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A WRITER'S WIT: WILLIAM SAROYAN

8/31/2023

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If you give to a thief he cannot steal from you, and he is then no longer a thief.
​William Saroyan, Playwright
Author of ​The Human Comedy
​Born August 31, 1908
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W. Saroyan
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

TUES: A Writer's Wit | Yevgenia Albats
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Jennifer Egan
THURS: A Writer's Wit | David Levithan
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A WRITER'S WIT: MOLLY IVINS

8/30/2023

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Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. 
​Molly Ivins
Author of ​Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America
​Born August 30, 1944
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M. Ivins
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | William Saroyan
FRI: My Book World | Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry
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A WRITER'S WIT: MATT BELL

8/29/2023

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Why aren't these fantasy novels on display somewhere in my house, where there are a thousand-plus other books stacked across a dozen bookshelves? Because bookshelves do more than just hold up our books. They speak to how we see ourselves, and more obviously how we want others to see us. This is a part of my makeup I don't always show.
​Matt Bell
Author of ​Appleseed: A Novel
Born August 29, 1980
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M. Bell
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Molly Ivins

THURS: A Writer's Wit | William Saroyan
FRI: My Book World | Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry
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Not Good for Nigerian Gays

8/25/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
When you’re a writer you no longer see things with the freshness of a normal person. There are always two figures that work inside you.
​Brian Moore,  Irish-American
Author of Lies of Silence
​Born August 25, 1921
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B. Moore

My Book World

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Somtochukwu, Ani Kayode. And Then He Sang a Lullaby. New York: Roxane Gay, 2023.

It would be a great understatement to say that the country of Nigeria is an unsafe place for the LGBTQ+ community to live. In this debut novel, Somtochukwu takes readers through the lives and loves of two young men. For one, neither set of parents offers any support for their gay sons. One man has a close relationship with his sister, which helps. Still, these two college men are on their own. On their own when one is beaten up by his very roommates. On his own in almost every context of his life. For those of us who complain about our LGBTQ+ lives in the US, we need only read this novel to realize we must be thankful for what we have and continue to fight against such bigotry here and abroad.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Matt Bell

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Molly Ivins
THURS: A Writer's Wit | William Saroyan
FRI: My Book World | Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

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A WRITER'S WIT: Stephen Fry

8/24/2023

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Having a great intellect is no path to being happy.
​Stephen Fry
Author of 
Troy: The Siege of Troy Retold
Born August 24, 1957
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S. Fry
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World |
Ani Kayode Somtochukwu​, And Then He Sang a Lullaby​
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Matt Bell
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Molly Ivins
THURS: A Writer's Wit | William Saroyan
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A Writer's Wit: Merrie Spaeth

8/23/2023

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We reinvent ourselves to solve a client’s problem. It’s more than just tweaking. It’s rethinking what your audience wants and needs. Isn’t that what great actors constantly do?
​Merrie Spaeth, Public Relations &
​    Communications
​Born August 23, 1948
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M. Spaeth
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Stephen Fry
FRI: My Book World | 
Ani Kayode Somtochukwu​, And Then He Sang a Lullaby
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A WRITER'S WIT: Dorothy Parker

8/22/2023

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I’d like to have money. And I’d like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that’s too adorable, I’d rather have money.
​Dorothy Parker—Poet, Writer, Critic, Satirist
Author of "Big Blonde," Short Story
​Born August 22, 1893
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D. Parker
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Merrie Spaeth

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Stephen Fry
FRI: My Book World | 
Ani Kayode Somtochukwu, ​And Then He Sang a Lullaby​
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Santini Not so Great

8/18/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
​My father was a very unhappy person, very sarcastic, and my mother was very nervous and worried about what people thought. They weren’t monsters, but it wasn’t a good childhood.
​Paula Danziger
Author of Desperate Characters
Born August 18, 1944
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P. Danziger

My Book World

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Conroy, Pat. The Great Santini: A Novel. New York: Dial, 2013 (2004, 1976).

So many men of America (of the world) have experienced abusive relationships with their fathers—in one fashion or another. This novel artfully explores one that may be representative. Bull Meecham, WWII veteran, is a crack jet fighter pilot in the 1960s South, often posted far away from home for months on end (and where is home? when the family must move once every year or two). Ben, his son, hates his father: hates him for treating his children like soldiers, hates him for striking him, hates him for verbal abuse. The wife serves as intermediary between the children and Bull, but she can only do so much; all four children suffer in some way. One wonders how the tension, which is high, can grow as you turn the pages, but build it does.

