RETURN OF THE GRAPEFRUIT

Three Trump blogposts in a row and what do I get? Another grapefruit. Let me tell you: the karmic fix is in. You may remember my recent surgical lament. I went to have a benign tumor, allegedly the size of a key lime, removed from my back. Out came a grapefruit and a rougher than expected recovery period. This is the sequel to that story.

I returned to the surgeon’s office for the obligatory post-surgical visit. My doctor has a stellar reputation, one of the best cutters in the Washington, D.C. area. His down side is that he is the spitting image of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. When he studies an image of my anatomy, I imagine him looking for an artery to close in order to mess up bridge traffic. Given some of the things I’ve written about his guy Trump, the thought of him lurching over me with a scalpel is a tad disconcerting. Then again, what are the odds that he is among the five regular visitors to this site?

So Christie’s doppelganger stood behind me, peeling the bandages off my back. I heard a couple of affirming grunts as he surveyed his work product. He backed up for a more global view. “Yes, very good,” he said. “Oh, yes. Perfect.” It was as if he were looking at the Venus de Milo at the Louvre, not a seven-inch incision on my upper back.

He invited my wife, Melissa, to join him at the viewing station. I would have thought the fact that I was still alive a week after surgery would have been sufficient validation for him. But he wanted more. He craved recognition for what he clearly thought was a remarkably compelling incision line, subtle in tone with an unassuming texture. Melissa, an artist in her own right, specializes in the rapid deflation of the male ego. She assumed the position adjacent to the beaming surgeon, who pointed to his handiwork and said, “See how nice this came out?”

Melissa, without skipping a beat, pointed her finger to a prime piece of upper torso real estate six inches from the incision. “What’s this,” she asked, “another tumor?” There was awkward silence behind me now. I felt two hands poking and kneading what felt like an enormous lump, very similar to the extricated grapefruit, except larger. It might be approaching small melon territory. Silence hung heavy for three or four minutes.

Then the surgeon uttered a long sigh, followed by, “Jesus, I’ve never ever seen anything like this.” The art show abruptly ended. He thinks the mass is a seroma, as was the one he removed. A seroma is a benign soft tissue tumor usually caused by trauma. I broke two ribs in June, giving rise to Seroma I. The most common source of trauma leading to these tumors is surgery. It is very possible that the surgical removal of Seroma I created Seroma II. My life seems to be evolving into an continuous surgical loop of Ground Hog’s Day seromas.

I was scheduled to undergo surgery today but was bumped at the last minute by some emergency life-and-death cases. Seroma II is now set to meet the knife on Tuesday of next week, unless the governor can work me in sooner. Meanwhile the mass continues to grow. As it does, it presses something fierce against a nerve, generating more pain than a Trump rally.

So that is my tale of woe for the day. Rest assured I have no intention of turning this into a medical blog. The world is overrun with medical blogs, most of them self-indulgent chronicles of everything you wouldn’t want to know about someone’s condition. For example: Jenni’s Guts, Celiac Chicks, I am Not My Disease, and my personal favorite, At Your Cervix. Yet, I wanted to let you know that I may need to skip a cycle or two of appearances here, depending on the pain level. Then again, I may decide to write through the pain. If my next post sounds like I have plagiarized the Unabomber’s manifesto, you deserve to know why.