My
Crappy-Turned-Happy Lap Appy
A
transsexual laparoscopic appendectomy adventure
By Calvin Neufeld
Last weekend my appendix decided it was no
longer happy in its 31-year-old home.
The whole story began on Friday night. A great
sweeping pain across my abdomen. Gas, I think. Big bad gas. Must be the garlic
scapes I had for the first time, three nights in a row; no other change in my
diet leaves me with no other sensible diagnosis. “I bet it’s appendicitis,” says
my wife. What does she know? “It’s not appendicitis!” I reply firmly. Many
times that evening. She keeps giving me the “you’ll see I’m right” eyes which I
keep ignoring as any husband eventually learns to do.
When I find I can’t eat my dinner – and more
serious, when I find I can’t drink my wine – I know this is no simple case of
angry flatus. I go to bed at 9 p.m. and lie there wishing away the pain and
willing sleep for the next five hours. When I wake in the morning, surprised at
having fallen asleep, the pain is still there. Only it has moved. To the lower
right abdomen. Dammit, I think, at the double-barrelled realization that not
only do I likely have appendicitis, but I will also have to tell Sharon that
she was right. She has eyes for that too.
But the pain has happily eased into a stubborn
discomfort. This means I can still work. Out I go to my potatoes. I have a
cheap bag of old seed potatoes – 45 pounds of them – and they are eager to see
soil. And I am eager, as I always am, to see how much food I can produce in my
little suburbanish space, and I’m especially addicted to homegrown potatoes.
Tomatoes too – I stopped counting at 60 or 70 plants – and beans – hundreds of
plants – and squash and broccoli and garlic and peas and onions and raspberries
and everything else I can get my hands on. But potatoes – these are my
precious.
So out I go in search of spaces in my already-planted
backyard, in each of my gardens, and in the neighbour’s garden, potatoes in
every spare space. 186 plants in total, I keep count. Tomorrow I must find
places to plant the other 30 pounds of seed potatoes.
By the end of the day I feel tired and sore
and the pain is still there. My wife asks if I’m going to have it checked out.
She’s been Googling. I whine about not wanting to. She says to me, “Well don’t
go if you think you don’t need to go, but don’t not go just because you don’t want to be sitting in the hospital.”
It’s after 6 p.m. I want to start dinner. I
had an early lunch, I’ve worked hard, I’m hungry and thirsty. But I can’t think
of a reason for not going that she hasn’t just ruled out. So I walk to the
hospital, only two blocks away, nursing a small grief in anticipation of how
unpleasurable my evening is going to be.
And I wonder when I’m going to get my dinner.
At the hospital, I’m asked at check-in for a
urine sample. I went just before leaving and have nothing to offer. And I haven’t
had anything to drink, nothing to encourage results. So the sample bottle waits
with me in the waiting room. An hour later I am triaged by a nurse, she asks me
to pee, and I manage enough at least to be analyzed. And then I’m sent back to
the waiting room.
Another hour later, after three very bad TV shows
that I intently ignore with Sudoku, I’m called back to “emerg.” A term that I will
hear many times in the coming hours.
I am happy to stand up. Sitting for two hours
in an awkward waiting room chair has made my cramp worse. Standing feels
lovely. And walking. By the time I see the doctor, I feel better than I’ve felt
in ages. I wonder if maybe I am suddenly cured, as I so often am in a doctor’s
presence.
I wonder if I will look like a hypochondriac.
So when the doctor presses into my abdomen and
it hurts, I am relieved. Does this hurt?
(Pressing in.) Yes. (Mixed feelings.) Now
pay attention! (She’s that friendly-authoritative type, which I like.) Does this hurt more? (Suddenly
withdrawing her fingers.) Yes! (My goodness.)
She tells me to press my knee against her hand
– Does this hurt? No. She twists my
leg to the side – Does this hurt?
Yes! To the other side – This? Yes!
Okay.
You’re going to have to go to Kingston. We can’t do a cat scan here until
Tuesday. You could have waited until Tuesday?
Oh, and she asks me if I have pain in my
testicles. No.
Should I tell her that I don’t have any? It
doesn’t seem the time or the place. (My wife later disagrees with me.) I don’t
bother to tell her. For me, it’s just a funny moment, one of many that will
crop up before my adventure is through. I store it for later retelling to
Sharon when I get home.