​Ben, a fine high school basketball player, is challenged during a game one night, to quit taking abuse from an opposing player. If Ben doesn’t do as he is told by his father (loudly from the grandstand), Ben will suffer—regardless of the coach’s wishes. Seems Ben suffers anyway. When Ben decks the opposing player, breaking his nose and injuring him mightily, Ben is ejected from the game, perhaps never to play again. Pleases his father but neither his coach nor his community. No spoiler here: suffice it to say something tragic happens to the family, and Conroy most beautifully portrays how a son can both hate and love his father and suffer both emotions simultaneously. A tour de force.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Dorothy Parker

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Merrie Spaeth
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Stephen Fry
FRI: My Book World | 
Ani Kayode Somtochukwu​,
And Then He Sang a Lullaby

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A Writer's Wit: Jonathan Franzen

8/17/2023

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I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then . . . it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that's fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats.
​Jonathan Franzen
Author of ​Crossroads
​Born August 17, 1959
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J. Franzen
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Pat Conroy, ​The Great Santini

TUES: A Writer's Wit | Dorothy Parker
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Merrie Spaeth
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Stephen Fry
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A Writer's Wit: George Stroumboulopoulos

8/16/2023

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Guns are part of the Constitution, and no one is willing to have that tough conversation with Congress and the Senate and the president to say maybe that's got to change. People talk about it—but I mean actual change.
George Stroumboulopoulos,
Canadian Media Personality
Host of The Hour,
​Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
​Born August 16, 1972
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G. Stroumboulopoulos
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Jonathan Franzen
FRI: My Book World | Pat Conroy, ​The Great Santini
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A Writer's Wit: Linda Ellerbee

8/15/2023

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If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?
​Linda Ellerbee, Journalist
Author of Take Big Bites: Adventures Around the World and Across the Table
​Born August 15, 1944

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L. Ellerbee
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | William Kennedy

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Jonathan Franzen
FRI: My Book World | Pat Conroy, The Great Santini
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Jhumpa Lahiri's 'Whereabouts'

8/11/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
The opportunities for heroism are limited in this kind of world: the most people can do is sometimes not to be as weak as they've been at other times.
​Angus Wilson
Author of ​The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot
​Born August 11, 1913
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A. Wilson

My Book World

Lahiri, Jhumpa. Whereabouts. Written in Italian and translated by the author. New York: Vintage, 2021.

This one-hundred-fifty-seven-page novel is divided into forty-six titled chapters, all in the form of prepositional phrases indicating, as the title suggests, place. Whereabouts. On the Sidewalk. On the Balcony. In the Sun. At the Villa. Even Upon Waking. Waking is a place, after all. Only Lahiri could create so much life with so little. The first-person narrative is told by a female Italian professor of literature living, we assume, not in Rome but a smaller, less satisfying city. She shares, in bits like chocolates from fluted paper containers, her life. After an unsatisfactory relationship with a man (told in flashback), she prefers living alone, prefers being childless, prefers to visit her ailing mother once a week. She wavers only a little between her preferred solitude and connecting with others: her neighbors, her university pupils, favored merchants. It is a hard-won battle, but she seems to win it with dignity and poise. An immensely satisfying read.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Linda Ellerbee

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | William Kennedy
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Jonathan Franzen
FRI: My Book World | Pat Conroy, The Great Santini
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A Writer's Wit: Mark Doty

8/10/2023

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A poem needs to be orderly enough to hold our attention, to make us feel that we are being guided through the exhibition, and needs to leave room for slippage and surprise, for those productive disruptions that characterize the real.
​Mark Doty,  Poet
Author: 
What Is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life
​Born August 10, 1953
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M. Doty
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

TUES: A Writer's Wit | Linda Ellerbee
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | William Kennedy
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Jonathan Franzen
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A Writer's Wit: Barbara Delinsky

8/9/2023

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Each of my books is different from the last, each with its own characters, its own setting, its own themes. As a writer,  I need the variety. I sense my readers do, too.
​Barbara Delinsky
Author of ​A Week at the Shore
​Born August 9, 1945
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B. Delinsky
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Mark Doty
FRI: My Book World | Jhumpa Lahiri, ​Whereabouts
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A Writer's Wit: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

8/8/2023

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It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed but not bought. It may be used but not owned. We are tenants, not possessors, lovers and not masters.
​Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Author of ​The Yearling
​Born August 8, 1896
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M. Kinnan Rawlings
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Barbara Delinsky

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Mark Doty
FRI: My Book World | Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts
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It Only Hurts When I Pee Hee Hee—Part III

8/4/2023

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It Only Hurts When I Pee Hee Hee
or How to Kill an Entire Summer—Part III

July 8, 2023
10:23 a.m. The day following the surgery, during Doctor V’s morning round: I gained his permission to record on my iPhone what he was about to tell me beside at Covenant Hospital. I later transcribed our conversation for use here:

