Need a Blood Donor? Sorry, Wish I could Help...

The other day I was at work when an e-mail came through announcing that they were urgently seeking volunteers to donate blood. When you work around the military - especially here in San Antonio where we have both Wilford Hall Medical Center and Brooke Army Medical Center - these requests are fairly common.

I'm sure that I had given blood before I joined the military so many years ago, but I distinctly remember in basic training having them load us all up into a bus and taking us to some blood donation center so we could all learn the importance of donating blood, and for those that hadn't done so, doing it for the first time. And of course, for the first few years in the military, I would do my duty and donate (gladly, by the way) on a routine basis.

That all changed when they invented Mad Cow Disease.

My first overseas assignment was to England, and my next overseas assignment was to Italy. I guess based on the years that I was in both places, at the particular times I was there (All during the 1980's), I was branded (pun intended) as non-eligible to donate.

So the other day when I got this e-mail, I got the name of the point of contact and fired off an e-mail back to her. I gave the specific dates of my time overseas and asked that surely, after 20 years, I was safe to begin donating blood again, right?

The response I got back was a polite, "thanks for trying", but unfortunately, I still can't donate. Oh, and that includes my wife and kids who were with me in Italy.

Don't you think by now, after this much time, someone would come up with a test that could scan my blood and verify that I don't have Mad Cow? More importantly, should I be worried so long after the fact that I might just in fact be developing Mad Cow. I don't know the exact symptoms, but I have put on a little weight this year.

Moo.

My Exciting Procedure...

You will thank me later when I tell you up front that I have no pictures to post.

I went to the clinic today to participate in a training session although, in all honesty, I thought I was going in for an appointment with a qualified physician to have a very minor, mostly cosmetic, "procedure" done. Turns out, my doctor mostly sat by and mocked me and complained about the clinic, while a kid still in medical school fired-up a tool he had never seen before, so we could both learn what burnt human skin smells like.

Good times.

I know, many of you might have been outraged by such a situation, but I'm a person who rarely engages in medical procedures, and the ones I do participate in are usually very minor, so why not let someone get a little practice? In fact, when I had my vasectomy years ago, the doctor showed his Med Tech how to perform the procedure on the first side, then handed him the pliers and the soldiering iron and let him do the other side. It has been over twenty years and Maury Povich hasn't called, so it must have worked out, right?

So about six months ago, I was looking under my arm, not for anything in particular, but I found this tiny little growth of skin. Like a mole or something. Then, curious, thinking maybe it was just a normal body part I had never noticed before, I looked under the other arm, and sure enough, there was one there too. WTH? Turns out, these little babies were what the medical professionals call skin tags. Turns out, lots of people have them, especially if you are over your maximum allowable weight. I am.

So really, nobody, myself included, looks at my armpits all that often and I just sort of let the little skin tags go. And then a few months later, I was looking inside my thighs. Yea. One skin tag on each side. WTF?

At this point, my wife suggested that she take a strand of her hair and tie off each of the offending tags with some sort of special fishing knot, and then the tags would simply fall off. As entertaining as that sounded, I suggested I would prefer someone with a little more medical training. She also suggested cutting the tags off with a knife, but again, I figured I'd like to be treated in more of a sterile environment.

Long story short, I consulted my doctor because I wanted to be sure that these little things weren't lethal in any way. He set me up with an appointment to have a quick procedure to have them removed. What he didn't tell me is that this would be a complete circus environment.

When I got in the office, there were two doctors, a technician, and a young man who looked younger than both of my kids. I sat down and as one of the doctors rattled through a form explaining to me all the possible things that could go wrong, I noticed that the method for performing the skin tag removal was still not circled. They were going to freeze it off, cut it off or burn it off, but even though I was signing a release form, they still hadn't figured out which method.

I know it isn't brain surgery, but I kinda thought someone would have at least had a game plan. As the one doctor was going over the release, my doctor was upset that the room we were in did not have the supplies we needed. For example, he wanted the burning tool. It is like a hot blade that just sears the skin tag off and leaves the wound cauterized so it won't bleed. Unfortunately, they didn't have one. Next, he was not comfortable that the scissors in the treatment room were sharp enough to get a good cut.

Now keep in mind, I'm hearing his complaints about the lack of proper surgical tools while the other doctor is reading a list of things that could go wrong.

The technician was dispatched to go found either a sharp pair of scissors or a cauterizing device and my doctor begins to tell his colleague how bad the clinic is outfitted. I strike up a conversation with the young medical trainee asking him exactly how much medical training he has had. The kid seemed pretty sharp to me and he was not in any way intimidated by the lack of proper tools; all he knew was he was going to be cutting on someone today. As comforting as that was, the conversation between the two real doctors continued on in the background.

In all honesty, in addition to feeling a little nervous, I started believing that Howie Mandel would show up in surgical scrubs at any moment and tell me that this is "Howie Do It." There was no way on earth that this little circus was real.

Instead, when the door opened, it was a different technician who rolled in the fancy cauterizing machine. My doctor immediately asked him how he got it and he just smiled and said, "Don't ask, but I need to get it back in 15 minutes or they will know it is missing." For some reason, I joined the doctors in giggling like 12 year-olds. The guy doing my procedure giggled like a 22 year old.

I am not exaggerating when I tell you that the young medical student and the doctor training him had never set eyes on the equipment about to be used, prior to this event. My doctor had only used one similar to it, and suggested they "turn it up about half-way, and see if that works." The two began turning knobs and touching probes and such.

I again looked around for Mr. Mandel or at least his camera.