It’s 9 p.m., then 10 p.m. They send me for X-rays.
A woman comes up with a wheelchair for me. I feel just fine, it seems absurd. I
ask the nurse, the nurse asks the doctor, can I just walk? The doctor – Doctor
Anna, whose last name I heard a million times but can’t remember, Sarkarovich
or something – says no way. In the wheelchair.
The woman wheels me to a curtained changing space
and says that she assumes she doesn’t have to accompany me in there. I tell her
she assumes right. I change into one of many nighties that night. Silly things.
My hospital roommate would later comment that for all their progress, no one has
come up with a nightie that does the trick and leaves you with dignity. Good point.
I stride out in my nightie, trying to appear
casual. She’s talking, we’re joking, it’s fun. But strange as I get puppeted
into position for three shots. X-rays doing their thing.
Then she wheels me back to my bed in emerg
where the other nurse, Chris, is ready to take blood. Many vials of it.
And while they’ve got the needle in there they
put me on a drip. A sugar-salt-water cocktail. If I might be needing surgery, I
can’t risk eating or drinking. No dinner for me, no sirree, not for a while.
And Doctor Anna won’t risk me dehydrating.
This is starting to feel like a bit much. Even
the doctor says to me, Look, it could be
a poop or it could be appendicitis. I think maybe a poop. But could be
appendicitis. So you have to go to Kingston for a cat scan. I’ve called them,
they agree, everything’s set up and waiting.
She is going to send me by ambulance but
settles on letting Sharon drive me. By now it’s after 11 p.m., I’ve been five
hours in hospital. I am hungry and thirsty (actually the drip does help) and
tired and want my dinner. But you do what Doctor Anna tells you to do. So Sharon
and I drive an hour to Kingston, park in a parking garage that looks like the
one in the horror movie about someone trapped in a parking garage, and waddle
to emerg. The pain is getting angry. Crankier at least. And I still have the
needle thing in my arm – not an actual needle, but a tube going into the vein,
uncomfortable but not exactly dangerous. It’s a plug that can be reused, and
will be, many times. And it’s a plug that leaked!
Three times it leaked. First, when nurse Chris
put it in. It’s my veins, you see, they amused her. When she came to take
blood, I rolled up my sleeve and Chris cries out “Oh my goodness I love you! I
love you!” Apparently my veins are a nurse’s dream. She says, “You have no idea
how many times a day you have people insist that they simply have no veins, and
you’d almost think they were right because you can never find them! Yours you
could find with your eyes closed in the dark!” The doctor walks by, Chris tells
her, “You should see his veins!” “Are they good?” “You could see them with one
eye closed in the dark and the other eye not seeing very well.” “Ooh, can I
try?”
She doesn’t try, of course, but it’s funny.
Nurse Chris ties the cord around my arm and I
start pumping my fist like you’re supposed to for a needle. Nurse Chris laughs
at me, “Oh you don’t have to pump your fist honey, trust me, you don’t have to.
Not with those veins.”
So I guess it’s my veins showing off when they
get blood to spurt before the attachment thingy connects completely. She stops
it in a second but a lot of blood can show off in a second and stain the bed. I
feel bad for that. But still I brag that my veins are showing off and we laugh.
In Kingston, the needle plug thing leaks a
second time, as the radiologist prepares me for my cat scan.
Cat scan. I’ve never had one, so exciting. The
radiologist explains everything to me. They inject radioactive dye. Yes. Which
the scans pick up better. Possible side effects, such and such, none of which are
very likely with me. It will make me feel warm head to toe and it will make me
feel like I’ve peed. But I won’t have peed.
Wowza, what an intro.
So he hooks the IV up to my arm needle thingy
and sets the machine to go. He steps into the other room to watch and monitor.
I am conveyed, lying down, arms back, into the loop that forms the cat scanner.
That’s when I notice that my needle thing is leaking, again. Onto my pillow. I
signal the guy, he comes and fixes it, and my cat scan continues.
It’s amazing. A voice and little lit-up faces
tell you when to breathe in, when to hold, when to exhale and breathe normally.
The lit-up face telling you to breathe is a green side-angle Pacman with a big
open breathing smile. The lit-up face telling you to hold your breath is an
orange puff-cheeked distressed side-angle Pacman. I find this amusing.
