Luke Thompson's Guts
Some of them had to come out. In LA Weekly's Considerable Town, Luke writes:
I checked in around 11 a.m. It was maybe 5 p.m. by the time I got a shot that reduced the agony in my abdomen to that of a typical stomachache. One of the questions they ask is if you’ve had any previous surgery. I had testicular surgery 16 years ago. Unfortunately, saying this meant that my first test was a scrotal ultrasound. An old German woman fondled my nuts with Vaseline. As a test, it revealed nothing. As a way to lower my shame threshold so that nothing subsequent could possibly embarrass, it succeeded.As part of a CAT scan, you have to drink a radioactive milkshake (which ought to turn you into a superhero, but doesn’t). Most people hate that part, but I was dehydrated, and had been denied any liquids in case I needed surgery, so it actually tasted good, too. For the CAT, you have to hold your breath 20 seconds. I couldn’t. Hurt too much. For the regular X-ray, I had to stand up straight, which was getting tough too. I was starting to need more painkillers.
A guy with a shaved head was wheeled in next to me — his face was split open and bloodied. He made the sign of the beast with his fingers and banged his head when he saw me. He’d been in a nightclub brawl (“with niggers,” he whispered in my ear), though he proclaimed his innocence in starting it.
“That girl, I heard her say she has a big welt mark on her chest from me punching her,” he told the cops. “Can you have your CSI guys do a DNA test on that or something?”
“No, sir. They don’t really do that.”
I overheard some talk of kidney stones, but pretty soon it was unanimous: My appendix had to come out. Surgery took all of 10 minutes, and when I came to, the pain was instantly cut in half.
Following the surgery, I’d puke up green stuff, but not violently — it was like my vocal cords and mouth would suddenly just say “Bleeahhh!” and green tea would fly out. After each performance, I’d get a shot of anti-nausea medication, which never worked.
I plied my doctors for info on how close I was to dying but got nowhere. Though when I brought up gangrene, they said yes, I had had that. My necrotic appendix shut down my digestive system. It had to learn how to work all over again. I wore a diaper out of the hospital and crapped myself three times on the way home. If you think the smell of bodily emissions is bad, try to imagine what it would be like if all your secretions smelled like household chemicals. Minus lemon-freshness, of course.
And now the bills are coming in. But that’s a whole different kind of pain.
The whole gory story can be found on LYTRules.com. See directions in comments below. Luke, you might post a link or two in the comments. (It is always worth seeing the wild photo of Luke on the front of his site -- and this time is no exception!)
link spotted at LAObserved
The Weekly version, incidentally, is an extremely condensed version.
Should you happen to want more gory details (a lot more), go to my blog and check out the archived entries for late April and all of May.
LYT at July 9, 2005 4:38 AM
As requested, links to the full appendix saga:
Go first to:
http://www.lytrules.com/weblog/archives/2005/04/index.php
and scroll down to the entry marked April 26, reading the entries bottom to top.
Then, to continue the saga, go here:
http://www.lytrules.com/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.php
scroll all the way top the bottom, and read right up to the top.
LYT at July 9, 2005 7:39 PM
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