Dr. V: … type of bladder cancer, but yeah there are other types and variants, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it’s transitional stuff.
RJ: Okay, so you caught it early?
Dr. V: Well, yeah, I mean, the CT does not show that there’s anything outside of that, but one of the key things about bladder cancer, you know, it comes from that transitional epithelium of lining of the bladder, but there’s a muscular wall to the bladder, so one of the key aspects of pathology: Is it just in the lining or is it also growing in the muscle …?
RJ: Mm.
Dr. V: When it’s in the muscle, that’s where the blood vessels and lymphatics are, that’s how the cancer could escape out of the bladder.
RJ: Mm.
Dr. V: So the treatment for muscle-invasive bladder cancer as opposed to what we call superficial bladder cancer is different.
RJ: Okay.
Dr. V: Muscle-invasive actually is a much more aggressive disease stage, and the treatment ideally for a relatively healthy man like yourself, is the removal of the bladder. Which is a big operation. Whereas superficial bladder cancer you trim it off, you basically instill… The drug of choice is BCG, it’s a live, attenuated form of TB, it activates your immune system, to counteract early cancer cells within the lining of your bladder, because they tend to be recurrent. By doing that, it’s not really chemo, it’s immunotherapy for your bladder. It significantly reduces your chances of recurrence.
RJ: Mm.
Dr. V: All right, sir. Fill him full. Make sure he can pee [speaking to nurse]. See me in about two weeks is our plan.

​But I must return to the day before. I was feeling quite good actually; I never experienced any pain in my bladder. But about four hours after surgery, I began to feel extreme cramps in my bowels. I suspected, as with most surgeries I’ve had, that the anesthesia had locked my bowels. A night of hell ensued, by which I could not seem to make clear to the nurses where the pain was coming from as my stomach appeared visibly to distend. They gave me everything from tramadol to a shot of morphine when I told them my pain was a “10.” I had been hooked up to a foley—a catheter that collects one’s urine in a bag. After the doctor told me I’d be going home, they disengaged it, and the nurses did fill me with water—four glasses-worth. Problem was, my urological innards were locked up, as well—I couldn’t pee!—and they sent me home with a different foley. Two sullen nurses entered the room (their routine with their patients had been disrupted) to install it because my nurse didn’t know how, and they were trying like hell to get me out of that room by ten p.m. So I was sent home with that urine bag saddled to my side like I don’t know what. Six days later, it was finally removed at Doctor V’s office, his nurse following the correct procedure (I shall spare you the description). The only problem was that after six days of that damn foley chafing my urethra, it actually hurt to pee. In situations like this you want to blame someone, but whom? The huffy nurses who might have injured me in their haste? The doctor and hospital who insisted I go home without being able to pee? The insurance company that was only going to pay for one night for a supposedly out-patient procedure?

​In any case, starting Wednesday, August 16, 2023, I will begin BCG cancer treatments, once again, in Doctor V's office. Not the hospital! BCG stands for Bacillus Calmette Guerin, a procedure by which the doctor will directly inject (by way of that still handy urethra) a “live attenuated form of TB” into my bladder. Six Wednesdays in a row, ending on one of the last days of summer, September 20. Maybe autumn will be a better time for me, for us all. I sure hope so. We shall have earned a break from the heat.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Barbara Delinsky
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Mark Doty
FRI: My Book World | Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts
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It Only Hurts When I Pee Hee Hee—Part II

8/3/2023

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It Only Hurts When I Pee Hee Hee
or How to Kill an Entire Summer—Part II

The eighth thing the doctor’s staff was about to do to me was to take place as they escorted me down the hall to what looked like a new piece of equipment in a room tinier than the radiology room. A beautiful young woman with dark swooping hair stood by.

“This is my daughter,” Doctor V said, “blah blah blah, she’s out at the med school.” And she smiled at me.

Now, the good doctor told me to lie back in the chair. “It’s kind of like a recliner,” he informed me, “but it isn’t really built for the patient.”

No shit.

It was fucking hard—unforgiving, like a seat pulled from an old MG Midget—and I swear I think I remember there being stirrups for my legs. Of course, my pants were pulled down, and the good doctor seated, manning his equipment as if he were a jet pilot, pulling at this lever and that knob, typing shit onto his keyboard. He wrapped a piece of pale blue paper around my wee cock so that that was all that was showing, as if my cock were a discrete sort of apparatus—something in his way, not a precious portal to my innards. Doctor V injected some deadening gel into my cock, unfortunately not deadening enough. Before I could scream or in any way protest this brutal, barbaric treatment of my member, he slid a probe in there and kept shoving it inside until . . . then he brought to my attention two computer monitors joined together in a “vee” . . . and he, oh, by the way, it felt like my wee cock had been connected to an electric socket, especially when the flow of water meant to cool things down surged all around my wee urethra. Anyway, he talked me through it, narrating as everyone in that tiny room, including the doc’s daughter, for Christ’s sake, listened:

“Here’s your prostate,” he said, pointing to the monitor. “Except for being about twice as large as it was four years ago, it looks to be in good shape.” (Is this yet another problem I’ll have to face in the years to come?)