And meanwhile, the scanner is spinning,
sometimes slow, sometimes at blur speed, doing goodness knows what. I learn
later that it’s taking pictures of my body, slicing it in minute detail, to
create a complete and minutely dissected 3-D image of me.
It’s done in no time. I’m returned to my
wheelchair – even here I’m not allowed to walk, but I admit it’s nice being
strolled around from time to time – and I’m dropped off in the waiting room,
back at Sharon’s side. Sharon at least had dinner. But she’s exhausted and I
can’t help but think how she’s being a better sport than I might have been in
her place.
At 2 a.m., I am brought back to an emerg bed.
Curtains all around it, 10 or so beds similarly curtained in this ward. A nurse
does the same checks Doctor Anna did. She says a surgical resident will be in
to talk to me. Sharon joins me and we wait, tiredly and hungrily and thirstily
– though Sharon has a water bottle – until 6 a.m., when the surgical resident
comes to tell me that yes, it is my appendix, and I am booked for an 8 a.m.
surgery. By then I’m relieved, an end is in sight, and at least my long night’s
plight won’t have been in vain. That
would have been a tragedy, a dinner missed for nothing. For some bad cat-scan-worthy
scapes.
Actually, the surgical resident had been to
see me once before during that long night’s wait, about 4 a.m. This was after
I’d grown a wee bit terrified of meeting him.
I will make this abundantly clear: at all
times he acted professionally and did his job well. Even so, it unfolded that
the woman in the curtained-off bed beside me was in with a host of problems
that included something to do with her bowels. I can’t think of anything I’d
less rather have to be in hospital for.
She’s a character. An old woman, from what I
can hear, and with a sense of humour that leaves me never knowing whether to
feel sorry for her or go hug her for being so darn funny. She fell asleep in
the night, and this surgical resident wakes her up to perform a test. She
doesn’t wake up easily, she clearly wants to sleep. But he gets her attention
and says, “Mrs. So-and-so, do you mind if I perform a rectal exam?” She says,
“What? Of course I mind!” He explains why he has to, there’s an exchange of funny/not
funny comments as they get her on her side, and then “OH! OW! What, you wake up
a person to do that? Jesus, Mary, and
whoever else!”
After he leaves, she continues to remark “Geez,
that hurt!”
This is still ringing in my ear when he comes
to introduce himself to me. But of course he isn’t the big bad midnight finger
monster, he’s just your average surgical resident guy. And I’m not here for my
bowels, thank goodness. I’m just here
for a silly old appendix and I’m being a big hungry thirsty tired baby about
it.
He asks me a few questions, allergies? No.
Symptoms? Yadda yadda. Medications? None. To this, my wife gives me a look like
I’m leaving something out, which I don’t think I am. Surgeries?
Oh dear. Yes. Despite my hungry thirsty tired
state I’m going to have to name and explain the surgeries I’ve had. I’m not
thinking clearly and lamely strategize a way out, “Well, I have had surgeries…but
they weren’t related to bad health.” Now I’ve confused him. I’ve confused
myself. My wife saves the day, as she tends to do. “He’s transgender, he’s had
a mastectomy and hysterectomy. Oh, and he takes testosterone.” She gives me her
look, “No medications?” she says, “Testosterone!”
My excuse that I didn’t think that counts as
medication doesn’t fly. And I look silly for having chickened out on the
surgeries question.
He just says “Oh” and asks about the hysto,
yes it was laparoscopically done. The appendectomy will also be
laparoscopically done. Been there done that, I’m ready.
Of course in my compromised state of mind I
have a moment’s panic about what opening they’ll be pulling my appendix out of.
I know where they pulled the uterus for my hysto…but that wouldn’t make sense
for an appendix. I never took Biology but I can figure that much.
(Still, I don’t know where they did pull the
appendix out. I have three little laparoscopic cuts, one in my bellybutton. Did
they pull my appendix out my bellybutton? I never got a chance to ask that. A
week later and my bellybutton’s still sore. But barely.)
Now that my surgery has been announced, a new
nurse comes to say that she will be my nurse for the next 10 minutes, preparing
me. The doctors want an ECG so she’s brought the ECG machine. It looks like the
world’s first laptop. In shape and age. I tell her it looks like something out
of the ‘80s and she agrees, “I keep telling people, sometime in my lifetime I
will see ECG scanners that you just bloop bloop then you’re done. Instead I
have to hook up all these electrode things.” (I may be paraphrasing all that.)
