Once upon a time, some cells decided to clump together and create a mass of tissue called a pilonidal cyst right by my tailbone. Worried, I had it checked out and was told it’s non-cancerous; if it doesn’t hurt, I can leave it alone as it’d be a cosmetic surgery. No biggy, leave it, I decided…

Few months later, it’s winter – I head to the slopes with my best friend to go snowboarding. I finally worked up the courage to jump off the ramp and do a 180 degree turn. SCORE! A couple more goes, managed to land most of these. What the hell, try for a 360… I definitely screwed up more of those landings, but nothing too painful. It was a long day and we were getting tired, but what the hell, lets get one more run in. I screwed up the landing bad, and fell on my back, right square on the cyst and… popped it like a zit. It didn’t hurt as bad as my entire back/hip was hurting from that landing. I got up, made it down, and felt my back – it was wet. Confused, I went to the bathroom and checked – I was bleeding, and found out I had flattened this cyst. Meh, pain wasn’t so bad, I was able to just clean up the blood, cover it up with some paper towel and went home.

A couple days later, it’s still bleeding, and I’m able to pull some hair out of it. WTF, right? Off to Urgent Care I went, only to find out… it’s starting to gangrene, and they gotta cut it out! Allrighty then, cut it out… and so they carved a crater right on top of my tailbone. No, it wasn’t closed up – it was left as a bloody crater, gauze pads stuffed in it and replaced twice daily. Kathy used to peel off the gauze layer by layer, pouring (I think distilled) water to help loosen it from the blood clot which made it stuck together. That’s how the gauze pads were changed daily…

Fun fact – I never had an interpreter. I had Kathy, who is not fluent in ASL, mangles signs in SEE/PSE, doesn’t understand what actual interpreting entails, and is in a position of power/control. Even though I was an adult… She would take control of talking to the doctor, make me wait until they were done talking, then dumb down a summary of what was said. Very common amongst d/Deaf of hearing parents, unfortunately.

Fast forward to my follow-up meeting with the doctor to check on how my wound is healing. I’m in the patient room with Kathy, waiting… Doc comes in, says something to Kathy, who tells me to drop my pants so he can check the wound, and so I did… Without warning, he grabbed the gauze pads and ripped it out. You know what they say about band-aid removal – best to rip it off quick, right? Well, this time it’s gauze pad with dried blood clotted to the inside of me… not my skin. I screamed, in a world of pain – it felt like my insides were being ripped out, and I reacted defensively, swung around and had my fist balled up and headed to his head. Luckily for the doctor, Kathy was next to me and grabbed my arm right before I punched him. He fell backwards, got up and ran out of the room. Not one warning, not any instruction of what he was going to do. Nurses and Kathy had always carefully, slowly peeled off layers by layers of gauze pads, which was a little bit painful but tolerable. What this doctor did was just awful – when I think back to this, I wonder what the hell was this idiot thinking? Of all my appointments/surgeries with doctors, they have always told me what they were going to do before they did anything to me – not this idiot. After what seemed like forever, a different doctor entered my room and “inspected” my wound from a distance, afraid to get near to me. Kathy wouldn’t take the time to interpret what I was saying, because I was being “rude,” and took over the conversation with the doctor. My wound was healing fine, and there would be no need for follow up appointments. The doctor hurt me like holy hell, and even today I shudder at that pain, yet he didn’t have to apologize, and I wasn’t allowed to make a complaint, thanks to Kathy.

Today, I say I have two assholes… One functional and one nonfunctional (unless being a lint trap is a function?). In other words, I have an extended ass crack – I don’t think it qualifies me to be a plumber, though…