Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: March 2013
If dreams were based off what we watch most commonly, mine would be MUCH better than this.
So (in last night’s little adventure), this man comes to see me because he’s unhappy with the rhinoplasty my partner did for him. This is preposterous on the face of it, because my partner has twenty-five years of cosmetic surgery experience, and I’ve done, what, maybe twelve rhinoplasties in my entire career, ten of those during training? But whatever. The guy wants an opinion.
And, indeed, it’s a botched rhinoplasty, which is again preposterous because my partner does great work, but hey, this is a dream. This fellow has no tip support and the nasal dorsum has been over-reduced. It’s amazing that his nose hasn’t sunk two inches into his face. I’m shocked that all he wants is his money back (preposterousness #3 — this is the Kize — so you want your co-pay back? Sure!), but then he pulls out a ten-inch hunting knife, very shiny, and says he wants to see my partner.
Don't worry. I'm sure that must be fake blood.
I locate my partner in one of the other exam rooms and innocently (evilly?) tell him, “One of your patients has a question for you.” But he’s in a snit over something going down in his own room, and leaves in a huff. So, great. I have an angry patient in my room looking for sweet, bloody revenge, and my partner’s gone from the building.
When I get back, some young Vietnamese kid is delivering my patient an automatic rifle, but there seems to be some disagreement, everyone’s getting louder, and right then, close enough for me to get splashed with blood, my patient stabs the guy in the hand, screams, “Just give me the goddamn gun!” and grabs the rifle.
Clutching his bloody hand, the kid races over to the other side of the room, pulls out his cell phone (no doubt with a third hand), and starts screaming into it in Vietnamese. My patient, meanwhile, is loading a clip into his rifle. Thinking fast, the kid jumps onto a table, grabs a handful of window curtain, and when the rifle-fire shatters the picture window behind him, he swings out and down using the curtains as a tether.
Sadly for him, we’re several stories up, and he has to release the curtains to fall into the ocean below. (Yes. In Bakersfield.) He makes a splash, and I see him start to swim away, but then a nearby submarine fires two torpedoes his way.
I turn to my patient. “You want a refund? NO problem. But here, look at this diagram, I’d like to explain to you exactly what the trouble is . . .”
Moral of the story: Not all male rhinoplasty patients are nuts, but you have to wonder about the ones who come to their appointments with ten-inch-long hunting knives.
D.