Froglegs and Eggplants

Early last Thursday morning Carol accompanied me to the hospital where I was scheduled for surgery to repair an inguinal hernia. As usual, our little hospital was fast and efficient, and before I knew it I was in a hospital gown, and under a warm blanket with an IV dripping into me. Carol sat beside me as the male nurse, Bill got me ready for the operation.

In my pre-op interview a few days earlier when an RN asked if I had any allergies, I answered, “None,” then I added, “Oh yeah, I'm allergic to frog legs!” (Being a slow learner it took me three tries of eating them and becoming deathly ill each time, to figure it out!)

Evidently, the nurse wrote it down on my record because Bill made a special arm band for me that read in bold letters: Allergic to frog legs! (Just in case the cafeteria had them on the menu, I guess.”)

After surgery, Doctor Larsen came in to give me my post-op instructions, he said that everything had gone hunky-dory. It was a good thing Carol was there to hear what he said because I was still pretty dopey. We were home by a little after noon and I hobbled around for a while and went to bed.

Friday was kind of blurry, but I remember that it hurt to bend over, and it hurt to sneeze, hiccup or cough. The pain pills worked pretty well, but I was out of it for most of the day.

Saturday morning, as per instructions, I grabbed some clean clothes, took a nice warm shower, dried off and started to remove the dressing over the incision so I could replace it. Looking down, I suddenly realized that something was drastically wrong.

Holy S**t! My p***er is purple!

Not only my p***er, but the family jewels were purple too! They weren't just a little bit purple, it looked like I had (rather small) eggplants hanging off of my crotch. I showed my technicolor thingies to Carol and she said, “It looks swollen, too!”

“Nah, that's normal size,” I said, trying to glean something positive from my predicament.

I thought about calling the doctor, but since it was the weekend, and since I had very little pain, I decided to wait and see what developed. My follow up appointment was on the next Tuesday and by then things were almost back to normal.

“Sometimes that happens,” doctor Larsen shrugged when I told him about my purple problem. Thanks for warning me about that, Doc! I thought, but since he seemed happy with my progress, I listened quietly while he warned me about lifting anything heavier than a gallon milk jug. (I didn't even ask him if that was a full or an empty one, but I was tempted.)