Just finished writing a history and physical of a patient that took way too long, then worked on a presentation about pelvic pain that didn’t take nearly long enough. After all that you’d think, “What drivel does he have left?” (and you’re within your rights to ask). Let me just say, “You’re about to find out exactly what drivel I have left!”
I flew back from an awesome trip to North Carolina that included:
- Being sick (with what I can only figure was swine flu)
- 90 degree weather (or as I like to call it, The Weather Wisconsin Forgot)
- Great food (even the delightfully disturbing vinegar based NC barbeque)
- An awful housing market (where $180,000 will buy you three small rooms and more Formica countertops than you know what to do with)
- Good times with some friends (new and old)
- Found an apartment to protect me from the above weather during my first year of residency
- An unfathomable lapse in memory (which led to a lack of reading material on the plane to NC)
Needless to say, the trip was memorable for several reasons. However, my lack of reading material was one of the most fantastic. Fantastic? How could it be fantastic? Allow me to explain… When I left William Osler: A Life in Medicine in the trunk of my friend’s car, I had no idea that on the way home I’d stumble across an 
equally enlightening and erudite book. Yep… you guessed it… I picked up The Maxims of Manhood: 100 Rules Every Real Man Must Live By. I'm not sure if it was the faux leather or the faux duct tape that first caught my eye, but needless to say that after 400 pages of A Life in Medicine (a book equivalent to mental lasagna… meaty, cheesy, lots of layers, and especially delicious) I was pleased to drizzle a little mental maple syrup (you know… sugary, thicker than water… but only water, and goes down smoothly) on top of said lasagna.
I liked the book enough to read it in two days. I laughed out-loud at some points and audibly disagreed with others. After a cursory read, I decided to find out how many of the points I had (denoted by an H), don’t have (denoted by a D), and the ones I need (denoted by an N). The breakdown was H – 81% (stuff I solidly have either by effort or default), D – 13% (stuff I don’t have or need usually involving alcohol), and N - 6% (stuff I was surprised to find I lacked).
I was proud to “H” the truly manly stuff like #9 Celebrate Birthdays Like You Celebrate Tuesdays, #27 Always Hold the Door For Women, #75 A Buddy’s Fight is Your Fight, and #98 Never Wheel Around Your Briefcase (a huge pet peeve of mine). I felt justified by H’s I’ve had all along, like #10 Never Take Sides Against the Family, #40 Properly Order a Steak, or #49 No Fake and Bakes. Littered along this trail of self-affirmation I found gems like #4 Never Say Blossom:
In a single day you could run a marathon, slay a wild boar, and uproot a tree
with your bare hands. If, at the end of that day, you say to your wife,
“Sugarplums, out little boy is really starting to blossom,” you have just
knee-capped an entire day of virility.
Or #97 It’s Only A Flesh Wound
Obviously there’s a time and place for admitting pain. Simple enough. But even then sometimes the true heroes—the ones who really matter—will inspire. Every guy knows these role models. For me, it’s two grandfathers who first fought Hitler, then fought cancer. In one particularly rocky stretch of treatment, a nurse asked Grandpa to describe, on a scale from 1 to 10, the intensity of pain. The man was in agony. Eighty years old—recipient of multiple Purple Hearts—and now he couldn’t breathe, laugh, speak or twitch a muscle without lightning bolts of pain. He looked at the nurse and calmly said, “Four.”
Not only were they funny, but it made me think of my own life. I remembered similar “heroes” or experiences where I’d tried to be heroic. Like when Greg and I used to work construction, and we
were hurrying to strip a foundation on the morning of the Forth of July. We couldn’t let the forms sit on the foundation until after the holiday, but every single one of us had plans that we were hurrying to get to. We kept going faster, and faster and faster, until we were all running from the hole to the trailer. We’d run to the hole and as a 2-person-team (one pulling from the top and pushing from the bottom), we’d yank the panels out of the hole, catch them in mid-air and carry them to the trailer. One particular time one of the panels I was pulling wasn’t standing straight up (in fact it was aimed right at me). With my partner’s push of the panel and my pull from the top, I basically helped push myself off an 8 foot wall. I fell onto the rocks below and the 100 pound form landed on me. Like a real man of 15, I sat up and yelled swear words that are still hanging over Draper somewhere. I fought back the tears and was surprised by a lack of salty discharge from my eyes. I bit my lip and stood up to go back to work…. Cooler heads told me to slow down and asked me if I was ok. They told me to take a breather… They laughed that I even wanted to work. One of my white-trashiest idols of all time said, “you’re the toughest little kid I know.” The only person whose opinion truly counted (my brother) walked coolly over to me, and in his best impersonation of my dad, coldly said, “You’re such a wuss…” And he meant it!... If only I’d found this book sooner…