I sat on a chair with my shirt off and held my right arm up exposing the small skin tag, and honestly, for a moment I thought to myself, it really doesn't look bad enough to warrant removal. Just then the doctor asked me if I was ready. I in turn asked the young med student if he was ready!

Holding the offending tag with tweezers, the young guy pulled it away from the body and began the first of what would prove to be a series of painful and useless swipes at it. I have to admit I flinched on the first pass, simply because I had no idea what to expect. This went on for at least twenty seconds when finally, my doctor intervened and suggested that first, he needed to bump up the power, and second, he needed to just do it quickly. To that, I said, Amen Brother!

Now when they started, I noticed the setting was on the number 5. When they decided to crank it up, it was moved to 39.5! Holy crap! When the instrument was next placed near my skin tag and the heat was administered, it was a quick jolt of pain but done in just a second, and my tag was next seen on a tray, smoldering. Yea, burnt flesh just an hour after lunch. Good times.

I'll leave the rest to your imagination, but believe it or not, not a drop of blood and not once did I faint (which is pretty standard for me in medical situations), and no, Howie Mandel never did show up.

Oh, and in spite of the circus-like atmosphere I described (and it is all true), I really do like my doctor. He seems to know what is going on; he just doesn't have the tools he needs. I like his matter of fact bedside manor. When I had my first appointment with him, he told me that for San Antonio, I'm not really that fat. But he told me, if I ever go to the east coast, I'll be really obese. You gotta like a doctor that can explain things to you in such simple terms.

Looking for Big Willy...

When I arrived in San Antonio for the second time, a day or two before the big snow storm of 1985, it wasn't long before co-workers at the base would talk about "Going to see Big Willy" or making references to "Big Willy" instead of the hospital etc. Soon I would figure it out that they were referring to Wilford Hall Medical Center. But even then, I thought of the place as a "hall", a hall that was named after Mr. Wilford or as his friends called him, Big Willy.

I know this sounds ridiculous now, but in the grand scheme of things, I worked in a place named Ardisana Hall, I had been to events at Mitchell Hall and Arnold Hall, so why not yet another hall named after some guy named Big Willy Wilford?

Big Willy has been good to my family. My son was born there, my wife has been there a for a few short stays and my daughter has been in a time or two. We have seen our fair share of the emergency room there and the clinics, and I even had eye surgery there, hence my ability to see without the use of glasses. A chiropractor at Big Willy taught me how to reset my back when it feels off, and honestly, it hasn't been a problem since. So, unlike a lot of visitors, we are pretty big fans of Big Willy.

But you never really want to go there.

When our son was about 2 and a half, we were living in Italy and noticed a slight lump on his chest. We went to the pediatrician and they looked at it a measured it and took pictures of it, but the doctor assured us frantic young parents that it would be okay. He said if it grew and we were worried about it, to wait until we got back to the states and have it removed.

It did, we were, and when we got back to the San Antonio, we went to see Big Willy. In the grand scheme of things, and having known people who have been plagued with all sorts of different illnesses in their kids, even a few who have tragically lost their children, a little lump of fat on a kid's chest is nothing to get excited about.

But when it is your kid, you aren't thinking of how fortunate, how truly blessed you are; you just know that the doctor tells you to sign forms understanding the risks of any complications or infections, and that it is scary, in any hospital.

So as we waited in the big, scary hospital with a three year old who had an idea that something was happening but not really what, and as my wife and I tried to avoid thinking about what could happen so as to avoid freaking out, we took little walks around the various floors and clinics, looking for Big Willy.

I'm sure at one time in my life, I had an imagination suitable of generating characters sufficient for capturing the attention of any three-year-old, but at a time like this, the windows overlooking the rooftops and storage sheds that housed equipment and such, the things needed to run a modern facility made for quite a game of cat & mouse. We would wander along and I would quickly spin him around pointing off in the direction out the window and we were both convinced that Big Willy had just passed by and slipped in behind some air conditioner units or some other structure to hide his view of little kids. Oh yes, Big Willy did not want to be seen - that was half the fun of looking for him. My son was one of the few people ever to get an actual glimpse of Big Willy. There is some older maintenance man who will never know that his chance sighting on one of the roofs going into a storage shed has lived in our minds for all these years. We never saw Big Willy again, but for one important day, he did more for a little kid and his parents than he will ever know.

So in the end, enough time had passed and enough nerves were settled that when the surgeon called for us to turn our little boy over to the anesthesiologist, we were able to do so. And as luck would have it, the only two things that resulted were a slight scar that my son would later tell kids in school that he had earned in a knife fight, and a continual search for Big Willy over the years.

Our kids are like real live adults now, though like a lot of parents, we don't always see it. Earlier this week, my wife took my son to see Big Willy, and expecting to get a prescription for some sort of flu or cold or something normal, they instead admitted him and kept him for the remainder of the week running all sorts of tests.

All is well and he is fine now, but the escalation of emotions from concerned to upset to freaking out can happen pretty quick when the series of phone calls go from "we're at the doctor" to "they want to admit him" to "they just took him into the operating room"! I guess I won't be stopping for a coffee on my way to the hospital!

So what do you do with a 21 year old who has to stay in the hospital until they finish "observing" him? You look for Big Willy.

My wife took our son around the various places in his past - the maternity ward (though it has moved floors in 21 years) and the surgical ward where they removed that piece of fat from his chest, and a tour of the outer windows and the various hiding spots where we had looked for Big Willy. Good times.


In case you wondered, Maj Gen Wilford F. Hall died in 1962, But Big Willy is alive and well, at least for now.