Plunging

We plunge.

It can be the kitchen sink or the bathroom toilets or the tub but one thing is certain with a large family: you shall plunge.

“Dad, the toilet’s plugged,” my teenagers tell me, or to my wife, “Mom, someone plugged the upstairs bathroom.” In each case, me and my wife are always volunteered for the job and the deed that is done is always done by us.

The question comes for these young, tender plants: perhaps you could plunge once in a while. You’re stronger than us, more fit, you work out and eat healthy, I’m sure you have the flick of the wrist to get just the right bubble of air down the pipes, but no: they cannot plunge. So the dirty duty falls on me and my wife. So be it.

One Brother in our Church said that his ministry in this world was to plunge, and I believe it. It could be a downer to think that one was born on this Earth for the sole purpose of plunging, but it’s entirely possible. They live in an old house with less than ideal plumbing and with lots of kids, so to plunge is ones lot in life. One could be born and called to be a doctor, or one can aspire to be a great pianist playing at Carnegie Hall or to be a physicist peering into the secrets of the sub-atomic world, or one can plunge. Who said the world is fair? I didn’t.

There’s always a certain satisfaction when everything goes down when the handle is pressed and an inverse feeling when the bowl is plugged once again. There are many trials in life, both small and big, but the swirling mass of you-know-what rates up there with locking the keys in your car on a bitterly cold day or the cat bringing yet another half-dead mole into the house and playing with it. It’s all a trial, and one that us humans run into quite a bit in our short stay on this otherwise fantastically beautiful Earth.

What shall we say, but if you have to plunge, at least plunge with joy in your heart, for life is too short for complaints about such trivialities. It could be worse. At least we have a toilet. At least we have running water. Whose to complain? But who knows: perhaps one of my kids will grow up to be a plumber, and me and my wife can hand off the blessed plunger to one of our offspring. How great would that be? You would think that all of our trials in this life would be gone.

Another Good Scan – And a PET Scan Even!

I had another good scan this week, so once again it is Christmas in August. This makes the third clear scan in a row. Let’s count: 1, 2 and 3. It’s great.

And this is not just any CT scan. This is a PET scan, which stands for Positron Emission Tomography. A PET scan is a nuclear test, where in the workup phase radioactive die is injected into your blood, and the test itself is more than just your average get a vein and then run-you-through-a-big-donut-hole type affair. No, since it’s a metabolic test, they want to set your metabolism to a calm state. Practically speaking, this means: 1) They place you in a room the size of a closet and, for good measure and maximum comfort, they throw a hot blanket over you 2) they turn the lights off and 3) they shut the door. Yes, they do. You sit in the room like a mushroom for an hour: no cell phone, no music, no light. Nothing.

Such is the life of a cancer patient.

After an hour, they come in and take you out, then run you through the glorified CT machine. This machine has not a one donut hole but a two donut hole machine, and you don’t go through it for three or five minutes but – yes – for about 17 minutes. In, out, hold your breath, in, out, exhale and do it all again. The worse part of it all is that your hands are above your head the whole time and you have to be perfectly still – 17 minutes of perfect stillness. This may not sound like a big deal, but after about 10 minutes both arms have fallen asleep and by the end of the test, they’re numb to the touch, and tingling with a thousand screams.

And, of course, the nose has to itch within the first three minutes of the test. It has to be that way. I told the technician that they should mount an automatic voice controlled nose scratcher on the bridge of the patient’s nose, and he laughed. I’m sure, however, that he himself has never been run through the two concentric donut holes, so severe nose annoyance is only theory to him.

But we got through it, and after that there’s a two day wait for the results. It has to be two days; just how it is. Of course, you wonder if you will light up like a Christmas tree the whole time, since cancer shows up as bright blue on the test against the background of your organs. It turns out that nothing lit up. No Christmas in this sense. So it’s really good news.

After we got the news, Angela said she was holding her breath before the doctor entered the room, and I can understand that. He later said it would always be like that. I had more rest and peace about the whole affair this time around. I came to the thought that whatever was best for me, God would serve up, so there was nothing to be afraid of. Still. The living enterprise is good, and if I got a form from God indicating my desires, I would check the Continue Living on Earth box. Another four months. What could be better?

Eating Regimes when the Kids Get Older

In the old days when our children were small, life was simpler. Simpler meaning that if you set food before them, they would generally eat it. If there was spaghetti for supper, there was no choice: spaghetti it was (well, some would whine and Mom would make eggs for them, but that’s another story, she being very good to them.) They were, as it were, our food hostages, and we had complete control.

Not so with teenagers. No, these teenagers have their special diets, food regimes and lifestyle changes, so spaghetti – the old holdover that everyone liked – is now considered carb hell and the source of all ailments known to the human body. Give me liberty or give me death, but don’t give me carbs – that’s what we now contend with!

Now, I’m not against diets\eating regimes and think that eating healthy is a great thing, but then again I do wish that some of these diets\eating regimes did not feature the most expensive foods as their star attraction. Fruits and vegetables are great, but they cost money, and meat is out of this world; I heard a story of robbers who dug a tunnel underneath the bank and successfully came up at the meat department of the local grocery store, and I believe it.

Recently one of my children, as dear as he could be, informed me that – hey – food is really expensive! He’s living on his own now and as such has to visit the grocery store to spend – not my money – but his. It is a revelation that when you are spending your own money, suddenly things like food take a chunk of flesh off your own hide, and, yes, that’s how it feels when you’re passing the greenbacks across the checkout line at Wegmans or Aldis. Suddenly it’s all too real, and perhaps one hearkens back to distant memories of Father and Mother saying something annoying about not wasting food. It can happen.

So here’s to good health and to financial solvency: may they coexist together like two cute furry animals cuddling on a cold winter night. May the food truck backup many times to your house and the bill collector pass by without a glance, and may we all live happily ever after: healthy and solvent – but then again perhaps we can’t have everything, and somewhere we might have to compromise.