A doctor tells his patient: "I've got good news, and I've got bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"
"The bad news," answers the patient.
"Okay," the doctor begins, "your son is dead, your daughter's in a coma, your wife has run away with your best friend, your dog got run over by a car, and you have an incurable rare disease."
"Holy mackerel," the patient said, only he didn't say 'mackerel.' "What's the GOOD news?"
"The good news is that there's no more bad news."
I tell you that old joke to set up the exciting conclusion of the sad adventure of me hurting my back. A story, I might add, that attracted almost no readers. But don't feel sorry for me, send money instead. Anyway...
The bad news is that my Dad either still thought I was making fun of the way he walked or he got tired of watching me hobble around the house like an invalid, because he interrupted his baseball-watching just long enough to asked me what I was going to do about my back.
"Well," I told him, "my wife wants to give me a muscle relaxant, but I don't take pills."
"I didn't ask you what you weren't going to do. I asked you what you were going to do."
I had no answer for him. I avoid taking prescription drugs if at all possible, the doctor's offices were closed, and I wasn't going to go the hospital's emergency room just for a slip disc or whatever it was. All I had was a list of things I wasn't going to do. And, by the way, I'm omitting all the usual clicks, whats, and other distractions. I don't think you want to be here all night.
My Dad, however, wasn't really interested in what I was going to do. He was more interested in telling me what to do, and that was just his way of leading up to it.
"What you need to do is take the pressure off your back," he told me.
"Dad, how can I do that? It hurts when I sit, it hurts when I stand, and it hurts when I lay down."
"Get two bricks," he told me. "Put them at the end of your bed, so that it lifts the box spring. That way, when you sleep, your spine will stretch into place."
I thought about that.
I remember watching an episode of Wings, where the Hackett brothers bought some gravity boots so that they were able to hang upside down like Richard Gere in American Gigolo, but I don't remember any of them saying it was good for a bad back.
Then I remembered the last Batman movie with Christian Bale. That is to say, I slept through most of it, but I remembered seeing the part where Batman was hung by upside down by his feet after he had his back broken by Bane.
Hmmm... it cured Batman's back, Joe Hackett married Helen, and the American gigolo sure was catnip to the ladies. Maybe there was something to my Dad's advice after all.
Of course, I'm just being facetious. I don't based my medical treatment by what I see on TV or in the movies. That would be silly. But...
...in a way it did make sense. And...
...what harm would it do?
So I followed my Dad's advise. I got two bricks, placed them at the foot of my bed so that the box spring lifted up about four inches, and when I slept, it was at an angle, with my feet higher than my head.
I felt like a dork.
My wife even went to go sleep in another room, because she didn't care for the idea of sleeping at a slant. The idea of all her blood rushing to her brain made her cranky and unsympathetic.
"It's bad enough I have to listen to your snoring," she told me.
Did it work?
Well, when I woke up after the first night, the lower part of my back still hurt... but... the rest of my back didn't stiffen up the way it usually does after a good night's sleep. The reason my back stiffens up is because I've spent a lifetime sleeping on my side, because my sleep apnea isn't as severe that way. My body's gotten used to it, and my skeleton and muscles have developed to accommodate that, but when I got my CPAP machine to help with the snoring you just heard my wife complain about, I had to learn to sleep flat on my back or my pig-snout of a nose-mask would shift and air would leak out. Well, like my wife sleeping on a slanted bed, my back just doesn't care for it, and, as a way of registering a complaint, it stiffens up painfully.
Only not after the first night on my new bed. The next morning, my back was a little better. I could actually bend over to tie my shoes without crying. The morning after that, still better.
I tell everybody who will listen that I was healed on the sixth day, and on the seventh I rested by inviting my wife back into our bed. Nobody buys my story.
My Dad continues to ask me, "How's your back?" Even though he knows it worked. He just likes hearing me tell him...
"It's better, Dad."
It's his way of reminding me I shouldn't underestimate him.
Yeah, I guess he still can teach me a thing or two, although I admit that grudgingly. It must be a father-son thing, my not really wanting to give him full credit for curing my back. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't.
Maybe he saw American Gigolo, too.
A man wakes up in the hospital. Before he can panic, the doctor tells him: "I've got some good news, and I've got some bad news. What do you want to hear first?"
"Well, the bad news first."
"You were in a terrible car accident. Your legs were injured so badly that we had to amputate both of them."
"That's terrible! What's the good news?"
"The guy in the next room made a very good offer for your shoes."
Raising My Father
RaisingMyFather.blogspot.com
jimduchene.blogspot.com Fifty Shades of Funny
@JimDuchene
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