When I posted last Sunday about my surgery, I had a lot of residual frustration
left from the ordeal. In it I said until that nasty piece of business, I had no “real
beef” with Michael Moore waxing rhapsodic about Canadian health care in his
film “Sicko”. Those two words would come back to haunt me. Comically.
Yesterday I had two doctor’s appointments. The first was with my primary care
physician. She had called me in to discuss some test results from my ER visit for
the gash in my hand. She sat down and said, “so, what brings you here today?”
I said, “well, you asked me to come in.” “Oh, right,” she countered. She shuffled
through some papers and said “your recent bloodwork shows that you’re anemic.”
“Wouldn’t anyone who’d just lost a pint of blood be anemic?”, I observed. Jude
had already told me that. “Yes,” replied the doc, “but I want you to increase your
intake of iron anyway.”
And then she said it — an 8-word sentence that I will never forget, a fantasy fulfilled,
a statement that every man lives to hear: “I want you to eat more red meat.”
”I want you to eat more red meat.”
“I want you to eat more red meat.”
“I. Want. You. To. Eat. More. Red. Meat.”
‘”I WANT YOU TO EAT MORE RED MEAT!”
After it stopped echoing in the arroyos of my brain, I asked her to repeat herself.
I had heard correctly. Regrettably, she couldn’t write me a prescription for a steak
dinner; but now I had it on the highest authority that I could stop my slouching
toward a vegetarian diet, at least temporarily. I could have some real beef.
I walked over to Jude’s nearby office. Or should I say, drifted over on my elation?
I landed long enough to get a snack at the hospital coffee kiosk. I got the largest
hot chocolate imaginable and checked out the scones and muffins. The kiosk lady
explained my options: “This one is bumbleberry with white chocolate, this one is
peach with bran, and this one is meat with cheese.”
“Ooh, meat with cheese! Meat with cheese!”, I blurted out with Homer Simpson
intensity.
When I gave Jude the good news, I wasn’t sure how she’d take it. She still surprises
me, and that’s good for a marriage, according to “Cosmopolitan”. “Well, then,” she
concluded, “do you want to stop at A&W on the way to your next appointment and
get some Uncle Sirloin burgers?” I have never loved her more than at that moment.
We made a quick stop at the giant gnome for gas and the burgers. They went down
easily, as if they’d been pre-greased. The visit to a physical therapist and the check-
up with the surgeon went well, too. I had nicked an artery, tendon and nerve. The
stitches were healing just fine. I got my first look at them.
The doctor had extended my original 2″ cut another inch. I was pleased to see it
looked Frankensteinian. The life line in my redesigned palm is quite long. I
asked the resident assisting the surgeon if that meant I was now immortal. She
said yes, but wouldn’t put it in writing.
I also asked her if they had played any Led Zeppelin during the operation, as I’d re-
quested. She didn’t remember, but the doctor said they played Justin Bieber. I
think he was just checking my reflexes. After I grimaced and gagged, he said I was
good to go.
Jude and I missed the 4:30 pm ferry, so I walked to a restaurant at the dock and
bought some calamari, popcorn shrimp, fries and a corn dog. Honestly, I just
wasn’t ready for another burger yet. I’ll have to build up my tolerance.
When we got home, we were about to start the half-mile trek down to the house
when our friend Paul stopped and gave us a hearty welcome back to the neighbour-
hood. I pulled up my bandage and showed him the wound. As he was leaving,
another friend stopped and looked at it. Paul called later and reminded me about
the time he did a butt flop on some stairs in our house with a beer in each hand.
Not a drop was lost.
“Didn’t I teach you to land on your elbows?”, he chided. I still have a lot to learn.
