Mood:
caffeinatedTopic: "Healthcare for Frodo"(5)
Benzedrine, or "Bennies" as they were known in the day, was used to assist struggling scholars somnambulate through the third exam in only two days. Everyone has heard the story of the "other guy" who dropped his pencil on the floor, and spent the remainder of the available time on the floor, contemplating how the pencil could once again assume its rightful position in his hand. Frodo heard the story too, and it is one of the reasons he never tried the stuff. Besides, his Old Man would've killed him.
Frodo is not ashamed to surprise everyone and admit that even as an offspring of the era, he didn't do anything like that (of course, he did everything else imaginable, except land an airplane on an aircraft carrier). Frodo enjoyed the more temporal pleasures, and he did his best to become an artiste.
In 1965, Frodo was administered anesthesia. As much as he'd like to profess that surgery was required in order to salve wounds suffered in arguing against another unjust war, it was actually of assistance in correcting the "deviated septum" with which he had been born. This is relevant only because this past Monday encompassed another anesthesia injection, and helped to convince Frodo that it will be at least another 45 years before he gets wasted in that format, voluntarily.
Frodo has long believed that there have been no white, American, males admitted to medical practice since 1965. In fact, in some "specialties" the practitioners are even more segregated. It has been Frodo's experience that every gastroenterologist whom he has ever met was a Jewish guy named Cohen. Everyone was at least a foot shorter than the Hobbit, and weighed fifty pounds more. In truth, every one was married to a "Jewish American Princess" whose mother stalked the unwitting medical student until he relented and married her daughter. Of note is the fact that Frodo has also never seen a gastoenterologist smile, and perhaps the imagination is a better producer of straight lines than the Hobbit at this juncture.
Frodo had never undergone a colonoscopy, which has been the reason behind the sincere and intense haranguing in recent days by a bevy of associates. Frodo was referred to a guy he had never met, and when Frodo was wheeled into the "medical facility," he was greeted by a smiling Italian, named Tranchina. Frodo should have known to ask for a fat Jew.
When Frodo came to, Sam was beside him. The "procedure," scheduled for no more than 30 minutes, lasted more than 50. It seems that the hacking cough which plagued Frodo throughout January was somehow re-energized by the presence of anesthesia, and Frodo had hacked his way through the entire procedure, and the staff were somewhat concerned about the "restricted airway" which resulted. In all, Frodo came to with no knowledge of what had transpired, except for the fact that he felt pretty funky.
Frodo has developed a "dry" cough that is accentuated in moments of excitement or mild exercise. As long as he stays close to cough medicine, which is a narcotic he supposes, he is slowly regaining normalcy.
By the by, all that was discovered was a 'medium-sized" polyp, "way back up in there," and appropriate slides are being pored over by scientists who do not get paid enough for what they do, every single day.
Georgia, a laughingstock by most measures against other parts of America, does require that health insurance providers include the colonoscopy as a part of every policy they write. That doesn't mean they are cheap, it just means that you can get one easy enough.
Frodo is not ashamed to document this instance of "public enema number one" for all his friends and followers. He hopes that all will take advantage of a service which helps fight premature demise, even if, sometimes, the cure is like Timothy Leary on steroids.
Frodo hopes you will be there when he next returns to utilize the services of Dr. Tranchina--in 45 years.