She sticks electrode stickers on my legs, on
my belly, and lifts my shirt to put them on my chest. “Oh, you’ve had surgery!”
She looks at me, concerned. I say, “Oh, right, well I’m trans, so I’ve had a
mastectomy, and a hysterectomy, which was laparoscopic.” She says, “Oh, I’m
sorry, no one told me!” But of course there’s nothing to be sorry for, and I tell
her so, and that’s why I’ve got these big-ass scars.
She’s actually cheerier from then on. It must
be a lot to process, if I think about it, no wonder people tend to perk up.
Then I’m wheeled up to the OR prep room, where
Phase Two of my adventure – the happy part – is about to begin.
The
Appendectomy
It begins in the OR prep room. Or is it a curtained
hallway? I don’t know, I’m tired and hungry and thirsty, though less thirsty
now that I’m on a drip (where there had been a third leakage incident, quickly
remedied).
The surgeon comes to see me. He’s the one
Doctor Anna was speaking to on the phone at 8 p.m. last night. Last night?
Between then and now for me are unbroken hours. But it’s 12 hours later, now
he’s signing into work fresh, still in his civvies, reviewing my file with me.
He’s so nice and friendly I couldn’t be more confident in the procedure, I’m
not even thinking about it, I just can’t wait to get it over with, get back
home, have a proper dinner.
But one thing is weighing on my mind now: the dawning realization that surgery is
imminent, which means that in moments I’m going to be sprawled out nude in
front of who knows who. Uh-oh.
I say to the surgeon, “You know that I’m trans
right?” He says yes, casually and without performance, as if I’d asked whether
he knew about the abdominal pain. I say, “Okay, I just wanted to make sure you
don’t find yourself surprised in there when you see my scars…and stuff.” He
assures me no problem. It really is nothing.
It amuses me that it’s nothing. It’s awesome.
He goes off to get into gear, and after him comes
the anaesthesiologist. We go over all the same questions, allergies, symptoms,
have I had surgeries before and what kind? He’s flipping through his papers and
I offer a weary but by-now-amused “Well, it’s funny, I’ve had a hysterectomy…”
Without batting an eye he says, “Well that
doesn’t make any sense.”
I laugh and explain. He says, “Whoa! You’d
never know it! I bet you have all kinds of interesting conversations in a place
like this!” We have a laugh over it and I tell him about Doctor Anna asking if
I had pain in my testicles.
Someone wheels me into the operating room.
It’s huge. At least from where I’m lying. Clean, white, blue, bright. Steel. There
are at least five people in there. Thank goodness the surgeon knows, I think.
If anyone here doesn’t know he’ll explain it to them. That’s all the
reassurance I need.
The anaesthesiologist is ready with the oxygen
mask and the anaesthetic drip. He asks me if I have any last questions before
they begin. I say no, then “Wait, yes, after this do I get to eat?”
He says, “The only thing standing between you
and a meal is this operation.”
I say, “Then let’s get the show on the road.”
The oxygen mask descends, I breathe deep and
eager, and suddenly things go woozy and the anaesthnolgst…says that in 30
seconds I’ll be out. I’m amused by the way my eyes are independently drifting
and then I wake up in recovery.
Another nurse, a new nurse, young, asking me
if I am in pain. Or if I feel alright. Or something. She’s nice. But there is
pain, lots of it, so I tell her. She says she’s giving me hydromorphone, which
is stronger than morphine. Lovely, I think, and say. She uses my arm needle thing
to inject it, and I notice it’s been replaced with a clean new arm needle thing.
The other one wasn’t looking so nice with blood and cat scan and drip stuff on
it. They must have changed it while I was out. It looks much nicer now.
The pain isn’t going away. I tell her (I don’t
want to know how pathetic I sound) and she brings me another shot, this time
morphine. Lovely, I think, and say. But again the pain stays. Or maybe I sleep a
bit. But at some point there is plenty of pain and I tell her. She brings me
two Tylenol. I swallow them, and shortly after feel just right again. A little
sore, but utterly comfortable. She found the perfect mix.
At some point they wake me to bring me to my
room. I might have been in the recovery room an hour, maybe two, I don’t
recall. But I wave at everyone as they wheel me out, goodbye and thank you!
