He Won't Bite

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has arrived at my facility for their triennial visit.  Happily, for the first time in my 20-year career, I don’t have any programs under my leadership that are part of this inspection/review.  

I spent 14 years of my career in Prosthetic and Sensory Aids, which is a department somewhat like a pharmacy but for home medical equipment, like artificial limbs, hospital beds, wheelchairs and computers.  We also provide services such as home oxygen, which requires periodic visits to veterans’ homes to ensure that they were receiving the proper equipment, it was working as it should and the customer service from the contract provider.

When I moved to New England in 2007, it was to take over the management of Prosthetics at the eight VA medical centers in the six most northeastern states.  In 2008, we hired a new manager (Rick) at the VA in Manchester, New Hampshire.  As he was new to Prosthetics, I would meet with him each week to train him on the different aspects of his service.  As I am a hands-on trainer, my method would consist of having him observe me, having me observe him and then fine-tuning everything before signing off on the training.  My oversight is full-service, y'all.

As any mailman, UPS driver or Mormon missionary will tell you, the biggest danger in unknown homes is the dog, not the potentially crazy homeowner.  Through trial and error over several years, I learned that dogs can be dangerous and their owners, delusional.  My advice was always to ask the homeowner to put their animal (dog, cat, emu) in a closed room prior to entering their home for the very quick and efficient visit.  The plan was never to be in the home more than 10 minutes.

On the first training trip for Rick, we arrived at one of those charming cottages scattered throughout picaresque New England.  We rang the doorbell and unleashed the unholy barks of what could only be described as either a pack of wolves or one angry mutt with a karaoke microphone.  He/She/It was loud, people.  L.O.U.D. 

When the elderly veteran’s wife appeared, she opened the wooden door but left the screen door shut to my great pleasure.  I introduced Rick and myself and told her why we were there and then asked, ever so politely, if she could put her dog(s) in another room while we made our very quick equipment check.  She responded, “Oh, he won’t bite.”

I smiled and said, “I’m sure he won’t, but we would feel safer if you would.”

She smiled a blank smile and said, “Oh, he won’t bite.” 

I smiled, again, and said, “If you could put him in another room, that would be appreciated.”

From behind her, her husband said, “Just put him in the other room!”

“Thank you,” I said to the disembodied voice in the background.  I placed my hand on the screen door handle to keep her from opening it up, just in case Cujo (my name for him) wanted to say hello.

Still smiling, she repeated, “He won’t bite.”

By this time Cujo had made it to the door and was jumping against the screen door, barking furiously.  I backed away from the door, Rick having already, wisely or cowardly, walked to the safety of the car.  I kept my hand on the screen door handle and said, louder (which I’m sure didn’t help to keep Cujo calm), “Can you please put your dog away, ma’am?”

Again, she said, “Oh, he won’t bite.” 

I decided to abort our attempted visit and turned to run to the car.  Well, I don’t think what I attempted was actually running, but let’s just say it was.  As my hand left the screen door handle, Cujo made his move and hurled himself out the door and immediately ran toward me.  Rick jumped into the car, while I turned to defend myself.  Cujo leapt up and bit me on the stomach, through my coat, sweater and undershirt.  I screamed, “Call off your dog!”

She replied, “Oh, he won’t bite.”

“Lady, he is literally biting me right now,” I yelled while bashing Cujo on the face and snout and ears and whatever else I could make contact with to get him off me and keep him from ruining my sweater.  As someone who, at the time, wore a majestic size 5X, it was increasingly difficult to find cute clothes in that gargantuan size.  I needed to keep what I had.  I was yelling and beating Cujo with all the strength I could muster, which admittedly was not enough.  He either enjoyed trying maim me or got his teeth caught in the lovely wool of my Ralph Lauren cable-knit sweater in Cranberry, but he was not letting go.

I screamed again, “Get him off me!”

She repeated, “Oh, he won’t bite.”

I finally landed the right combination of yelling, hitting, running in a circle and praying and Cujo released me and fled down the street like a prison escapee. 

I stared at Rick, then the lady, turned to watch Cujo as he disappeared in to the distance and could not form words that were proper, government-sanctioned or even remotely Evangelistic or Jesus-approved, so I just sort of waved at the house and got into the car.

As I shut the door, I heard her ask, “Did you get what you needed?”

“Yeah…Sure…Aaaah,” I mumbled giving her a thumbs-up, knowing deep in my heart of hearts I wanted to share a decidedly different digit.

I turned to Rick as I started the car and said, “Just so you know.  That isn’t the worst home visit experience I’ve had, although it’s in the top five.  At least this one didn’t break the skin.  I should write Ralph Lauren and let him know his sweaters can stand up to dog attacks.  Maybe I’ll be in a commercial.”

                Rick retired not long after.

                I haven’t missed Prosthetics for even 10 minutes, y’all.  True story.

