You have in fact Sir earned the Gigantic Brass Clankies award.
Holy Catz.
It's not really as it might seem, sir.
I take calculated risks with myself all the time every day, the "calculation" including, "Okay, if something goes wrong, do I have a back-up plan to make it right?'--in this case, the already-scheduled appointment on Monday.
If there hadn't already been an appointment sometime soon, I never would have done it.
I know this is an iconoclastic view in contemporary society, but far far far far too much is made of medical skills possessed by medical professionals, and far far far far too little made of medical skills possessed by laymen.
Morning Angel here is an R.N.; I don't know about anybody else, but from what I've ever seen in my life, I would trust Morning Angel with just about every medical procedure excepting brain surgery.....which is to say, I would trust her to be competent in 99.9% of all those things people usually leave for M.D.s to do.
She's skilled way beyond her recognition, and skilled way beyond what professional conduct allows her to do.
When I was 10 years old, one time I crawled over a barbed-wire fence, puncturing the inner upper left thigh; two days later, I had a purple-and-black spot nearly twice the size of an old silver dollar; I had obviously gotten infected. The parents were away at some convention in either Chicago or Kansas City or somewhere, and I didn't want to get yelled at by an older brother or sister. Of course the hospital was nearby, but all the local physicians were at some sort of meeting in Omaha that weekend, meaning the nearest physician was.....75 miles away until the following Sunday evening.
I went to a neighbor, a retired veterinarian, who lived about a mile and a half away. Upon evaluating the situation, and of course knowing more than I that everybody was gone, he took some sort of glass prick and poked a hole in it. I had never been aware of the eruptive volcanic qualities of pus and blood, or that the thigh of an undersized 10-year-old could hold so much.
By the time the weekend was over, and the parents and physicians back in town, it was all over, healing.
Now, if I had a wife and children, if something was wrong, I'd panic and send them to a physician. Hell, when something goes wrong with any of the cats here, right away they go to the appropriate medical personnel.
But this is just me, and I appear to have a pretty good idea of my limits.
There was a story in the
Omaha World-Herald about me, in the 1980s, about the time I hired a Greek plumber to pull out my four wisdom teeth. I had seen a dentist, who took x-rays and all that, and showed me how it was going to be an easy and quick job, given that the roots of the teeth grew straight down (rather than curling around the jawbone), and so they'd pop right out. He wanted $160 to do it, but as I didn't have $160, I promised to have it taken care of when I did have $160.
Some months and several thousand miles away, the wisdom teeth began bothering me big-time (for the record, the only dental problem I've ever had). I learned of a local plumber who was skilled in such things, and for $25, all four teeth were yanked.
I would NOT have done that if I hadn't already been aware of the situation revealed by dental x-rays, nor do I recommend anybody else do it, even if the x-rays show the same thing. I may seem stupid, but I think my life proves I'm really not. When I returned to Lincoln (Nebraska) some months later, and had the usual routine standard teeth-cleaning, the dentist noticed the absence of the wisdom teeth, and said it had been a good job, a really good job, whoever had done it (he learned who did it by reading the
Omaha World-Herald some time later).
The morning of January 20, 1993, about the same time certain things were happening in Washington, D.C., while walking out of a coin-and-stamp store, I slipped on ice and crashed down onto the sidewalk, utterly destroying my right elbow. It was shattered to pieces, none of them larger than a wooden matchstick. The whole thing.
Well, that was attended to by appropriate medical personnel, and then so as to gain "at least 40%" of the use of the "elbow" (in quotation marks because now it's mostly metal), I was assigned to "physical therapy." After the second bout of "physical therapy," it all seemed so stupidly nonsensical to me. Insurance of course was paying for it, but all I was ever getting was warm baths and massages, and besides, it cut a considerable part out of the day, doing this. It was a ****ing nuisance.
With the approval of the M.D., I stopped this, and instead began walking around with an empty briefcase, so as to encourage the arm to bend. After a while, I walked around with a brick inside the briefcase.....and then two bricks.....and then three bricks.....and then four bricks.....and then five bricks.
It had been thought I could never have "more than 40%" use of the arm any more; by that autumn, nine months after the Impeached One had been first inaugurated, and I was on my way to explore the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants with free medical care for all....I could do anything I wished to do, with the right arm.
That would have never happened with "professional physical therapy," where all one was given was stupid warm baths and stupid light massages.
Again, I wouldn't advise anyone else to do many of the things I've done, but really, as I'm me, I know my limits, and quite frankly, there are a great many medical things that can be done without medical professionals.....and their fees.
