We thought our friend Sassy Winger (names have been changed) had appendicitis, so we took her to the hospital. Turns out it was just an ovarian cyst that had burst. YOU WANT TO KEEP READING NOW, DON’T YOU????!!!!
I’m uncomfortable discussing Sassy’s ovaries, so from here on, we’re going to call them phone books. Sassy began experiencing pains in the general area of her phone books — sharp, stabbing pains, as though someone had stabbed her with something sharp — and she feared it could be her appendix. Trying to be helpful, I related the story of my brother Jeff, and how he had his appendix taken out when he was 4, and how the scar has subsequently grown to be over a foot in length, due to Jeff as a whole having also grown exponentially since that time.
Sassy found this unhelpful, and Luscious Malone and I took her to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. There we waited as she met with the triage nurse. I love the idea of triage nurses, because I love the idea of someone’s job being to tell you whether you’re sick enough to be there. She’s like the bouncer at an exclusive nightclub, holding open the velvet rope for some, but not others. (“You, you, you, not you, you, you, not you….”)
Anyway, as Sassy pled her case before the triage nurse — and each time I’ve typed the word “triage,” it has come out “triangle,” by the way — Luscious and I looked around the emergency room to figure out who was sickest.
It gave me time to reflect on all the time I’ve spent at that particular hospital, almost always to visit someone else. My first major experience there was in 1998, when my friend Chris was in a terrible car accident where he almost died and missed his own wedding. (The woman married him after he got better, and now you’d never know he even had an accident, except that he talks about it ALL THE TIME.) For a couple weeks, my friends and I would go hang out at the hospital in the afternoons, watching TV and pretending to be family so we could sneak into the ICU and see him.
The difficult thing with this accident was that Chris’ spleen was crushed, and theretofore, “spleen” had been one of our favorite funny-sounding words. Now, it was no longer funny. (It is funny again now, by the way; the statute of limitations has passed. Soon we’ll be able to make fun of George W. Bush for being stupid again, too.)
In 2000, Luscious Malone herself was the recipient of a car accident, and we all scurried down to see her in the E.R. She reports that the wooden slabs they put possible back-injury people on were not made for persons above 17 pounds in weight, and that she, being larger than that, began to feel like a Luscious-kabob. She also reports that, at least in her case, if you swear in front of your nurses, they will think it’s funny.
(My first memory of meeting Luscious Malone, by the way, was when she was playing Nintendo at a mutual friend’s house, swearing in such a manner as would knock a buzzard off a crap-wagon, if you’ll pardon my use of the vernacular.)
She also reminds me that you know you’re in bad shape if they put you in a private room in the E.R. Usually, you just have the curtain separating you from the other victims. But if they foresee a lot of screaming or sawing, you get the private room. Fear the private room.
Sassy Winger didn’t get a private room, fortunately. She was relieved, if grossed out, to learn it was merely a phone-bookian cyst and not something worse. They told her to let the phone books rest for a couple weeks, and everything will be fine. Even so, maybe we’ll head back to the hospital, just to visit. I hope we can get in. (“You, you, not you….”)