By then I realized my hands were grasping—no gripping—the armrests, reentering the earth’s atmosphere. Sweat flying from my forehead, challenging my deodorant. Then the doc gave me a good view of my bladder. It just appeared like pink skin to me.

Then, he announced, “I don’t like this,” and he made me turn my head while my hips make their Saint-Vitus-dance my hips dance so I could view the monitor to my left. “This is not good,” he said, pointing out a whitish, lacey-looking growth. “We’ll have to shave it off.”

“Today?” I asked, alarmed that I might have to squirm through yet another procedure.

“No,” he said, looking at me funny. “No, we’ll set up a hospital appointment. You’ll be sedated.”

“Thank Christ,” I mumbled, hoping my curse hadn’t offended anyone.

All in all, I was in that office for nearly three hours. Must have been sixty of us being shuffled in and out of those wee, antiseptic rooms like Marx Brothers’ characters—peeing in cups, giving up blood, having x-rays taken, being prodded and poked—then escorted back to what nurses kept referring to as the lobby, as if we were guesting ourselves at the Waldorf-Astoria—made to sit and wait (it was a waiting room, let’s be clear) for the next round of torture.

But then, there was no more. I was told I would appear at Lubbock's Covenant Hospital on July 7, where the doctor would “shave” the tumor and have it biopsied. Yippee!

NEXT TIME: In “It Only Hurts When I Pee, Part III,” I give you Dr. V’s blow-by-blow description of what is to come.
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It Only Hurts When I Pee Hee Hee—Part I

8/2/2023

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As per my last post, June 20, I stated I would return from my "hiatus" on July 18, with a rousing week of posts. Here it is August 2, and obviously that has not happened. In a three-part series to be posted over the next few days, I explain why life can sometimes change our ironclad plans. Enjoy . . . or . . . learn.
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It Only Hurts When I Pee Hee Hee
or How to Kill an Entire Summer—Part I

No, I do NOT have an STD, but ha! I hope my title got your attention. This post is about something perhaps just as menacing: cancer.

I wasn’t sure I was ready to blog about my bout with this disease. Most of my posts share quotes from others more eloquent than I, “A Writer’s Wit,” or ascribe my take on literature, “My Book World.” But if I don’t write about my cancer, it might otherwise wind up as something-swept-under-the-carpet—mentally, emotionally—something I wish to avoid. Must I share? you might wonder. Yes.

The turmoil began when I noted blood in my urine. Knowing better than to fool around with a symptom as obvious as that (never a good one), I immediately made a quick appointment with my urologist, whom I’ve consulted for over twenty years.

My appointment with Doctor V began at 9:30 a.m. on June 13, two days after my seventy-fifth birthday. I mean, I had to stop and think. Edith Wharton lived to be seventy-five. Penny Marshall lived to be seventy-five. So too, her once-upon-a-co-star, Cindy Williams. I’ve had a great life, I say, trying to bolster myself. Anyway, the doctors and his staff did at least eight things to me while I was present for my two-hour-and-forty-minute appointment.

1) They took an EKG.
2) They took and tested my urine.
3) Took and examined my blood sample.
4) & 5) Gave me an antibiotic shot in EACH buttocks.
6) & 7) The office was a sprawling building. My doctor and a second urologist maintain their own radiology lab, employ their own radiologist, who x-rayed my kidneys. (I think this is right. Things moved so quickly.) The rugged man with a gray beard but the hardbody of one who works out at Golds told me mechanically (because he must repeat the same words thousands of times a day) to lay on the table. It was a high, narrow sort of table, with a footstool to help me up. And above me loomed that X-ray machine, threatening to create solarized pictures of my organs. The radiologist entered the adjacent room, his office, to execute the x-rays (Hold your breath please|click|you may breathe).

When done, he determined all the images were viable. The radiologist disappeared into his office again. He emerged and informed me both kidneys and prostate were healthy. Yay. 

This same man then slathered cold gel over parts of my body, injected it up my rear end, and stuck a probe up there to take sonograms of my kidneys, my prostate? (Again, I know he told me, but I couldn’t seem to retain the information.) I just wanted the barrage against my body to be over. When finished, he handed me the large, gel-soaked piece of paper I’d been laying on, and pointed also to the cute stand with rolls of toilet tissue. 

     “There’s more paper over there,” he said, “if you should need it to wipe off the gel. Put all that paper stuff over there in that big red container, not in the trash can, and I’ll leave you to get dressed.” 
NEXT TIME: In “It Only Hurts When I Pee, Part II,” I share the gruesome details of another test, the one that reveals I have a bladder tumor.
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