Return of the Nutsack Chronicles

I originally posted this post at 3:00 a.m., then pulled it down due to potential TMI issues. However, three of your sisteren (is that even a word?) convinced me that it was publish-worthy. None of them professed being grossed out or offended. So without further ado, I present to you, in all of its amateur, sophomoric and unedited glory, "The Nutsack Chronicles." If it's well received, perhaps one day there'll be a sequel called, "Revenge of the Nutsack."


**** WARNING **** This post contains six references to euphemisms for the male *kitten* (one is in the title, and one is in this disclaimer, so you only have four to go. If you've gotten this far without writing letters to the FCC or your Congressman, congratulations... you are probably a mature adult). If frank discussions such as those are offensive to you, please do not read the remainder of this post.

So.... Wednesday, December 5th. Not quite the day I expected. I dropped below 400 pounds for what feels like the first time since Milli Vanilli packed 'em into 18,000 seat arenas. That part, I kind of expected. I mean, when you end the previous day with the scale saying 402 while you're still digesting dinner, there's a fairly decent chance that tomorrow morning's After-Peeing,-After-Removing-Three-Ounce-Underwear,-After-Showering-to-Remove-Four-Micrograms-of-Dead-Skin-And-Hair,After-Drying-Off-Thoroughly-to-Eliminate-Potential-External-Water-Weight-Gain,-But-Before-Consuming-Food-Or-Water Weigh In will drop a few pounds. And in this case (see my profile picture), it did. 399. Terrific.

After basking in the glow of dozens of your wonderful posts of congratulations (each and every one of which I savored like August's Godiva chocolates (yeah, an "insider" reference to one of my previous posts... deal with it), I took my morning exercise walk, showered, and headed to my family physician for my annual physical. Once again, this part of the day, I expected (given the fact that I made the appointment for my December physical in...uhhh.... late-September). Everything went well there (pending lab results which feel as though they arrive in 4-6 decades after a visit). EKG was good (will be the subject of a future post), weight was astounding, and she (my physician) had a lot of questions about how I was able to lose so much weight so fast. I explained that the biggest difference from decades of weight loss failure to four-plus months of lifestyle change success was each and every one of you. Collectively, and in some cases, individually, you have displaced the negative voices of doubt and despair from my past with new messages of hope, determination and self-empowerment for today and tomorrow. I'm not merely stroking y'all. I am dead serious. I could not have lost 79 pounds (80? who knows... my scale, Old Reliable, is 1304 miles south-southwest of here) in 135 days without you. Trust me. I know me.

Anyway, I got out of the physical, and it was 11:40 a.m. Hungry. Really hungry. Rip YOUR arm off and eat it without bbq sauce hungry (and really, if you're going to rip someone's arm off and eat it, shouldn't it be prepared over low and slow dry heat, using mesquite or applewood smoke so that no bbq sauce is really necessary?). I called Mrs.TFT and mentioned the fact that it was almost noon and with my morning's exercise and fasting (except for the 80 ounces of water I drank at my doctors' lab tech's request), I had over 3000 calories at my disposal. We decided to meet at one of our favorite casual go-to places (www.becksprime.com) where I devoured my favorite grilled ahi tuna sandwich on a slowdough bun in all of its 652 calorie splendor. I even threw caution to the wind and ordered it WITH the ginger-wasabi asian spread. Hell, I had over 3000 calories left... I was going to ENJOY that bad boy.

We talked about my doctor's visit and our son Jake's preparations for his upcoming bar mitzvah. It was a nice and leisurely mid-week lunch with my favorite person in the world. We parted ways so I could head to the office and Mrs.TFT could take care of business on the home front. But before I did, I drove over to Kegg's Candies where I bought 3 (not a dozen.... not 20... THREE) of my favorite chocolate covered lemon creme candies (at 60 calories each, thankewverymuch), and enjoyed them on my way to the office. Again, nothing much unexpected. Yet.

After 2+ hours of work, I received a telephone call from my younger sister, Dr.YoungSisTFT. I knew instantly that something was wrong because she NEVER calls me during a work day. Dr.YoungSisTFT is a cardiologist at the VA Hospital in Cincinnati and is always running and gunning during the work day while taking care of our brave veterans. "OldSisTFT [our older sister who lives in North Olmsted, Ohio] was having a surgical procedure on her kidney and she just coded. They revived her. It doesn't look good. She is in very critical condition."

After several minutes of clearing the decks, reorganizing my professional life for the weeks to come, I explained to my legal assistant AssistTFT what had happened, made travel arrangements to the Midwest and hit the door running. Literally.

Based upon my quick and likely somewhat hysterical review of flight schedules, it appeared that the only way to get to North Olmsted by early the next morning (Thursday morning), making plans at 4:00 p.m., on Wednesday afternoon, would be to fly to Nashville, rent a car, arrive at 10pm, and drive through the night to cover the 500+ remaining miles from Nashville to the southern shore of Lake Erie. So that is what I did. I arrived in North Olmsted (actually, Westlake, where the hospital is located) at 8:30 a.m. Thursday (yesterday) morning. By that point, I had been awake for 27 hours.