Wonky Moles, Ninja Turtles and Shame

           The rate at which people I’ve just met are asking me to disrobe is alarming.  I made an appointment with a Dermatologist for the annual mole patrol.  I arrived at the appointed time and location and was ushered into a room and introduced to the Nurse Practitioner, Nurse Lady (not her real name), who summarily asked me to undress and then began pointing at my body and commenting on what she found less than desirable. This I did not need at 8:15 in the blessed morning. Keep in mind this was before I had me daily iced tea from Dunkily Donuts.

            If I’m being honest there are many wonky things about my body but this particular wonkiness could be related to cancer so I allowed the inspection to continue.  Did you know there are ABCs to mole/spot inspection?  There are and it’s cool in a medically nerdy sort of way.  A is for asymmetry – if your spots or moles form a complete circle without lots of meandering lines, you’re probably good to go.  B is for border – if there are visible borders, it’s a good thing.  C is for color – if the entire spot is one continuous color that’s good.  If it’s not, you’d better have a doctor check it out.  Ombre is only good on fabrics and hair, y’all.  You heard it here first.

            Unfortunately we must return to my partially nude body.  Unlike a turtle, I prefer to be on my back if required to be in the prone position.  Admittedly my ninja skills are subpar, but what I do have I would like to employ and you cannot do this when lying on your stomach.  There I lay, face down, clad only in boxer briefs being scrutinized by my new friend (trying to go through my shtick about where I'm from which is required each time I meet someone new and I open my mouth and a magnolia falls out).  But this scrutiny I can manage until I hear a brand new voice.  And I am introduced to Nursing Assistant Lady while my old and dear friend of 15 minutes, Nurse Lady, pulls down the waistband of my underwear to ask the new girl her opinion of a somewhat wonky dot on my top left butt cheek. 

            Since I cannot see or interact with either of these ladies due to my position, I attempt to insert myself in the conversation by stating, “Of course it’s wonky.  I don’t buy my freckles and moles at Brooks Brothers. If I did they’d be plaid or at least paisley.”  I hold for laughter and there is none.  I have never done stand-up but I feel fairly certain failing to elicit a giggle while mostly nude, face-down on an exam table in a dermatologist’s office about three blocks from the bad part of town would be considered bombing.

            The next thing I hear is one of the voices say, “What was that, Mr. Thompson?  We stepped out of the room.”  What?  Not only did they leave me unattended with a partially exposed butt check, they didn’t even close the door leaving my nakedness visible to all and sundry in the outer office?  And what did they see on my cheek to cause them to whisper in the hallway like one of the downstairs people on Downton Abbey?

At first I was nervous, then I was appalled, then I was sad for those who sneaked a peek as my derriere is not worthy of discussion or viewing.  Semi-public nudity is not the direction I have been trying to take in my life.  My family is not a naked family and I am not a naked person in any context other than a shower and only then because not exposing your skin to the water will get you less than desirable outcomes.  Also, when I showered in my underwear after a football game in 7^th grade, I was so mercilessly mocked by my teammates, it caused deep psychological harm, y’all. 

We must return to the nudity once again to bring this story home.  In my haste to right the many, many wrong(s) of this visit, I attempted to flip over onto my back to at least let the paper napkin of a gown cover me.  As I was doing so, Nurse Lady attempted to flip me back over onto my stomach as she needed to relieve me of three wonky moles to be sure they were not cancerous.  The misunderstanding of who exactly was in charge of my body movement resulted in a pulling of something in my hip region, causing admittedly limited pain, but pain nonetheless.  The unforeseen consequence is this injury is preventing me from attending the yoga/Pilates/rolling on the floor with fat people class this Saturday. 

What can I do?  Nurse Lady’s parting instructions were to avoid strenuous activities for at least two weeks.  Her exact words were, “If you don’t hear from me in two weeks, it means the tests came back benign.”  But I can read between the lines.  I do work in healthcare, y'all.

Fat Rednecks and Gangstas: Style Cousins?

               It has happened.  I have crowned myself America’s Next Diet Guru without the need for an exhausting reality program hosted by someone of questionable British heritage.  The evidence, you ask?  I present, for discussion, my Daddy and his 40 pound weight loss (since September 2011).  I have dragged him kicking and screaming toward physical health.  Well, his version of kicking and screaming which is more pouting and angry looks as he is often tired and willfully quasi-ambulatory. 

                I discovered the exact degree of weight loss (39 pounds 11 ounces) when he entered the dining room this morning and asked, “How is it that I’ve lost 40 pounds and I’m wearing the same dad-blasted pair of pants?”  He did not like my answer of, “Those pants have been, and remain, too small.  Belt buckles should sit at your waist, not the middle of your thigh.”

                Men of his generation, the offspring of those called “The Greatest” by Tom Brokaw, are an interesting group, I will say.  Now I’m not sure if this is a Southern thing or not, but all I know is that most of the men I knew growing up in the South begin in high school a lifelong relationship with the same waist size of pant, regardless of issues of proper fit.  Baby Boomer is the name for their generation and although it probably wasn’t a term created to correspond with the alarming rate of waist expansion, the moniker is more than apt, wouldn’t you agree.  I was going to say ample, but there’s no need to be rude.

