I Slept With Tiger Woods!

That there is one big honker of a tumor. It's bigger than an egg. It is attached to a patient from our free clinic. It's been bugging Dr. P.A. and me for ever; that thang has got to go. We've been poking and prodding it for months, tried needle aspiration under local which is about all we can offer at our shelter/clinic. Naturally the patient doesn't have a pot piss in, he's totally uninsured and scared to go to County because they'll likely just hack the entire limb off.

He could be mistaken for a CEO if you spotted him from across the street, but when you get a little closer you can see that the overcoat is little tattered and he smells like bung-choda. He always waits his turn very patiently, reads books about origami, and has a list of well thought out questions regarding treatment options. We're very curious about his past, but we don't generally ask too many questions at our little clinic where all you need for treatment is a signature on a consent form, and it doesn't even have to be your signature. We've had charts for Elvis, Jesus, Osama bin Laden and the Lone Ranger.

Favors were called in, and an MRI was obtained and pathology services secured. Based on the MRI it was a solid well encapsulated mass, which means it should pop out easier than boobies from a big girl's blouse, unless there is extensive investment of tendons or nerves, in which case it could take a little work.
It's difficult to set up a procedure when your patient doesn't have a phone number or a reliable address, but yesterday after much anticipation, the big day finally came. We had to do it in the procedure room in the office because no self respecting hospital or surgery center is going to donate anything to anyone.

Block, prep, drape, exsanguinate, apply tourniquet, cut and SQUIRT right onto my new school marm specs. BLOOD FOUNTAIN. This was not supposed to happen, it was not supposed to be vascular. We checked for this, and you asshole that's sniffing and saying we should have had a venous Doppler, yes you are correct, but you do it better for free. First time I ever saw a pumper with a tourniquet on, I would have been less surprised to find and ectopic pregnancy or a creepy alien. This presented a problem in that we can't have that much bleeding in an office procedure, it's against the rules, and we were flat running out of sterile gauze. It's also bad when it's under local because that means the patient is fully alert on the other side of the drape and you can't swear or even depart from a monotone. The plume of smoke produced by the cautery, the mounting pile of bloody gauze and the calls for ties, ties and more ties might have been a hint that something was amiss, but he just reclined and reviewed his origami manual. For all the ado, we ended up with a large (securely closed, hemostats achieved) incision and a 4mm punch biopsy for path. Damn. More frustrating that trying to get Mr. Bunker to put his socks in the hamper.

And yes I'm positive I slept with Tiger Woods. It was a few years back, but I'm sure it was him. Or I guess it really could have been David Letterman, hard to tell them apart. I'll just wait to see which bunch is getting the better payout and jump on the pile right after my tearful interview with TMZ.