Two weeks passed before I felt comfortable leaving my sanctuary to venture into the real world. I plugged the supra-pubic catheter and carefully secured it in my fiancée-designed, custom-made, inside the waistband, semi-sterile (not even) samurai pouch.
I presumed that no one in the restaurant could tell I was packin’ (a catheter, not a pistol/piss tool).
Using […]

Calculating the rate of bladder filling and hours before surgery, it was painfully obvious I would have to catheterize myself and penetrate the Three Gorges of Hell (see Act Three), hopefully, for the last time in this life time. I awoke early. Mission accomplished.
Trying to remain in a very positive mental state,I crossed the Hospital […]

IN GRATITUBE: A NIGHTMARE WEEK
Act three:
Time, in my mind, was moving at a different rate than real time. The reality of imminent surgery was circulating in my brain cells. Would it happen in hours or days?
The Doctor held an anatomical model of the entire exposed male genitalia in front of my eyes. While focusing on […]

Act one: Signs and Symptoms
I was absorbing the beautiful light of a mid-May dusk when my right kidney decided to gift me with a nugget made of calcium oxalate (a chemical compound that forms needle-shaped crystals and is a major part of human kidney stones). I was grateful that the diameter of the tube (Right […]

One quarter of what you eat keeps you alive. The other three-quarters keeps your doctor alive
 (Hieroglyph found in an ancient Egyptian tomb)
In the past, they knew it. Yet thousands of years later we still don’t get it. We are seeing an increase in diabetes and obesity all over the globe. The World Diabetes Foundation […]

Quid quid latine dictum sit altum viditur -> translated into english means “whatever is said in Latin seems profound.”
Why does a Latin phrase sound profound? What causes us to become attracted to certain things visually or aurally? What triggers us to spend money on items that may be harmful or, at least, not in our […]

During a recent trip visiting my family, I had the opportunity to observe an interesting juxtaposition between the mind of my 92-year old father(a former educator), who is losing many of his mental capacities, and my nine-year old nephew (diagnosed with autism and delayed development), who is succeeding in his efforts to gain mental capacities. […]

In the era of pads, pods, berries and droids, the radio has become obsolete, except for a few of us troglodytes. The other day I had my radio on as background for the soundtrack of my life and I realized it was not on my station. Someone had moved the dial. As I was tuning […]

Einstein proposed that Energy equals Mass at the speed of light (squared). However, Energy may not equal mass, especially at the speed of life (one second per second). This conclusion came to me while I was attending a funeral Mass for my friend, a Franciscan Monk.

I entered the Chapel, approaching the open casket at the […]

In the future, medical science may eliminate the need for surgery. However, we happen to exist in the present and surgery is still a very important treatment modality for various human conditions. My guess is that many of you will have one or more surgical procedures in your lifetime.
Surgery is a team effort. The surgical […]