By Greg Budell
The Mayor of BOOMTOWN
A PAIN IN THE NECK "A true story from the Greg files"
“This is bad!”.
It wasn’t just the efficiency of being tested. Everyone, mostly 20 and 30 somethings new in their field, was kind, courteous and friendly. “This can’t be real”, I thought to myself. “The surgery will be a nightmare”.
Those are not the first words you want to hear from a neurosurgeon when he sees your MRI on his computer screen. Dr. Patrick Ryan pointed to a white line on the image- my spinal cord. In the mid-neck area, the white line was obscured by a protrusion that was impinging The Big Nerve thus explaining why I’d been dealing with months of something I called “studio neck”. In my radio booth, most of my equipment is to the right, and whenever I turned to look at it, my neck would lock up- sometimes with a popping sound. The condition would momentarily make me look like I was auditioning for Quasimodo, head twisted until the pain passed, my back shrugged under the shoulders. Dr. Ryan said a surgery was the only fix. That was the bad news. The good news? This would be a great story for a magazine column! I could reveal medical horror stories. Long waits. Indifferent staff. “Just another face on a gurney” kind of stuff. I was ready to bring you 1000 words delivering the inside scoop of rotten medical care in this nightmarish year of 2022. That is NOT the story here. It would be a complete and utter lie.
58 BOOM!
April 2022
RiverRegionBoom.com
Nothing like watching The Office through the prism of your complimentary hospital socks!
After explaining why several words ending in “ectomy” would fix my pain in the neck, I was dispatched to Dr. Ryan’s assistant, Edwina. She couldn’t have been more professional or accommodating. Edwina was more like a concierge in a fine hotel than a medical office staffer. She scheduled my surgery for St. Patrick’s Day, my pre-op tests for the Monday before at Jackson Hospital. Ha! A Monday at a major hospital! This is where things would go off the rails! My appointment was for 9:30AM right after my Newstalk 93.1FM morning show. I’d made arrangements to have someone cover my 3PM afternoon show because surely 930A was a suggestion, not a real appointment, right? I was home before 11AM. It was boom boom boom for this BOOMer. Tests done and passed!
Wife Roz drove me to Jackson for our 6AM check in. The previous day, my afternoon show was cohosted by friend and family lawyer Jacquelyn Tomlinson. Sorry to say, I will not be leaving a vast estate, but we got everything buttoned down during a chat on the importance of a will. Anytime you have surgery they remind you of “risk” no matter how unlikely. Everything got settled. Jacquelyn helped me decide who gets my bag of whiffle balls and treasured Christmas ornaments. When we arrived, we arrived preparedfor anything! Once again, we were promptly greeted and seated. Within moments I was whisked to a room for the most painful of medical experiences. I’m referring, of course, to the dreaded hospital gown. I had my first surgery in 1984. Incredible advances in medical care have occurred every year since yet somehow the hospital gown- an overgrown 50s dishtowel designed to teach the lesson of equality, remains mostly unchanged. Nobody- I don’t care who it is- can make one of those things look good.
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