© 2006 Brian Hodges - Please do not remove the copyright from this essay

t figures that after years of lifting weights and working a job where I routinely maneuver five-hundred-pound cases into and out of cargo vans, that I would give myself a hernia how?  By sneezing.  But it was just that type of morning when I said, “Achoo” in the shower, reached for a towel and heard my wife say, “Is that a hernia or are you just happy to see me?”  Passing out two seconds later eliminated every notion that happiness was playing a role in any of this.

I lived in denial for several days as I checked every medical website out there.  But every page that began with the word “HERNIA” ended with the word “SURGERY.”  Even the most crunchy natural remedy sites I checked out said, “Each some granola and tree moss then go see a surgeon you jackass!”

So with much trepidation I scheduled a consult with a man who, for all his years of experience, was far rougher with my testicles than anybody else I’ve ever paid that much.  We set a date and I immediately envisioned all sorts of bad, horrible, as-seen-on-Dateline scenarios.  Cutting open the wrong side, removing my appendix by mistake, giving me too little anesthesia so I woke up in the middle of an incision… or worst of all, giving me a pre-op enema.

I’ve never been part of a prayer chain, so I started one of my own by sending an email to twenty of my friends, telling them they had to forward it on to twenty of their friends or else they would never meet their true love…  Oh wait, that was something else.  Suffice it to say, if God wasn’t watching out for me last Friday, well then He just wasn’t listening.

After giving my name and information to five different people, I kissed my wife goodbye and went to another room where they sat me in a big comfy chair upholstered in beautiful pink polyvinyl, and stuck a small television in front of my nose.  Flipping through the stations, I immediately stopped at the sound of: “Previously on Dawson’s Creek.” 

I swear to you I was just stopping for long enough to see if this was a pre or post-Pacey-and-Joey episode.  But in that ten minut—THREE SECONDS of time, the nurse walked over and I had to quickly fumble for the button, not caring what channel I ended up on.  She took one look at that Home and Garden lady teaching me how to stencil butterflies onto my hope chest, and walked away saying nothing. 

I had to redeem myself.  I stopped for a moment on an episode of American Chopper but feared it would look too much like I was trying to compensate.  I likewise passed all the sports stations on the off chance that she would feel compelled to ask me some obscure question about this ‘Tee-Oh’ character I keep hearing about.  I looked for something neutral, a Law & Order or CSI: Miami rerun perhaps.  NEWS, there had to be news on somewhere.  I paused ever-so-briefly on The Golden Girls, but couldn’t figure out if that was more brokeback than Dawson’s Creek. 

I politely, and wittily I might add, answered all of the same questions that each successive person asked me, though I don’t think the anesthesiologist appreciated the fact that I answered all her questions with, “Only recreationally.”  I was at least thankful that the nurse charged with shaving my private parts was neither very pretty nor atrociously ugly.  I wouldn’t be embarrassed, yet I wouldn’t have to worry about her exacting revenge on all of us fortunate enough to rank an “above average” at HotorNot.com.   

I didn’t wake up in the middle of the procedure.  I think the anesthesiologist – and all the nurses – made certain of that.  I awoke in a blissful haze of purple and listened serenely to yet another nurse giving me post-op instructions – while inside I was contemplating just how pretty the reflection off her stethoscope would look through a prism.  I have spent the better part of this past week sitting in my cozy recliner with a box of Cheez-Its in one hand and a bottle of Percocet in the other, and asking the brightly-colored midgets in my imagination why on God’s green earth I put off surgery for so long.

Oh, and my hernia’s fixed, in case you’re wondering.