is euphemistically calling a “surgical suite” and looks down at me. And I would be remiss here if I didn’t insert the word LOOMS into the story, because when a person in a uniform (whatever, doctor’s coats are uniforms) stands over you and looks down at you, they are looming. It is the very definition of the word:

loom
verb, intr loomed, looming

1. To appear indistinctly and usually in some enlarged or threatening form.
Thesaurus: rise, tower, take shape, appear.
Form: loom over someone (often)

2. Said of an event: to be imminent, especially in some menacing or threatening way.

Thesaurus: overshadow, threaten, menace, hang over, hover, impend.
Form: loom over someone (often)

See - she was indubitably looming. Anyways, she looms over me with a hypodermic needle full of what I hope is either a local anesthetic or a hallucinogenic drug, and says, “once I freeze it you won’t feel it when I cut it out or stitch you up. But the needle is gonna hurt like hell, and I am sorry about that.” Again - the spade thing. I convey to her in a blur of English and a foreign language I picked up in Africa that only sounds to the untrained ear like whimpering but is really a very highbrow form of communication that I appreciated her being sorry about the pain she was about to inflict. I tried to explain that I have a medical condition that can best be described as an allergic reaction to pain that causes uncontrollable twitching (not to be confused with flinching) and eye watering (not to be confused with crying). She said that it was not tha uncommon a condition and she had dealt with people with similar conditions in the past. She did note that usually it can be dealt with the promise of a Popsicle afterwards, but I informed her that over time I had built up an immunity to that particular treatment and we would need to look at a new generation of medical or at least “medicinal” remedies. Wanting to deepen her affinity to me before she eviscerated my nasal cavity, I went with the cultural route and suggested something in a single malt prescription. That did induce a sly smile from her. But she then proceeded to fulfill her promise in a way that no one every has before in my life. People often say they will do things and then not really live up the the expectations (like prom nights and such) but not my doctor. She said it would hurt like hell and I’ll be darned if I didn’t actually feel the flames of hades and Satan himself speared my nose over and over with his nasty little pitchfork. I swear that I could feel the river Styx pooling around my buttocks, that or I pissed myself, either way it was not the most important thing on my mind at the moment. There is something incongruous in the concept that one should be hurt that badly in order to make pain go away. The paradox was not lost on me, in fact I asked her about it, but I realized afterwards that I had done it completely in the African language I spoke of earlier and it was obvious that she was not fluent. She just smiled patronizingly. Then she began to strip mine my nose.

While she cut, dug, pulled, sniped and otherwise carve out flesh from my face (once the stitches heal I will be able to tell for sure if she engraved her initials into my nose, for know I can only assume) she assured me that this was most likely basal cell carcinoma and that it was considered to be a benign form of cancer. (Normally this is where I would have been quite the smart ass about “benign cancer” being an oxymoron like crash landing or student teacher or Clinton’s monogamous relationship or Bush’s foreign intelligence or Microsoft Works. But ti e honest all I heard was carcinoma blah blah blah when the freezing wears off it’s gonna hurt like hell again blah blah blah.) There is a reason for this -my wife’s parents both died of cancer, my dad died of cancer, and then there is the fact that it’s cancer.

I did do some research though and it turns out that if you are gonna have cancer - which I do not recommend - then basal cell is the kind you “want”. Skin cancer is divided into two major groups: non-melanoma and melanoma. Basal cell carcinoma is a type of non-melanoma skin cancer, and is the most common form of cancer in the United States. According to the American Cancer Society, 75% of all skin cancers are basal cell carcinomas. SO I am in the top 75%, which in Canada is almost an “A” in school (it’s a B+ actually which is nice cause in the schools I went to as a kid it was a solid “D”) AND the potential for it to return is about 1%. So rest easy my passengers on the good ship Maru, your cap-i-tan will be steering this vessel for quite some time.

I went to work the next day with the nasty looking blood crusted stitches holding a hole in my nose together and walked into staff meeting. I was about 5 minutes late and everyone turned to make smart ass comments to me and their eyes were immediately drawn to my nose and the obvious trauma it had endured since they had seen me last about 12 hours earlier and they stammered out…”uhhh, what happened to your nose?”

I thought about feigning ignorance and running to the bathroom to look in the mirror and letting out a blood-curdling scream, but I thought better of it. I thought about telling them that I had been attacked by a crazed druggie who was tripping out and thought that I had stolen his nose and tried to get it back, but I thought better of it. I though about just telling them the truth, but I thought better of it. I looked down and said, it was a home nose-piercing kit, the damn thing said it was safe!!! Then I sat down and opened my notebook to start the meeting. Then I told them it was cancer and nothing to worry about. Usually I would have milked this kind of thing for some sympathy, but I had work to do, I didn’t really want a day off and well, I take this kind of thing a little to seriously to take it that seriously. (I know that doesn’t make sense on the surface, but if you lose enough people in your life to cancer, you will know exactly what I am talking about. Until then, just nod you head somberly like you understand and say “mmmmmmm”. And if you crease your forehead just a little, it really completes the effect and passerby-ers will think you very wise and rich in life experience.)

So while my shnoz might not be a pretty as it once was - I’m still sexier than most people (relax of course I don’t mean you) and I got sympathy sex that night from Ferf too. So the whole thing wasn’t a total downer. I got that going for me…which is nice.

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SO today my boss closed the office and announced that we were all walking across the street and watching the Canadian Snowbirds perform over Okanagan Lake. It was a very cool cultural experience and I feel more Canadian having done it…I guess.

The American in me thought - this would be so much cooler if they dropped just a bit of napalm on the lake and let it burn off.

But maybe that’s just me. Everyone else seemed satisfied with watching the planes fly by. I have to admit the last time I just sat and watched planes fly by, I was in college and Ferf took me out near DFW Airport, to this spot that was incredible because it over looked the airport and would have been very difficult to find (it was almost like she had been there before) and molested me. So I was somewhat uncomfortable with this today because:

a) Ferf was not there

b) lots of other people were there

c) it’s a vivid memory

But somehow I made it through and got back to the office so I could tell you about it. It’s okay, you don’t have to thank me. I just want to know your favorite airplane memory - note to Badger and others: mile high stories will be read, and possibly appreciated, but unfortunately not published on the Maru…

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SO Happy belated BC Day to everyone. I am really not sure what the day is for (other than to get me and lots of other folks a day off). I did do a little research on the day and this is what I got off an official government site: