Uncle Don Wants You!

I am not often shy about sharing personal details here, (my post about urine collection for example), and today is no different.  I was overjoyed to learn earlier this week that President Trump is finally openly weaponizing space by forming an official United States Space Force.  As such, I have posted here a copy of the application letter I will soon be sending off to the Space Force Academy. Fingers crossed I get in.

Dear President Trump,
Thank you for finally announcing what I suspected long ago. I am pleased to know I  was correct in surmising that with last year's mysterious "Covfefe" Tweet, which obviously (at least to a genius like me) stands for Covert Outer-space Voyages For Exterminating Foreign Extra-terrestrials, you were signaling the formation of a U.S. Space Force.  My astute power of deductive reasoning is but one quality that makes me an excellent candidate for entry into Space Force Academy.  I assume to keep your standards high, you will require enlistment applicants to be straight white males.  Now, I don't want to rock the spaceboat before even being accepted, but may I make a suggestion? I would recruit at least a few women.  After all, us Space Rangers will need something to look at and someone to keep us company on our long cross-galaxy flights. 

As one of your loyal Space Rangers, I look forward to MSGA. Great like when we blasted chimps and brave dudes into orbit atop giant gas cans. We'll show North Korea who the real Rocket Man is. Great like before we shared the International Space Station with other countries.  We don't need to collaborate, we're America, dammit! 

For so many reasons, I am ready to head into space. I am eager to gain visual confirmation of the majestic turtle upon whose shell our flat Earth travels through time and space.  Armed with proof, I can stick it in the eye of my ninny friends that think the Earth is round. I can't wait to smash Sanctuary Space ports, though I understand not all of us can be warriors. Some of us Space Rangers will work in support roles. If asked, I will serve in any capacity.  Perhaps I can help build the Wall around the moon to prevent those dirty Martians, AKA Space Mexicans, from invading.  I believe we have done enough "sciencing" here on Earth, therefore it is my sincere hope that Space Force's missions will consist of only protectionism, galactic war, conquering planets, and plundering said planets and any other meteors, comets, moons and such, of their precious natural resources in the name of the good ol' U.S.of A.  I would absolutely volunteer to run Exxon's drilling operations in the asteroid belt or the "clean" helium mining on Neptune.  However, as an upstanding,  "family values" applicant of profound moral standing and big Mike Pence fan, I am afraid I must refuse any missions to explore Uranus.  Of course, if you keep hemorrhaging staff at your current unprecedented pace, I may be in line to be Chief of Staff by the time I graduate from the Academy.

Anyhoo, as I know you make all your decisions only after careful consideration and thoughtful rumination, I humbly submit this application. I'm sure, like all things provided for your perusal, you will thoroughly read this missive.  If not, let me put it easier terms: I want to help @failingspace. #SAD #MSGA #SPACEFORCE

That Ain't Lemonade.

There are worse things you can hear your doctor say than, "Get him the jug." Things like "Scalpel" and "Grab the defibrillator!" come to mind.  But jug talk isn't super when the doctor is your kidney doc and the container in question is a big, honkin' 3-liter bottle in which she expects you to collect your urine.  Yep, for a 24 hour period starting yesterday morning, I had to forsake toilets in favor of a bucket with a screw-on lid.  I'm all for saving on my water bill, but if I was truly concerned I would simply pee  in the sink on a tree outside.  Since I'm neither Howard Hughes nor a passenger on some sort of non-stop cross country road trip, I  haven't often thought about urinating in a jug. That is, until I was diagnosed with kidney stones.

A couple weeks ago, I woke in the middle of the night to some pain in my left upper back and side.  Thinking I had tweaked something by turning awkwardly in my sleep, I stood up to stretch.  Instead of resolving, the pain worsened.  I tried to remember when I had been kicked in the side by a horse. Or when I had gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson.  It was certainly more than a sore back.  I suddenly felt like Mola Ram, the evil high priest from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, was reaching through my ribs, not to rip my heart out, but to give my innards a nasty squeeze.  Uncertain of the cause of the pain, my anxiety slipped into overdrive. I didn't know what it was, but I knew it wasn't good.  I shook Amanda awake to tell her I was driving to the emergency room. My sweet wife, not being keen on indulging my paranoia at 4am, tried to calm me down. Too late. I was already a sneaker-clad Igor shuffling towards the car.

Arrival at the hospital began to ease my worry.  Not because the pain relented, but because the first four staffers I encountered all said, "Yep, sounds like a kidney stone."  Had there been a coat check girl, I'm sure even she would have concurred. Now convinced it only felt like I was dying, I tried to settle into my ER bed to wait for the doc to examine me. Of course, because they were convinced it was only a kidney stone, I slipped down the priority ladder.  Don't get me wrong, I was happy to be healthy enough to not warrant immediate action.  Yet the pain made it impossible to wait patiently.  I could not get comfortable.  Standing, sitting, lying down, nothing brought the slightest bit of relief.  Meditation failed to ease the pain. As did any breathing exercises.  Can we page the Lamaze coach?

Let me interrupt my story to commend every mom ever.  The pain of a kidney stone is said to rival that of labor and contractions.  If that is what labor feels like, I salute you. You are all even more badass than I thought.  I was in pain for five hours. I can't imagine feeling like that for as long as some labors last.

Too distracted by the discomfort in my side to realize there was a tv remote control attached to my bed, I was stuck trying to lose myself in whatever was on the television. Unfortunately, the last 45 minutes of The Notebook just added to my misery.

The nurses were great. Sympathetic to both my pain level and my wait time, they changed the channel, hooked up an IV to ward off any dehydration, and got some pain meds on board.  I learned from them "Hurts like hell" appears nowhere on their Scale of 1-10 Emoji Pain Rating system.  With meds knocking the pain down from a 9 to a frowny-faced 6, I was whisked off to CT scan. 

But not before the most frightening moment off the night. I had to remove my pants for the CT scan.  The doctor or nurse casually set them on top of the  biohazard can. The Biohazard can! Sure, the lid was closed, but as Seinfeld taught an entire generation, adjacent to refuse is refuse.  It's bad enough I am in the  ER immersed in a viral cloud in the middle of flu season. I have already dropped my phone on the Petri dish of a  floor a couple times. (I'm sure watching me painfully maneuver to pick it up, straining against the confines of the IV and an ill fitting hospital gown, would have been good for some laughs.) Now my pants are separated by only a few millimeters of plastic  from whatever demon particles are inside the biohazard bucket?  Germophobe alarm activated!  I wasn't sure if my nausea was now from the kidney stone or the fact that my pants were, as Ruxin would say, forever unclean.  When Amanda walked in to the room after getting Grace to school, she laughed and asked if I was going to burn those pants.  Believe me, I considered it.

The CT scan confirmed a stone had passed and that welcome news combined with a dose of morphine (the pain had bounced back to an angry-emoji 9 or 10) took the discomfort level to a chill zero. Fortunately, even though I do have some more stones, I have been pain free since. However, bloodwork revealed some of my kidney numbers were wonky, leading to my date with the nephrologist (spooky) and the 3-liter urine jug.

Peeing into a jug may seem like a simple proposition, but there are more than a few logistical gymnastics involved.  First, is the When and the Where. Carrying a jug o' warm pee around for an entire Earth rotation isn't simple. It would be a little awkward carrying a jug, or a large bag hiding the jug, in and out of the pubic restroom at work.  (Actually, as awkward as it might be, it would be about the seventeenth weirdest thing to occur in our store's bathrooms, but still.)  Then I learned the collected specimen has to be kept cold, either in the fridge or on ice.  Well, I suppose workplace etiquette dictates  I can't very well toss my jug of dragon drainings next to Susie's brown bag lunch in the community fridge in the break room. That means I have to collect on my day off. That means on my day off I can't stray too far from home and my own fridge.  The key phrase of that sentence, of course, is MY OWN FRIDGE. Have I mentioned I'm a germophobe? Talk about cross-contamination. I don't like placing the plastic-wrapped raw meat next to the veggies.  Now, I have this jug stashed next to the juice.  Grace, ever clever at age nine, feigned disgust, but I know her Captain Underpants-reading self got a kick out of it. Especially when I reminded her jug was NOT filled with lemonade.

Having established the When and the Where, figuring out the How wasn't the easiest of tasks.  The opening of the jug is a wee (see what I did there?) bit narrower than a toilet.  Then there is the order of tasks. Flip the toilet lid. Unscrew the jug lid. Set the jug down. Unzip. Pick the jug back up.  Actually pee. Then reverse the steps. I'm by no means claiming to be wrestling an anaconda down there, but juggling all this with only two hands is challenging.  Especially twelve hours in, when the jug is starting to gain some weight. The last thing I want to do is pee all over my hands. (Who am I, Moises Alou?) Actually, the last thing I want to do is drop/spill the jug so I have to repeat this entire process again.

Fortunately, the 24 hours passed without incident.  No one in my household mistook my jug for the bottle of Minute Maid.  There were no runs, drips, or errors. I even remembered to use the jug in the middle of the night.  The only hiccup was at the lab where I had to give one more  sample (the cup was a breeze after hoisting a full jug for a day) and for a few tense minutes when the lab tech thought I had been given the wrong container making my nearly 3-liter sample invalid.  Luckily, all was well, and I didn't leave the lab PISSED off.