Meetings with doctors. Decisions to be made. Sitting for hours, holding OldSis TFT's hand and doing all the talking (because she was on a ventilator and still groggy from Ativan). Finally, at 1pm, the decision was made to complete the surgery that they were trying to do the day before when she coded. The team prepped for surgery. At 3:30pm, they wheeled her out to the surgical suite. While she was there, I realized that most of my day's calories and nutrition had come from a vending machine Kit Kat bar (delicious layers of crispy wafer and hazelnut cream, enrobed in a delicious waterfall of rich milk chocolate), and a convenience store package of Starburst ( tropical fruit flavor, if you MUST know).

During the surgery, Dr.YoungSisTFT, my older sister's amazing and wonderful neighbor Cathy (sorry, but peripheral characters in my stories don't get snazzy pseudonyms) and I headed to a restaurant to get a bite to eat. Unfortunately, the healthiest thing on the menu seemed to be the "homemade pickle bar". I'm pretty sure I saw some wild deer licking at the pickle bar because it had more salt than a salt lick. But the turkey burger was really good. I passed on the flash-fried matchstick rosemary fries (which smelled heavenly, but I AM trying to give up or at least limit fried foods), and stuck to the turkey burger and six varieties of pickle slices. We shared stories about OldSisTFT and her deceased husband, Walter (sorry, Walter, but you lose your right to have a pseudonym when you cross the River Styx). We ate, shared stories, and laughed, mostly to keep our minds off of what was occurring at the hospital a few miles away.

We got back to the hospital and received the good news. The surgery went as planned. They upgraded OldSisTFT's condition to critical but stable. After a round of goodbyes, I headed back to the hotel for some rest. I had now been awake for 37 straight hours (minus a 12 or so minute inadvertent nap while I held my sister's hand at the hospital). I remember setting up my computer, putting on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt to get ready for an exercise walk, checking out the pillows on the bed to see if they would be comfortable, and that was it. The next thing I knew, it was 12:20 a.m. I had been asleep for over six hours.

"Why wake up, when you're so tired," you might ask. There are two answers. The first has to do with the 8 cups of coffee, four bottles of water, and 2 bottles of Pepsi Max that I consumed the day before to stay hydrated and awake. The second has to do with the fact that I haven't been in the North in the winter in two years. I forgot that if you're going to fall asleep in your hotel room, you might want to check the thermostat to see if the heat is on. In my case, it wasn't. When I woke up, two sensations hit me at once. A desperate need to pee and the fact that I was colder than Ebeneezer Scrooge's nutsack (yep, that's reference #3).

I immediately realized that if I was going to avoid needing to use the laundry room on an emergency basis, "need to pee" had to be addressed before "freezing fricking cold." So I headed to the little litigator's room.

Men, when you get older, you might want to consider placing a brick in your carry on luggage. Strange sounding? Yes. Good practical travel advice? Also yes. Two truths converge to make this an important part of your comfortable travel experience. One of the few things that I never learned from the books or film strips in "health class" (why, oh why can't they just call it sex ed), is that as the adult male ages, his nutsack (yep, this is reference #4) tends to lengthen. Now, I have not yet tripped over it while powerwalking, but a swinging nutsack can prove reasonably uncomfortable given the following confluence of factors: (1) too tired to stand and pee, (2) being an older male, and (3) the seemingly higher water level in the average hotel toilet than at home. Put them all together, and you've got a recipe for "the boys" going for an unplanned swim in "Lake Erie" in the freezing cold of winter. Not the optimal way to raise one's already lowered core body temperature. Also not the best way to fall back asleep after a trudge to the bathroom. Anyway, I've been told that if you put a brick in the tank of a toilet, it lowers the water level in the bowl, thereby diminishing the chance that the boys will have an unplanned swim meet. Or, I suppose, you could just not be lazy and "stand and deliver," as it were.

In any event, now that "have to pee real bad" was taken care of, it was time to fix the fact that it was 55 degrees in my hotel room. I turned up the thermostat, but realized that it would take a while to warm up. I didn't have a while. My teeth were chattering. So I turned on the shower (nice and hot) and raised my core body temperature the way Hawkeye Piece defrosted his side of beef that had been shipped from Adam's Rib (across from Dearborn Station in Chicago), in one of my favorite episodes of M*A*S*H. After a glorious 30 minute warmup, I now find myself wide awake at 1:41 a.m. Which explains this lenthy epistle.

We have reached the conclusion of this unexpected page from my life. "Hey," you might be thinking, "I only counted five references to euphemisms for the *kitten* and you promised us six. What gives?" And my answer is, "if I told you there would only be five such references, you wouldn't have read the entire post, would you?" Have a wonderful rest of your Friday. I think I might head back to bed.