#3 BOIL

I just got released from the hospital this morning and I can see by the concern in your face that you want to know all about it! It all started about a week ago when one morning after I shaved; yes I shaved my beard off after 20 years. I thought that it might be about time to see just what I looked like under all that hair. So I shaved it off a few days after my birthday (Feb. 4, just in case you didn't know). Any way some times when I shave I get an in grow hair that once in a blue moon will turn into a small insufficient pimple that goes away in a day or so. Well you guessed it, this one hung around a few extra days and than decided to turn into a boll right on my right cheek next to the corner of my mouth. Great, just what I needed. So it grew to the size of golf ball and I figured it was about time to go to the doctor. I went to the SDA clinic (Seventh Day Adventist) and talked to the doctor there who is a nice old guy but whom I'm not too sure of his ability to recognize a real problem when he sees one. He prescribes some antibiotics for me to take four times a day and says the Immortal word of all Doctors from all over the world. "Call me if it gets any worse!" Which I have come to know, really means "So long kid and don't bug me no more!"

The next morning I wake up only to discover that my cheek has doubled it size over night. I go back to the doctor and he says that we should open it up to help it drain. By now I'm willing to try any thing. He then utters another of those famous doctor sayings "You may feel a sight discomfort!" Slight Discomfort my Ass!! He's got this 12" needle digging so deep in my check it feels like he's going to poke through to the other side! After about what seemed like three hours of surgery he says "Strange, nothing in there!" With tears in my eyes I look up and say "By chance have you ever done this before?" He then decides that maybe he's looking in the wrong place so he takes the needle and says does this hurt?" I felt like grabbing him by the balls and saying "Does this hurt?" But I figured he had the advantage of having a knife and I didn't so I let it go. By now I have a gapping hole in the side of my cheek that you could almost put your fist inside, so he rolls up what looked like a washcloth and sticks it inside. "Call me if it gets any worse!"

I stagger out to the front deck to pay my bill ($30.00) I kinda knew that I was in trouble when I had to ask him what seemed obvious to me and everybody else in the waiting room "Can you give my anything for the pain?" I sat down and waited for the nurse to come back with my pain pills. By now the whole side of my face felt like it was on fire and someone was trying to put it out with an ice pick. I'm starting to squirm sitting on the chair when she finally comes out with a small bottle of pills. She sets them down on her desk and starts talking to some patient about how to fill out some stupid form and then the phone rings and she talking to her boyfriend. After ten minutes I can't take it any longer and I walk over to the counter and yell "Can I have my fucking pills now!" No I didn't say that I just made that up, but that was what I was thinking. She did give them to me finally and I swallowed two with a little water from a little paper cup with daisies on it. "Excuse me, but will these make me drowsy or anything? I might be operating some heavy equipment later today and I wouldn't want to, you know, squash some little kid or something!" To which she replied "Oh no it's Acetaminophen!" I said "What's that, some form of Codeine or Morphine or LSD or something?" "Oh no it's Tylenol" "TYLENOL, are you crazy? I'm about to pass out and you give me something from a TV commercial!" She smiles "But it's Tylenol 3!"

I get in my jeep and head over to the dive shop, look at the bottle of Tylenol and think that if I were take the whole bottle at once…By the time I get to the shop I'm starting to get the chills and my lips are starting to swell up. I go to the Marina Hotel and Susan (Francis wife) is there and suggests that I lay down in one of the rooms for a while. They put me in room 103 and I tell the girl at the front desk to please check on me in an hour or so just to make sure I'm still alive. I had this vision of them finding some decaying body in the bed a few weeks later and saying "You know if somebody had just checked…I got under the covers and I'm still shaking and the pain is so bad I can't talk. (Yes I know that must have been REAL bad!)

I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I know the front desk girl is asking me how I felt. The pain was not so bad so I figured that the Tylenol had probably kicked in…NOT…she wants to know if I want to watch a video on the TV? They play video's in the office and you can see them in the rooms. I said “Sure just pick something you like.” She turned on the TV and left and I just laid there watching the static for about 20 minutes before she was able to find a great selection. It was called "Fury for Freedom" Which is about some punk kid that was in high school and was always getting into trouble and then he joins a Karate school and becomes an expert, but then gets into a fight back in high school and goes to court and the judge lets him go only if he joins the Marines and he goes to Vietnam and kills all sorts of guys but then get into a fight with some officer and…and…the electricity cuts out! I just lay there waiting for the power to come back on for 45 minutes. When it does come on I figured that they would continue with the movie so I watched the static for another 20 minutes. OK, it’s not coming back on so I get up to turn off the TV, and take three steps and look into the mirror. Oh great, my face is puffed up like a beach ball! I get back into my jeep and drive to the clinic. The old doctor looks at me and suggests that I go to the new hospital and leave a real Doctor look at it because he's not sure just what's wrong.