I love being wheeled around after surgery. I
want to watch everything and everyone around me, my head is never on the pillow.
Perhaps it’s the drugs, or just the effect of a bit of excitement. A whole new
perspective, watching hospital lights sweep over you and doorways and people
clearing an elevator just so that you can get on. The post-surgery gurney ride
only lasts moments but they’re moments I always remember.
They wheel me to my room. I’m sharing it with
a man I can’t yet see, on the window side, behind a dividing curtain. They ask
if I need help walking to my bed but of course I’m just fine. I sit up,
cautiously, walk to my bed and get in all comfortable. The nurse says, “You
don’t look like someone who’s just had surgery!” I hadn’t thought about that, I
was just enjoying myself.
They settle me in, probably explain a few
things, nurse Sarah introduces herself as my nurse, and she says that she knows
how important food is to me and there will be a meal soon. Wonderful news. And
then I think to remind (or inform) her that I’m vegan. She says, “Oh, no
problem, I’ll let them know. But…I’m worried they might only have something
like a hummus for you.” I say that’s no problem, I’ll survive – meaning,
secretly, I’ll eat whatever vegan scraps I can get and they’ll be exquisite.
I lay there taking in my new environs for a
while before falling asleep. I wake up a short while later and next to me is
food on a tray. Oh happy day! It sounds hokey but that’s just how it felt. I
sweep the tray to me and say out loud to no one “Lunch!” and survey what’s before
me.
No hummus. A beautiful big round tray with an
Indian chickpea curry and rice and broccoli and on the side a fruit salad and
tomato rice soup and best of all, TEA. Tea, a black plastic mug of hot water,
beside it a Red Rose teabag, a packet of sugar, and a little Tupper of soy
milk. My goodness. There are words for happiness like this, but I can’t find them.
The nurse walks in and tells me she knows I’m eager
but go easy, take it slow. I try. I compromise by eating half of it in the
first few seconds, and then waiting several minutes for a second tea before
devouring the second half. There’s even a little margarine, unaccompanied by
bread, that I spread over the curry and dip in the tomato soup. I’m hungry. And
it’s delicious.
The tea is so good that I refill my mug four
times before stealing it when I check out. I think I should send the hospital
an apology with a few bucks to cover it, but it was worth it. Maybe it was the
drugs, but it was the perfect little mug, lightweight, unbreakable, and we had
grown emotionally attached, it goes where I go. Good tea.
Back to my story. After eating, I’m left nursing
my teas, watching the clock in silence as hours go by. The hours are not
without entertainment. My roommate, John is his name, is called out for a cat
scan. I wonder if he’ll feel like he’s peed.
He is helped out of his bed by his nurse – not
my nurse – and as he walks to the gurney there’s his bum peeking out of his
nightie. He makes no effort to cover it. I look at my tea.
It wasn’t the only time his bum showed up. It
walked to the bathroom a few times. And he was brought back unsuccessful from
the first cat scan attempt, because they just couldn’t find a vein. The nurses,
the doctors, the technicians all tried, he just had no veins. So until they
could tap into him, the cat scan had to wait. The second time they tried, a few
hours later, they were resorting to special methods. He came back successful
this time, bare bummed and with his own arm needle reusable plug.
Meanwhile, I’m watching the clock, thinking
about how much fun I’m having, thinking about how good that meal was, and the tea,
and how I’m going to get the rest of my potatoes planted. Serves me right for
waiting until July, every day counts for those potatoes.
I also get to peek at my tummy. They’ve shaved
it, bellybutton-down, which looks funny on a hairy guy. And it’s covered with
red dye, or is that to sterilize? And three neat little bandages where the
laparoscopes went. It’s a strange sight. And there’s barely any pain thanks to
a job well done and the perfect mix of drugs.
I’m eager to go home but I’m told that I must
meet three criteria to leave: I must be able to eat a full meal without nausea,
walk without feeling dizzy, and pass gas.
So I set to my tasks. I’ve missed one good
evening’s meal, I have no intention of missing another. I am having a nice
dinner at home tonight.
Clearly I’ve proven that I can eat a meal with
ease. Gusto even. So I set about walking. Up and down the corridor, squeaking
my wheelie drip stand along beside me, like walking arm over shoulder with a
friend. I wander, smile at nurses, who usually have something funny to say, and
repeat a few times before settling back into bed.
