I'll Mature When I'm Dead (13 page)

If you’ve ever watched a soccer match, you’ve probably noticed that, during a penalty kick, the defenders—who stand only ten yards away from the guy who’s about to kick the ball really hard—use both of their hands to protect their groins. They do not spare so much as a single hand to protect their heads. These men are clearly saying that, if forced to decide which is their
most
vital organ, they are not choosing their brains.

So with all due respect to women: You cannot really appreciate the electric shock of fear that shoots through a man when he contemplates the prospect of allowing somebody to take a sharp implement and

 

 

Nevertheless, a lot of guys get it done, because they have reached a stage in their lives when they have the wisdom, the maturity, and the perspective necessary to understand that if they do
not
get a vasectomy, their wives will never ever stop bringing it up. You may be one of these guys. To determine if you’re a vasectomy candidate, ask yourself:

If you answered “yes” to both questions, you should make an appointment to see a urologist. What you should NOT do—this is very important—is go on the Internet and read the vasectomy message boards, because you will see anecdotes like this:

And:

Pay no attention to these hearsay anecdotes. Your vasectomy will be a walk in the park, although for a day or two it will be the walk of the late Walter Brennan as Grandpappy Amos McCoy. But the procedure itself will be nothing, especially if you do it the way I did it; namely, unconscious.

I’m a big believer in anesthesia. I think it should be used for every medical procedure, including routine physicals. I’d like to be knocked out while I was still in the doctor’s waiting room and not regain consciousness until everything is over, ideally in my car, with no memory whatsoever of what happened.

I’d also like to see anesthesia used in non-medical settings. Like, if for some reason you had to attend the opera, there would be an anesthesiologist in the lobby, next to the candy stand. He’d knock you out and special brawny ushers would drag you to your seat and leave you there, drooling into your lap, until it was over. I think there should also be anesthesiologists on hand for meetings, ballet recitals, banquets, charity galas, and movies based on books that my wife likes (fatal diseases; no punching).

But the point is that you definitely want anesthesia for your vasectomy. Tell your doctor you want the Full Coward Package. Tell him you don’t necessarily want to wake up during the same
month
as your procedure. That’s what I did. I was totally out for the whole thing, and it worked out fine, aside from the video that later appeared on YouTube featuring a close-up of my privates dressed up in a tiny Elvis outfit.

I’m kidding, of course! It was a large Elvis outfit.

No,
seriously:
Nothing happened. I went home with my jockstrap and my peas, and in a few days I was able to resume my regular exercise regimen of mostly sitting around. So if you’ve been thinking about getting a vasectomy, my sincere advice to you is: Do
not
read this essay. You’re welcome.

W
hen we analyze the American health-care system, we see that the most important questions facing us, as a nation, are:

I think we can all agree that our highest priority, as a nation, is my weird forefinger thing. So far, I’ve been following the standard course of treatment recommended for diseases in general by the American Academy of Physicians with Framed Latin Diplomas, namely, picking fretfully at the affected area. But after months of fretful picking without any forefinger improvement, I’m thinking of breaking down and going to see the skin doctor.

I’m reluctant to go see any doctor, but especially my skin doctor. I went to her a few years ago when I contracted a rare and very serious disease consisting of cancer combined with small-pox, leprosy, cholera, heart failure, and the bubonic plague. At least that was my diagnosis based on the symptoms, which consisted of: pain. But it turned out, according to my skin doctor, that what I actually had was “shingles,” a disease that gets its name from the fact that it is transmitted by roofers, which, as a resident of Florida, I am exposed to constantly.

The skin doctor gave me medicine for my shingles, but she also told me that I should (1) eat a lot of broccoli, and (2) not drink alcohol. I asked her if she meant I should not drink alcohol while I had shingles, and she said, no, her medical opinion was that people in general should never, ever drink any alcohol. At all.

Well, I may not have a framed Latin diploma, but I know crazy talk when I hear it. Alcohol has been an important part of the human diet for thousands of years. The Bible is filled with references to people drinking alcohol, such as this quotation from the Book of Effusions, Chapter Eight, Verse Six, Row 7:

Oh, I’m not saying that alcohol is perfect. It has caused its share of problems. Russia is only one example. But throughout history, alcohol has shown that, used correctly, it can be a powerful force for good. I personally have won many crucial arguments at parties because alcohol gave me the conviction to keep arguing until my opponent had no choice but to leave, even if he or she was the host. And consider this: If there were no alcohol, there would be no straight white men dancing at weddings. There also would be no such sport as “luge.” And virtually none of the scientific discoveries concerning what happens when you launch bottle rockets from a set of human buttocks would ever have been made. Is that the kind of world you want to live in? Me neither.

I have, however, been eating more broccoli.

But getting back to the American health-care situation: It is bad. Consider the following disturbing facts:

Clearly, we have a crisis on our hands. The question is: What should we do about it? To answer that question, we must first figure out how we got into this mess in the first place. So let’s review:

In prehistoric times, people believed that sickness was caused by angry spirits invading a person’s body. To get rid of these spirits, sick people went to see primitive medical specialists called “shamans,”
²¹
who would “cure” them by sacrificing a goat. Of course this was all a bunch of superstitious nonsense. We now know, thanks to modern medical science, that the shaman was actually making things
worse
, because when he sacrificed the goat he released the
goat’s
spirit, which was (Who can blame it?)
really
angry, and which would proceed to invade some totally innocent human. Scientists now believe this is what happened to Nick Nolte.

The first big breakthrough in medical knowledge was made by the ancient Egyptians, who discovered that the human body contained organs such as the pancreas, and if a person became sick, and you took out one or more of these organs, the person would get better. Or not. But either way you could charge the person, or his heirs, money. This was the beginning of surgery.

The next big players in medicine were the ancient Greeks, who believed that disease was caused by an imbalance of the body’s four “humours”: blood, bile, phlegm, and sarcasm. This made for some really disgusting treatments, especially if you were diagnosed as being phlegm-deficient, in which case you had to have a transfusion from a compatible loogie donor.

The greatest Greek physician of all was Hippocrates, who is often called “the father of modern medicine” because he invented the concept that remains the foundation of all medical care as we know it today: the receptionist. Prior to this invention, when patients came to see the doctor, the doctor had to actually
see
them, which as you can imagine took up a lot of his valuable time because they were always nattering on and on about being sick. But all of a sudden, thanks to Hippocrates, incoming patients could be intercepted by a receptionist, who would (1) tell them to take a seat, and then (2) avoid making eye contact with them for the rest of the afternoon. This breakthrough meant that a single doctor could schedule as many as 375 appointments per hour, which is the system we still use today.

After the ancient Greeks came the ancient Romans, who advanced the cause of medicine by inventing sewers, running water,
²²
and of course Latin, without which modern diplomas would not be incomprehensible.

This was followed by the Middle Ages, during which medical care consisted of putting dress pants on the corpses.

Then, in 1676, came one of the most important medical breakthroughs of all. A Dutch scientist named Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who had developed an improved method for making optical lenses, was peering through a microscope at a drop of his saliva, when he made an astounding discovery: the letters in “Antonie van Leeuwenhoek” could be rearranged to spell “Look, Nun, at Weenie Heaven!”
²³

Unfortunately, Antonie didn’t speak English, so he didn’t realize how entertaining this was. Instead he went back to looking through his microscope, and he made another astounding discovery: Some very tiny things were moving around in his saliva. Upon peering closer, he realized that what he was seeing were actually living creatures—but very strange-looking creatures, unlike anything ever seen before: