MONDAY JULY 1, 2024

Bypassing the Bypass and Outliving Myself

By Steve Eskew

Talk about horrific hallucinations. Have you ever experienced the surreal fright of feeling that a tall, grim guy with a cycle is stalking you? Ever felt him sitting in the back seat of your car? Even lurking on the other side of the shower curtain, tapping his foot as you bathe?

Well, believe me, you haven’t lived until you think you’re going to die.

It would appear that my complacent cardiologist dropped the ball by not giving me the scans I asked for. “No! You don’t need a scan or any other tests,” he uttered repeatedly for years. “Your blood’s perfect. Your heartbeat’s steady. My motto is: if something’s working, don’t fix it." 

Knowing I’m a born hypochondriac, I figured the doc had hit the nail on the head. After all, I’ve never had symptoms, but my gut instinct finally propelled me to insist on a scan — “just to feel safe.".

Imagine my shock when my trusted Dr. “No” told me that I’m the innocent recipient of serious blockage issues — as if he himself had actually predicted my dilemma. 

WhiIe I was in the middle of lowering my eyebrows over that whammy, the ditzy doctor fervently stressed that I needed triple bypass surgery — “or else!”

I almost dropped over dead. 

Instead of keeling over, I suddenly heard a saw separating my chest bone, then my chest cracking open. I think that’s also the moment when the image of the tall, grim guy with the cycle materialized itself into my stalker.

I explained that I couldn’t possibly agree to such a fearsome eskewpade as a bypass. I offered three excellent excuses: I’m a coward, I’m too old and I’m booked to give my high school class a keynote address, commemorating our 60th anniversary.

Well, at ease, at ease and glory be: as destiny would have it, my keynote show will go on, but I’ll still be old and definitely a coward. 

Yup, a miracle happened — a second opinion doctor installed three stents and joked that the minimally invasive stent procedure would give me “another 30 years.”

“But I only wanted to make it to 106,” I quipped. “This longevity news will crush the people who are dying to outlive me.” 

Thirty years? Thirty years! I could outlive myself.”

Oy! A stent procedure requires threading a wire-like tool through a blood vessel in one’s groin and running it up to the heart.

Ouch!

This entire year has bedeviled me with endless doctors’ orders: You must wear your eye glasses constantly, you must keep your hearing aid in, you must drastically lessen your intake of carbs, sweets, salt and saturated fats.  

All right, already, I’ll do it — to avoid blindness, deafness and to ward off that cycle-wielding stalker. 

But cutting down on the dangerous goodies took off 30 pounds of fun fat that I had grown fond of. Oh how I miss my fun fat. 

The closest I get to a rich food nowadays is the ham that thrives within me. As an innate showoff but an atypical class clown, I simply gotta deliver that keynote address.

It’s in my extroverted blood. My classmates expect me to maintain my X-rated antics. My image is at stake.

You see, as my teenaged hormones raged, I created a crude alter ego who I called Studly Dowell. Studly performed only when the teacher wasn’t present. Studly sometimes malfunctioned but basically counteracted my nerd image.

Girls cringed. Boys adored him.

Let us pray that my now-sophisticated former classmates will be kind and laugh as they remember Studly.

On second thought, maybe I should show a little class and skip the Studly sex segment for my keynote. Let’s face it, old fogies can better identify with health issues. Should I confess my fear of going deaf, blind and being stalked by sinister entities? Will they find that funny? Or will they fulfill my phobia of the sound of silence?

Optimism remains no easy accomplishment for a hypochondriac. Pessimism relentlessly thrives inside my psyche with a voice taunting me as it whispers: “Stents instead of a bypass? Too good to be true, man. Too good to be true.”

As fate and modern medicine would have it, my stent procedure caused an infection in the area surrounding my groin. And just when I thought it would be safe to get back into the waterbed.

To make a long story longer, my urologist has sprung an eye-opening command, using the dreaded “c”  word — circumcision.

My entire romantic life instantly flashed before my eyes.

Forget Studly Dowell fur sure, it’s time to resume my nerd look for my classmates and risk losing my spot at the cool kids’ table.  While delivering the keynote, I’ll be wearing glasses, a hearing aid and a bigly invisible bandage.


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