It Won't Heal If You Don't Stop Picking At It

I’ve written before about my miraculously good health, and the resultant risk I bear of living way too long. It’s already been way too long. I’m running out of shit to do. Hell, I’ve done some stuff twice.

I was gazing at the contents of the vial sitting atop my mantle, and realized that I have endured only two semi-surgical procedures in my lifetime. Like I said, I’ve done some stuff twice. Both procedures were elective in nature. Both were performed on my package. What a magnet for tinkering that thing has been.

My Circumcision. The ritualistic disfigurement designed to acclimate a little boy to the pain that his crotch will inflict upon him throughout his life. Why don’t they leave the foreskin alone and just sever the nerve center controlling the Little Brain? You know, that Little Brain that hijacks the Big Brain and tells the male animal to pursue females and sow seeds in search of the Holy Grail: alimony and child support. Just leave the foreskin alone. A little crust and mold in there is a good first line of defense.

I survived 48 years without finding the Holy Grail, and without it finding me. I didn’t father any little boys requiring immediate physical mutilation, nor any little girls to perpetrate ongoing emotional mutilation. But my health insurance benefits were soon to become iffy, so I was perusing the catalog for any medical procedures that tickled my fancy before the benefits expired.

I found one. Seemed like such a good idea, I’m surprised I didn’t pursue it years ago. I never wanted to have kids. Don’t much like ‘em. Didn’t like ‘em when I was a kid. My imaginary friends were far more entertaining than the kids I grew up with, and they went away when I deemed them uninteresting.

My Vasectomy. I scheduled it for a Friday afternoon in February. It was cold, but the roads were dry, so I rode my Harley to the appointment. I didn’t want to risk being rescheduled for lack of appearance of sound mental health, so I cut the engine and coasted into the surgical center’s parking lot.

Before the cutting began, the doc gave me the obligatory consultation. "Brad, this procedure should be considered nothing less than permanent. If you should change your mind later, a reversal procedure can be attempted, but it is very expensive and not guaranteed successful."

"Doc, I’m not inclined to trade the Harley for a minivan, and I don’t anticipate any sudden urges to spend my weekends at soccer tournaments and ballet recitals. Wash your hands and let’s pull the plug on this thing."

I couldn’t help wondering if the doc had read any of my published editorials about scumbag money-grubbing doctors and their incessant whining about the malpractice insurance situation. I didn’t really care. As far as I was concerned, he could lop the whole assembly off at the root. That would prevent me from thinking of any more surgeries to have done on it.

I noticed that his office was decorated with a bunch of holy-roller shit. Crucifixes and cutesy Bible verses. Twelve fucking years of college, with an emphasis in the sciences, and this guy puts his faith in Jesus. Should I make my check out to Holy Father? What’s the copay under His plan? Is He a preferred provider or will I be paying the out-of-network deductible? Apparently the Bible was this guy’s Physician’s Desk Reference, and I fully expected to hear prayers while he was fingering my rosary beads.

Time for the Main Event. A slathering of antiseptic and a syringe-full of crotch deadener. I had envisioned the need for two nurses to wrassle the dragon out of harms way at ground zero. Turns out it only required a snippet of adhesive tape. It was cold in that room. Yeah, that was it.

The doc offered me a hit of Valium, but only on the condition that I had arranged a designated driver. I declined, and figured it was safe at that point to reveal that my designated driver was Harley Davidson, and he was waiting in the parking lot. The doc took a moment to document this fact in his malpractice defense file, and we were good to go.

I propped my head up on the pillow to watch the action. "No, no, no" the doc admonished. "That could cause you tighten up down here and complicate the procedure."

I insisted. "If my dick is attached to my neck, I’ll slacken my jaw while you unreel and tie off another few inches of it. Otherwise, since I’m paying for this, I’m going to watch. I’ve observed autopsies and fat guys in Speedos without losing my lunch, so I don’t think a little nut-snipping will make me swoon." Time-out for more defense file documentation.

The coolest part of the show was the cauterization of my insides. The smell of burning tissue and the cloud of blue-gray smoke wafting into the light fixture signaled the permanence we had discussed previously. Cutting those horny little fishies off at the pass. They were now residing in a cul-de-nut-sac.

The vial sitting atop my mantle? It’s a saline-filled contact lens vial containing the remnants of my surgery. After the doc left the demolition site, and as I was supposed to be recovering from the trauma, I ransacked the medical waste receptacle. After all, the doc wasn’t selling t-shirts, and I needed a souvenir. I salvaged a discarded section of one of my vas deferens, wrapped it in gauze, and stuffed it in my pocket. What’s so sick about that? Senator Rick Santorum brings dead babies home. This is just a quarter inch of mini-macaroni. And a good mechanic always returns used parts to the customer.

In the end run, the whole procedure was nothing I couldn’t have done myself with common garage tools. Nail punch, needle-nosed pliers, soldering iron, isopropyl alcohol, Jack Daniels. This whole medical arts thing is overly aggrandized. I’m submitting a query to Popular Mechanics for a how-to article on self-sterilization. The New England Journal of Medicine won’t be interested, because do-it-yourselfers don’t fund Porsches and vacations.

I think I’ll leave the little fella alone for a while now. I could have "ATM" tattooed on it, but there’s no room for instructions in English and Espanol. In spite of my new slack-jawed look.