                It strikes me as humorous that my father’s pants have slowly slid ever toward his knees like a child who has been instructed to clean the yard; a slow, meandering walk, gradually easing toward the intended destination, which I can only assume, is around the ankles and these people spend an inordinate amount of time in bathroom.  I have never known him to be a fashion pioneer but he and his meaty brethren have been (grammatically more accurate) bursting a sag since, at the very least, October 1970 AD, translated ‘After Dustin’.  I know there are those who will say it’s actually Anno Domini or something else Latin, but my interpretation makes more sense, n’est-ce pas?

                Due to the reduction in the protuberance subjecting the upper portion of his lower torso to extreme shade, his pants are now somewhere in the, medically inaccurate, upper-middle-thigh area.  This is just low enough to cause concern but high enough to lessen the likelihood of a glimpse of ‘welder crack’, as he has never plumbed to any degree.  The citizenry of the South San Francisco Bay Area are appreciative, whether they know it or not.  I am accustomed to working behind the scenes, trying to make the world a more pleasant place one person at a time.  Your silence reeks of gratitude dear readers.  You are most welcome.

                If you know anything about me you know that once my father proclaimed his weight loss, I immediately began to deconstruct each section of his person to see if anything else had changed.  Other than the wearing of the new shirts I bought him to replace the ones that were somehow misplaced in an incident in the laundry room that, as it was un-witnessed by anyone except myself and Lulu, shall remain a mystery, he has maintained his “look” as it were.  Throughout my life I have noticed that his stomach had increased at a rate equal to the disappearance of his buttocks.  I did not notice any change in his lack of posterior.  Full disclosure, I try to avoid eye contact with that particular part of anyone’s anatomy prior to my morning coffee.  I prefer my wake-up to include only caffeinated beverages. 

Now, I am no physician, but having worked in the healthcare field more than a decade and as I am hyper-observant to the point of criticality, I can say that most men of this generation are equally disproportionate.  As it is in all real estate transactions, location is king.  And it seems that their buttocks, tired of the view, have migrated en masse, to a better spot.  I suppose the betterness of the spot is an opinion to be validated by someone else interested in the anatomy and physiology of “old men parts”.  I would have said this would include their female counterparts, but I have been assured on more than one occasion by the alumnae of my alma mater, Mississippi University for Women, that this is simply not true.  As I am a student of criticism, not anthropology, I will leave this academic discourse to others.  I do know that I have seen much more old man crack, plumber or otherwise, than I have ever wanted or imagined; mostly within what I used to consider the relative safety of my own home.

                On a positive note, the weight loss has afforded an improvement in his diabetes, or The Sugar as it is known is the countrier of circles.  His blood sugar is relatively under control.  I say relatively as his scores are better than his siblings, for whom gravy is still a beverage.  He has said on a number of occasions, usually in the throes of some dramatic invitation to one of his patented pity parties, RSVP not required, “You know tha sugah is gonna take my feet.”  I typically do not engage when this is presented as a topic of conversation because I, and he, have grown tired of my constant refrain of “carbohydrates are as harmful to your body as sugar.”  His practiced inability to retain this information causes me much frustration.  Each time we discuss the fact that crackers, bread, potatoes, rice, etc. are all carbohydrates he feigns confusion as if he expects to go to bargain market and find a box emblazoned with the word ‘CARBS’.  His avoidance of this particularly labeled box should allow him carte blanche when it comes to eating a meal containing pasta, potatoes, bread with crackers as a vegetable.

                By simply creating pre-portioned meals that give him what he wants in moderation and forbidding the purchase of items such as soda, ice cream and chips, he has unwillingly lost the afore-mentioned “near ‘bout 40” pounds.  Helping him choose cottage cheese and fruit over Peanut Butter Snickers is also a way to remind myself to consume a more healthy diet, as I must eat by example.  He has not cottoned to sharing my love of salmon and Mediterranean food, but he has agreed to mashed cauliflower as a substitute, sometimes, for mashed potatoes and he will infrequently allow “hippie hamburger” in his meatloaf or breakfast omelets.  The rest of society refers to it as ground turkey.

                I predict that he will be able to reasonably fit into his current clothes once he loses about 25 more pounds.  Only at that point might he be at the appropriate weight to for a 44x27 carpenter jean; his pant of choice.  Yes, you read that correctly.  With my measurements of 36x29, I am the Heidi Klum to his Melissa McCarthy.   

                As Dr. Phil is unequivocally larger than I and has several weight loss products on the market, I feel that it would be acceptable for me to launch a second career.  I could call my guidebook; the “Shrinking Redneck Population” to trick unsuspecting Yankees into buying what they are hoping is a sociology treatise.  Of course, I would expect each of you, dear readers, to purchase a copy yourselves, along with the first in my Southern mystery series, A Gone Pecan.  Get thee to Amazon.com or Authorhouse.com post haste as my last quarterly royalty statement would not have allowed a foray onto the McDonald’s Dollar Menu, a phrase that has just caused grievous injury to my psyche as it escaped my fingers to land on this figurative page.

                If I have an existential crisis, you have no one to blame but yourselves.  Other than my father, of course.