My Children are Growing Older, Thankfully, I Am Not.

My health care professional, in this case a Nurse Practitioner, tells me I have to lose weight. I have a couple of problems with that; first, she is just a practitioner. Now if she were an Expert, or even a Highly Trained Professional, I would feel better. I am reluctant to let someone ‘practice’ on me.

Secondly, I think her scale is broken. I have no evidence to support this belief; I just think it is broken. And I value my opinion quite highly.

Either way, I have decided I need to exercise more. When I was first married, I used to run quite a bit. By ’quite a bit’ I mean often, although not necessarily far. That was the only way I could keep up with my wife; she moves like a bolt of lightning. When I got a bit older, and my knees started to file complaints with the labor relations board about how I abused them while running, I began swimming.

I remember swimming with my girls as they grew up. They would splash in the shallow end and come over between my laps to tell me of the amazing things that happened while they played in the water. Then they grew older and would swim a few laps with me, before wandering off to the deep end to dive from the diving board.

I remember the amazement the girls would express as they swam hard to keep up with me. I would slow down and swim leisurely, but they were little and it was still difficult for them to keep pace.

Then, about five years ago, I started working a few extra jobs, and swim time went away. At least for me. The girls got involved with the synchronized swim club at their school.  And Middlest just recently took, and passed, her class to be a life guard.

Now, this summer, I decided to swim again. It has been five or six years, and a few extra pounds, after I stopped swimming regularly. After three or so laps, Littlest comes along side me at one end of the pool and asks how I am doing. I tell her it feels good to be swimming again. She grins, “Yeah, fun, isn’t it.”

I nod and start off on my fourth lap. I get to the other end of the pool and prepare to turn around, when I realize that Littlest is hanging on the edge of the pool, awaiting my arrival. I stop abruptly and take off my goggles, just to be sure I am not seeing things.

I look back to the far end of the pool, then back at my daughter, then around the pool and finally back at my daughter, who looks at me innocently, but with that twinkle of merriment in her eye that says, “ooooo, this is gonna be so much fun.”

“Where did you come from?!” I ask.

“I swam here,” she replied in a calm, un-winded voice, as opposed to my heavy gasps for precious oxygen.

I searched for a snappy come back, but my oxygen-deprived braincells were not firing properly. I just shook my head.

Eldest has celebrated her last birthday as a teenager and is going to Guatemala soon. Middlest, at sixteen, has completed her training as a life guard and is ready to save lives. And Littlest, at halfway through her second decade, can swim way faster than I can.

I am thrilled my daughters are growing into such wonderful young women. And I am proud to be their father who is holding steady at twenty-five.

A Pen Stuck Up My Nose? Never!

CBS news reported this week that a German man had a pencil removed from his head. The pencil had been stuck in the nostril of this 24 year old man for 15 years. He reported that he remembered falling badly as a child.

Every parent cringes with me at the mental image of a child with pencils stuck up his nose, pretending he is a walrus, or some other sort of animal, falls down.

The article goes on to share some other oddities of writing utensils being lodged in peoples’ bodies for years. My favorite was the 76 year old woman who had a felt tip pen removed from her stomach. It had apparently been there for at least 25 years.

When the doctors removed it, the pen still wrote. That the pen wrote is amazing. I can never seem to find a felt tip pen that works; they are always dried up and useless. I see now I have been looking in the wrong spots. I should be looking in the stomachs of grandmothers, rather than the pen cup on the desk.

As I read these stories, I sneered and tried to imagine how people could do such dumb things, I congratulated myself on never having a pen lodged in my nose for fifteen years.

Then I remembered a story from my youth. It was my birthday; I was turning 10. All of the neighborhood boys thought it was cool to pick long stems of grass and chew them.

I cannot imagine why we thought chewing grass was cool and eating vegetables was gross, but we did.

This glorious mid-August afternoon, I was riding my bicycle, chewing grass, and pretending I was a cowboy in the great wild west. As I rounded the corner, I fell off my bike.

I suffered a few scrapes, but nothing was broken.

As the day slipped into evening, I had this scratchy throat that I couldn’t shake. Nothing helped; drinking didn’t help, birthday cake didn’t help, ice-cream didn’t help.

After the last birthday guest had left, I told my mother that something was wrong. My throat felt scratchy, almost like there was a sliver in it.

She shook her head, “A sliver? How would you get a sliver in your throat?” She took a flash light and peered down my throat. She stepped back, eyes wide and called my father. “He has a sliver in his throat!”

Dad calmly said, “No, he can’t have a sliver in his throat.” But just to verify, he looked. He laughed, “He does have a sliver in his throat.”

I had to explain about chewing grass and riding my bike.

Mom and Dad shook their heads. Then it was off to the emergency room. There the nurses and doctors viewed my mothers diagnosis of a sliver in my throat with bemused looks that quickly turned to wide-eyed looks of surprise when they peered into my throat and saw that little sliver of grass lodged there.

After a parade of doctors and nurses stopped by to see the crazy boy with the sliver in his throat, a doctor reached in with a long pair of tweezers and removed it.

I no longer ride my bike and chew long pieces of grass at the same time, but I do like vegetables.

Surgery

As many of you know I had surgery recently. Now this does not seem as if it would neither be at all fun, nor anything I would want to blog about. I want to correct those misconceptions.

Upon arrival at the hospital, I was ushered into pre-op, which is short for “the room where you are prepared for surgery”, and was instructed to take off all my clothes and put on a gown. Now anyone who has worn a hospital gown already knows how hilarious this is, those gowns never fit, have snaps in all the wrong places, and flap in the breeze - rendering any sense of modesty useless.

Once I had the gown on, a seemingly endless procession of medical professionals began to parade in and out of my room. Starting with the pre-op nurse. “Good morning Mr. Distaffen.”  she cheerfully greeted, “I am Clara, I will be your nurse while you get ready for surgery.” Now I think it is wonderful that each person in this procession introduced themselves and explained what they will be doing during my stay at the hospital. However, not wanting to be undone, I responded to each as professionally as is possible while wearing a silly gown that air-conditioned parts of my anatomy that do not normally experience air-conditioning, “Good morning, my name is Rob and I will be your patient today.” was my chosen response.  This exchange occurred with the pre-op nurse, the operating room nurse, the anesthesiologist, the surgeon, the unit nurses, the patient care techs, and some guy who was lost and looking for directions, “Hello, my name is Bill and I am lost, can you tell me the way to the post-pre-op-recovery-discharge unit?”

Finally, it was time for surgery and since I was “Fasttrack” patient, I went straight to surgery without anesthesia.

From all the stories I have heard about surgeries, going to surgery fully awake was neither what I expected nor a pleasant prostpect. My terror was allayed once I actually reached the operating room and was greeted once again by the anesthesiologist, who explained that all the anesthesia would be administered right in the operating room. She then placed a mask over my face and instructed me to breath normally as she gave me oxygen to breath. I thought that is what I breathed normally, but I was sadly mistaken. Only a certified medical professional can give you oxygen to breath, the rest of the time you breathe air. The difference between air and oxygen is simple, air is free and you can get it anywhere, from anyone. Only a medical professional can give you oxygen and it is expensive.

In keeping with being a Fasttrack patient, I awoke before surgery was completely finished. I vaguely remember them taking screws from my head and hearing shouts of ‘restrain him’. One thing I remember distinctly is a bead of sweat trickling down my face. I hate beads of sweat trickling down my face and I wanted to wipe it off. The doctors and nurses were unconcerned with my beads of sweat, they were more concerned with my loose screws. Unfortunately they did not tighten my loose screw, they just removed it completely.