My parents come to visit. We have a great
chat, I tell them it’s silly for them to drive all this way just for an
appendix. Is this a big deal? To me it’s just an annoying interruption to my
potato planting, and it’ll be a short one. But they were sweet to visit and I
think John must have been entertained by the kinds of things my parents and I
get to chatting about.
After they leave, Sharon arrives, having
caught up on a bit of sleep and taking care of our pugs and cat to whom
dinnertime is also very important.
It’s about 6 p.m. and I’m calculating time
needed to get home and make and eat a nice dinner. By now I have passed gas
twice, most happily and discretely. I tell the nurse so and she praises me. She
says, “This is the only time people will applaud you for that.”
And there is dinner. This time, a beautiful
big round tray with a lentil dahl and rice and broccoli and tomato rice soup
(which Sharon eats, among other things on the tray). The dahl is delicious. The
nurse is astounded at my meals. She says she never knew they were on the menu,
she’s going to have to try them, they look and smell so good. I tell her about
my friend who always orders the vegan meal on airplanes because they make them
custom and in smaller numbers, so they’re always fresher and tastier. Same with
hospital food, apparently.
Lovely dinner. But to me, a mere appetizer. A
tide-me-over. I will have my dinner tonight.
The nurse is as convinced as I am that I’m
ready to go – she keeps telling me I don’t look like someone who’s just had
surgery – but it’s after 8 p.m. when I finally get the doctor’s release. A
trauma elsewhere delays him for a while. Again I’m reminded that I’ve had a
fairytale time here compared to most.
Even John, my roomie. After three days here,
he’s still in pain, both in the arm that had surgery and in his arthritic body
generally. He’s barely middle-aged. It’s only as I’m leaving that I speak to
him for the first time. He’s very nice, he’s funny, he’s got a ceramic hip and
he’s upbeat for a guy in his situation. I myself would have been cranky after three days here, however
much fun it may be.
I comment on his veins, so they eventually
found one? Yes, he says, and shows me his arm needle thingy. I tell him my vein
story, about finding them with one eye closed in the dark and the other eye not
seeing very well. And how my veins showed off by leaking. And how she joked
that most people swear they have no veins. We laughed because he’s one of them.
And he joked about these damn nighties, despite all their progress all these
decades, no one’s come up with a nightie that does the job and leaves you with some dignity. Good point.
A new nurse comes in with the papers to sign
me out. There’s been a shift change. I didn’t get to say goodbye to my nurse
but when my new nurse walks in, as I’m talking to John, the first thing she
says to me is, “Well you’re the
happiest person I’ve seen all day, that just makes my day!” Which of course makes
my day. She’s the one who explains to
me that they call what I had a “Lap Appy.” Which I think sounds like a French
restaurant.
It’s been fun but I’m so happy to be leaving. I
do the math: 8:30, get home 9:30, be eating some dinner by 10 p.m., I can do
that, easy. It’ll be late but I don’t think I’ll be falling asleep early
tonight, too many experiences to absorb. The testicle story. The big-ass scars.
The Jesus, Mary and whoever else. My vain veins. Feeling like I’d peed. The
tea. The meals. The passing flatus (in the release form’s words). And not once feeling
weird for not having a penis and testicles. I’ve had fun. Despite a hell of a
beginning, I now regret having only one appendix to give.
My late Sunday dinner ended up being just soy
chicken nuggets from the freezer, but they were exquisite. And I’m happy to report that, a week later, I have
planted the remaining potatoes, 314 in neighbouring farm space, for a grand
total of 500 potato plants. It’ll be a good year.
Appendix
I return several weeks later for my post-surgery
check-up with the surgeon. I hardly recognize him, with his face showing. He asks
me questions, pokes my scars, they feel fine. It’s a short appointment, he
moves at a fast pace, but before he leaves I can’t resist asking him if he took
my appendix out my bellybutton. He answers Yes,
with a look on his face that suggests Of
course. Then, unexpectedly, he continues:
“You see you get it such and such way to come
out through the bellybutton, then you take a little bag, like a Glad bag, grab
it, and wiggle it, wiggle it out and into the bag.”
I find this funny. “Do you find that gross?” I
ask.
“Oh no, I love
my job!” he says. “And anyway, I’ve done much grosser things…”
On that note, we shake hands and part,
laughing.