Palau has just opened a new Hospital, which by the way I helped Richard Install the computers and an the cables, they only had enough money to build it but not any money to update any of the equipment for the inside so they just took all the old stuff from the old hospital and moved it into the new one. After waiting for over one hour I got a chance to see a doctor. He was an Indian, not an American Indian but an Indian from India, and spoke with the typical stereo type Indian accent. .

"Oh, your face not look to good!"

"Hey, you’re not much to look at either rag head." I didn't really say that I just made that up.

"Oh you “You make joke,” (giggle) “I mean the big lump on your face"

"No, the lump on my toe. Of course the lump on my face you idiot"

Reaching over and poking the hole in my face with his finger... "Does this hurt?"

"THAT does it. Come on, put ‘em up, just you and me doc. right here, right now!"

"Oh very sorry, very sorry"

"Well OK, just don't let It happen again. What do you think?"

"Take two of these antibiotics and call me if it gets any worse"

"Yeah, Yeah, I know, can you at least give me something for the pain?"

Thinking for a few moments he writes some thing down on a piece of paper and hands it to me.

"TYLENOL"

Its 6:00 PM by the time I get home and immediately head straight for bed. Took my pills and told Francis to please check me in the morning. Still had thoughts of them finding some rotting body and saying "If somebody had just checked...!”

I woke up at 7:00 the next morning and felt pretty good no pain, sat up and started to get out of bed when I realized that my most of my right check was still lying there on tile pillow! Holy shit. Now I discover that I can't see out of my right eye! I look in the mirror... "Oh my God", the right side of my face has tripled in size, and has even swollen so big that it has almost closed my right eye! Oh Man, Oh Man this can't be happening! I jump into the jeep and head straight to the hospital emergency ward. On the way there I keep thinking that it must have got so infected and with the washcloth still struck in the hole in my cheek there was no place for it to go so it just filled up the empty space in my head! When I arrived the nurse immediately puts me on the table and starts to pull the washcloth out. "Ah, I would stand back if I were you!" But nothing, nothing comes out. So she cleans it up and puts in a new washcloth and says that I can leave. "No way" says I. "Something's wrong and I want to be checked into the hospital" About 10:00 O'clock a doctor finally comes in and agrees with me and orders the nurses to start a IV going so they can get me on antibiotics as soon as possible. At this point I must confess that I'm not afraid of needles as long as they stick them into somebody else, and it's not even the needles that bother me It's the PAIN I don't partially like. I don't know why but somehow I just knew that I would get some trainee nurse that still hadn't got a passing grade on starting IV's. Sure enough, they bring in this 250 ponder who looks at me and starts giggling. She talking to the doctor and then says "You want me to do what?” Christ, just give me a dull rusty knife and I'll do it myself. She wraps the tourniquet around my arm and says "You may feel slight discomfort" I look at her and said ''What? Are you studying to be a Doctor or something" I'm not sure who hand is shaking more hers or mine but she jabs this huge needle in my hand trying to hit a vain. "Oops I miss (Giggle) Sorry; missed again...This is my first time you know! (Giggle), Oops." Mercifully the head nurse comes by and takes pity on me and slaps my wrist 30 or 40 times until the vain is just about to pop through and sticks the needle in.

"Take him to the Surgical Ward and check him in!" These words were uttered with the same inflection as you would say "Take him to dungeon and throwaway the key!" Everyone around me had the look on their face as if to say "Oh my God, Not the SURGICAL ward" They put me in a wheel chair and rolled me away. I not quite sure why, but I had this strange feeling that I was going back into time to some ghastly prison of war camp that was being controlled by some hideous combination of a Nazi, Japanese, and the deep south prison guard. I was expecting to see this tall blonde guard with a crew cut hair cut, little squinty eyes, a big pot belly, wearing chrome sun glasses and dressed in a kimono, come out of nowhere and with southern Japanese ascent say "What we have here is a Failure to Communicate." Mentally I was prepared. The first thing would be to eat any and all food they slid under the door to my cell, to keep my strength up. Second I wasn't going to kowtow to no white silk, hooded imperial grand wizard no matter how much they tortured me, well, OK I'd do it, if it was for the well being of all the other prisoners, and third they weren't going to…to…I'm not sure what number three would be, but they weren't going to do it to me, By golly!

