Update On My Surgery

I’d like to apologize to everyone for not keeping you updated on my pending surgery. Don’t worry, I’m fine. I’m fine. I didn’t mean to keep you in the dark. I know it can be excruciating when you don’t get regular updates concerning the stricken individuals in your lives. One tends to think the worst in those situations. I’m sorry to have put you through that.

As I discussed in a post a while back, I have a condition called Latent Epiglottial Profuius. This is a rare affliction, genetically bequeathed through the ages to only maternal descendants of Theodorus of Samos who also happen to be paternal descendants of Rowena, the Stertorous Saxon. Only J. Craig Venter knows why, for sure. And he won’t tell anybody.

Most people who suffer Latent Epiglottial Profuius lead normal lives until around their mid thirties. By this age, the epiglottis of the victim starts to sprout small nubs, which, over time, develop into streamers of flesh. This does not cause the patient discomfort, but in rare cases may cause death. In some people, the flesh streamers do not stop growing and get swallowed, still connected to the epiglottis. The stomach begins digesting them, and the stomach acids climb the flesh streamers to the epiglottis and beyond – the poor wretch essentially eats xeself alive from within. It’s a terrible, truly horrific way to die. Luckily for me, the growth of my epiglottal flesh streamers has stopped at about 5.86952 cm, which is normal.

The most apparent burden of this condition is the effect the flesh streamers have on the subject’s voice and speech quality. The strain the weight of the flesh streamers puts on the throat causes the epiglottis to take on a conical shape. That, coupled with the wheezing characteristics inherent in the streamers (of any kind, not only the flesh variety), causes the voice to take on a quality not unlike that of a New Year’s Eve party horn. Although, the tonality varies among patients. My flesh streamer affected voice, for example, because of its jaunty tenor range, and the unique concaving structure of the combination of the inside of my cheeks and my palate, sounds more like the muted trumpet heard in Cab Calloway’s Blues Brothers version of Minnie the Moocher. It’s gotten to the point where people can barely understand what I’m saying, mostly due to the “wah” distortion caused by the muting influence. To offset this muting “wah”, I added another level of muting, manually, using the toilet plunger from my bathroom, in a “wah” pattern inverse to the natural one caused by my cheeks/palate/streamer configuration. This has worked famously, but the rash that soon developed around my lips demonstrated that I should have used a new plunger. It’s not easy living like this, but I survive, especially with the help of friends who have pitched in and bought me a leather plunger holster hand made by a blind, retired plumber named Yasni.

As nurturing as the plunger has been toward my handicapableness, I don’t want to live this way for the rest of my life. Hence, the need for surgery. Since this is such an unbelievably rare condition, no standard medical procedures exist to relieve those in my state. So I must resort to experimental operations conceived by medical school dropouts, who write varnish awareness manifestos and carve tongue depressors out of salt licks, and live in back rooms of frappe’ houses. I met one of these unwanted healers at a crowded dry dock, and she enthralled me with tales of her method of de-tentacling squid. She assured me the same technique would work to rid me of my fleshy streamers. But, she did warn me that most of the squid she worked on had died, and then asked me if I was afraid of death. I replied, “Sort of.” To which she acquiesced, “Alright, you’re in!”

I am currently waiting for her to fit me into her schedule.

I’ll let you know how it goes.