Treating Slime

As screwed up as the American Health Care system is, predicated on income generation more than health outcomes, there's sometimes a nurse ... rarely a doctor ... who will shoot straight with you in your darkest hour.

I've had a bitch of a month!

First I expressed all the symptoms of COVID-19 and spent a week in bed sweating and sleeping until it was figured out I have pancreatic cancer instead.

"It's why you're so damn yellow," the straight talking Angel told as I lay on the operating table waiting on the doctor who is late.

I've been yellow for the better part of six months, itch like a mutha and and urinate every five minutes.

"We getting rid of all that shit right now," she says stuffing my long hair under a net.

"Believe me! You gonna want this or you're hair's gonna get messy like you never seen messy before."

"Why's that?" I softly ask.

Green eyes peer at me upside down from above my face and she smiles.

She has lots of freckles and is smiling.

"After we get this stent in you, we gonna turn you over on your stomach! The stent's gonna loosen the bile held captive in your body and it's gonna flow like the River Jordan."

I'm picturing my surgery as a raging yellow river.

"There's a hole in the bottom of the table where your head's gonna be and a bucket under the hole. All the sludge is gonna run straight to it."

"Sludge?" I ask.

"It's a medical term. All the bile cooped up in your swollen gallbladder turns to sludge ... like in your oil pan."

"Who knew?"

"Then we're gonna keep wracking you on the ass until it's all out."

"Wow," I say, not knowing what else to say.

The Doctor arrives frustrated the other Hospital delayed him for no real reason that lousy scheduling.

"Ready?" he asks.

"He sure is," my Nurse answers.

A few hours later, my sweet wife's face stares into mine full of love and concern.

"It went well," she tells me.

At least this is the version of waking up I remember.

She recalls it differently saying that I was awful.

But the itching's dissipated.

Yellow skin is already fading.

I don't have to pee.

"Good," I say squeezing her hand.

"Why's my ass sting so badly?"
_____________

TOTAL HOSPITAL CHARGES - $4,300
ACTUAL HOSPITAL COSTS   -  $  800

AMOUNT TURNED OVER TO DEBT COLLECTORS - $100%