They wheeled me into my semi-public room with my IV bottle rack and said that I could have the bed over in the corner, So far so good; I sat down and had a look around, there were three other beds with four other guys laying on them. My IV bottle rack looked like it had been left there since the war but it still did it's job of holding up the IV bottle and all the tubes that ran down to my hand. The guy lying in the bed straight across from me looked pretty bad. His arm was in a sling and what looked like knife slashes all over his chest and back! "Those bastards!" I hissed between my teeth. In the other corner was this real old man sleeping, with six relatives sitting around looking real depressed. The third one was sitting up in his bed with a great big grin on his lips and said "Hello! How are you doing?" I knew right then and there that he was a plant, a spy, an informer, for THEM! All of a sudden the guy with the knife slashes all over his body comes over to my bed and asks "If you’re insane can they put you in jail?" Kind of caught me off guard, "I don't understand the question" He repeats it "You know if you’re INSANE can they just put you in jail or something?" My mind going like a whirlwind "Gee, that’s a tough one, I’m not really sure about that, Ah...could you excuse me for a minute?" I slowly, as not to make any sudden movements, got out of bed and dragging the IV bottle rack, which had wheels not unlike a broken shopping cart, and headed straight for the front door. The nurse stops me and wants to know where I'm going? "No where, just checking" "Checking what?" she persists" "Just checking to make sure there wasn't a mix up and by some trivial clerical error you've put me in the ward for the fucking criminal INSANE!"

It was lunch time now and some old fat lady, with her hair tucked up under a plastic bag of some sort, rolls in this cart with what I guess was suppose to be spaghetti. ''Where's you cup? Do you have a spoon?" "Hey you got me, and no, I don't" She walks away and comes back a few minutes later and hands me a little plastic spoon and a Styrofoam cup with some pineapple juice in it. First of all I hate spoons, and how do you eat spaghetti with one any ways? Plus my mouth was so deformed by now that all I could do was try and hold a noodle by one end and tilt my head to the right and try and drop the noodle in the corner of my mouth and suck it in. This worked with fair success and after an hour or two I estimate that I was able to consume about twelve noodles. So I change my mind about my first decree about eating everything and figured things could only get better.

I'm supposed to get a new IV every six hours and it was that time. In walks my male nurse, or should I say, in sashays my male nurse and sit down on my bed puts his hand on my knee and with this incredible lisp says "Hi, I’m Tony, and I'll be you very special nurse for tonight!" Great, just what I needed. But by and by Tony and I get to talking and Tony says "You know, I want to be a doctor some day" This was too good to pass up. "By any chance are you studying to a Proctologist?" A big smile comes to his face why, yes, how did you know?" "Just a lucky guess!"

Evidently there is relatively free medical in Palau but when you go to the Hospital they don't supply you with anything. That's why there were no spoons, cups, soap towels or even toilet paper. It's also a custom for the relatives of the sick person to stay with them the whole time they are in the hospital so they spread out these little mats and everybody sleeps on the floor.

It was time for lights out now and everybody lay down on their mats and we all tried to get some sleep. My biggest fear was that my bottom lip had swollen so much that I was afraid that it might

flop up over my noise and I’d suffocate myself while I slept, so I ask Tony to please check on me just in case.

I was in that state where you’re not quite asleep and yet all the sounds around you somehow work their way into your dreams. It was hot outside and of course I didn't bring my fan so I laid there listening to all the snoring and let my mind wander off into some far off place where it was cool, so cool in fact that it was snowing, yes soft fluffy white snow coming down all around me. Morning came and I could tell I was almost but not quite awake and I was still having this great dream about snow and floating through pristine white fields of white floating things and white chickens and baby white seals...and…CHICKENS? I'm awake now and there's still white stuff floating all around. What the hell? Chicken feathers all over the place! A seam in my pillow had broken open and chicken feathers were pouring out all over the place. Chicken feathers were all in my hair. My face was covered with them and there's a three inch layer all over my bed. Tony comes in and says "Why Lenny, don't you just look sweet, I could just”… I stopped him with a raised finger. "Can it Tony!"

People must have felt sorry for me because strangers would walk over to me and give me things like coconuts, Gatorade, old tuna fish sandwiches, grapes and beetle nut. The way my mouth was swollen they thought that I could really chew down the old beetle nut! By the end of the day I had collected so much stuff I was thinking of opening a small gift shop.

You know, I don't think that’s it’s to hard to be a nurse. I mean all you have to do is come by every few hours and stick a thermometer in someone’s' mouth, check their blood pressure, count their pulse rate and give them a couple of Tylenol. How tough can that be? In fact I should have been a doctor.

“Nurse”

“Yes Doctor"

"Every few hours why don't you check the patient’s temperature, blood pressure and pulse rate, and nurse?"

"Yes doctor"

"Better give him a couple of Tylenol...and nurse"

"Yes doctor"

"Call me if it gets any worse"

After five days of this my face finally came back to kind of normal and they said I could leave. Before the doctor had finished the sentence I was packed and halfway out the door. "Wait, you have to pay your Bill!" I hadn't thought about that. At the front desk they made out my Bill and handed it to me. $127.15 not bad I thought for five days in the hospital, but then I started thinking. I only make $100.00 a week so that's still a week and a half of my pay! They get you one way or the other. At the bottom of the Bill there was a question to be answered by the doctor in the space provided.

Condition of the Patient upon release?

To which the Doctor had scribbled.

“Getting better!"