SOME TIMES IT MAY BE GOOD IF YOU DON'T PUT OFF UNTIL TOMORROW WHAT YOU WERE GOING TO DO TODAY

One of the questions you ask yourself while waiting for hours to have your insides probed while you are

anesthetized to oblivion is: When the hell a Medical Center get placed smack into the midst of restaurant row

on Emmons Avenue, right across from the waterways of the Atlantic Ocean.

And why in hell did the staff in the Medical Center call you the day before the operation, telling you they are changing when they want to do the surgery (I mean "procedure", the medical communities currently favorite wording) from

1 in the afternoon to 11 o'clock in the morning, when you then wait in captivity for three hours before they take you into the back rooms, after it is pushing towards 2:00 in the afternoon, and a guy with a gown and a surly face shoves an IV into the back of your hand as if is driving nails into wood.

And then (and I'm not making this up) just about everyone goes out for lunch.

You can see beyond the confines your plastic encased surgical room that the outer room

ceases in movement, except for the near comatose patients who are still under the ether.

This was the third endoscopy I would have since June.

This time it was to determine, as best I understood it, whether the grapefruit sized tumor had

been totally cut away.

And that the arteries feeding this thing I have been facetiously referring to as a organic

Morbius, The Living Vampire. is healing.

I need to be real serious for a moment.

I really like my heart Doctor, Dr. Eisenstein.

But his office is in a distant part of Brooklyn.

Parking can be a bitch to find.

They are going to run tests all day, because he is thorough.

I wish I were seeing Dr. Eisenstein on other conditions than deciphering heart films

showing MY heart!

And discussing blood work.

Very often, I put off the first appointments I have to go to the offices.

I have no excuse for this.

I understand why he wants me to come in every three months,

I just put it off.

Normally, it's more like 5 months before I actually see him again.

I keep putting it off.

But...

This time we are in the throes of moving away from where we have been for four decades,

and I knew I could not put it off.

It was a good thing I didn't.

If I had, no one would have seen that my blood count had gone down from 13

to 8.

Dr. Eisenstein had the woman who follows up on blood work call right away.

She hoped the blood-work was in error.

She wanted to know when I could come in for more blood-work.

It was 9 in the morning, and anyone who knows me, knows 9 in the am is not my time of the day.

My befogged brain is skittering about trying to think of when I can go.

The woman tells me never mind, puts me on hold, comes back on the line in a couple of minutes and

tells me they are sending someone to the apartment to take the blood tomorrow.

Now, even someone as oblivious as me knows: THEY DON'T SEND SOMEONE TO TAKE YOUR BLOOD AT HOME

UNLESS THERE IS SOMETHING SERIOUS GOING ON.

Morbius The Living Vampire

A man shows up next day, you guessed it, at 9 am, and takes my blood.

Two days later, the woman has a note from Dr. Eisenstein, and I thank him for pursuing this

so diligently, that I need an appointment with a specialist and when can I make it.

When I hesitate, she puts me on hold, and a couple of minutes later she is back telling me I

am to be on Emmons Avenue two days from then.

And I'm not going there to have my birthday dinner at the Japanese hibachi restaurant

while drinking hot saki.

Not this time.

Now, after the lunch hour, a cheery guy with a garrulous disposition comes in and

tells me to open my mouth.

In the first two operations (procedures) if anyone did stick anything in mouth to spray it

and my throat, I was already unconscious.

This spray was supposed to make it easier for the probes to go down my throat.

The doctor came in, and I cautiously asked him why they had made the appointment so much

earlier the day before, and then had us wait for three hours.

But I did it nicely. You know, you don't want to upset anyone who is going to be scraping

instruments about your insides.

You would like them to feel kindly about you in those moments.

When I came out of the anesthesia it wasn't long before the doctor has paperwork with

medical terms I would never understand, and color photographs of my insides, which

is somewhat disconcerting.

I see where the artery is sealed.

And the scar tissue where the blood-sucker had been, that could have been cancerous.

If I had put off going to Dr. Eisenstein and waited for another two months,

I might not have dodged a bullet.

Since I still have difficulty at times with equilibrium and fatigue, I have to have more blood-work

done in three weeks.

With each previous operation, Marsha and I had been able to go to eat afterwards.

I had been suffering terribly from dry mouth, probably from some of the medications I have to take.

But this time was different.

I suspect it had to do with that mouth spray that the congenial talkative guy had said some people

don't do.

I was eating toast and eggs.

The toast congealed to think paste in my mouth, even though I had been chewing on ice cubes

before I started to eat.

The thickening glob clung to the top of my mouth, pasted itself to my tongue.

Pieces spat into my throat.

And suddenly I couldn't breathe; everything was sealed shut.

My nostrils were burning.

The seconds then were very long, seeming like they would not end.

I managed to clear enough area to get air again.

My throat remained constricted.

I was breathing heavy, long gasps, as if I had been through some kind of endurance test.

I couldn't eat anything that day.

Except for the ice cubes.

Sometimes you are thankful for the little things.

Thanks for all of you who wrote during this time.

It was so kind of you.

Rich Buckler, my pal, this was the earliest I could get back to you.

Frank Lovece, thanks for calling my friend.

Be kind to each other.

Be kind to yourselves.

And hang in there!

Don McGregor