A funny thing happened on the way to the doppler imaging

Sooooooo

For the past month or so, I've been having this pain in my leg. I'll spare you the details. They're just not that exciting.

I went to my doctor, who thought it might be arthritis in my hip. After sending me down to get my knee and hip xrayed (where, btw, the receptionist was smoking hot, thank you very much), he looked at the xray and thought that it confirmed his initial diagnosis. But, being a good Doc and not having met his billing quota yet, he wanted me to have doppler imaging of my leg, to rule out any blood clots.

So I'm like, yea, I'm down with ruling out blood clots, since, you know, they can lead to death and shit like that.

His receptionist calls the Vascular doctor and they say "run right over, we'll see him now". I drive like a mad man to the office, three towns away, since, you know, they said "get here as soon as you can". I walk in and say to the receptionist "Hi. I'm me and I'm here". She looks at me and says "Wow, you got here fast. Did you run over here or something". Ah, yea, like you said to, idiot.

Anyway, moving on...

Now, before we proceed any further, let me just say, that like any good husband and father, I went to all my wife's sonogram appointments. So I'm kind of familiar with what a sonogram/doppler imaging is. I'm just not familiar with what they do when they do it to you leg, ok? But, you know, like, what's the big deal, right?

So this cute, gum chewing tech leads me back to the exam room and says "lose the pants, hop up on the table and cover yourself from the waist dow with the sheet". So far, so good.

I'm sitting there, looking at the old ceiling tile, when she walks back in and gets to work. The first thing she does is pull the sheet off the leg to be examined and with her purple gloved hands, curls the sheet up into my boxers. So now my leg is exposed all the way from my groin to my toes. Ok, I can work with this, right? I'm a mature dude, no reason to get excited, right?

That was, until she squirted the goo all up and down my leg and started rubbing the doppler probe all over the place. And I mean ALL over the place.

Ah, hello? A little warning would have been nice. I had to immediately launch into a mental review of recent accounting policies and regulations, cataloging my sock drawer and anything else to keep my mind off the rubbing and probing going on all over my leg. I wanted to say to the tech "the last time I got rubbed like that, there was a happy ending included", but, fortunately, I refrained. I was able to make it through the exam without showing the tech my probe, which, I thought, was no small achievement.

So that was my excitement at the doctor's office last week. Et tu?

My Post Secret

“My son’s high school hockey team has made it to the State’s semi-finals. My son’s coach doesn’t like him, so he never plays him. I hope they lose.”

There is one more week of this strange, confusing and frustrating season left. On one hand, we’re all excited that the team has made it to the semi-finals, the “Frozen Four” as it is. On the other hand, our son is hardly playing and we’d just like this special kind of torture to come to an end.

On Saturday, the team was playing down in Newburg NY in a Regional play-off game. We got out early on the other team and by the end of the 2nd period, we were up 5 – 0. Our son had played 1 or 2 shifts in the first period, had four shots on goal, didn’t make any mistakes, and hadn’t seen the ice since then.

After a really long delay between the 2nd & 3rd periods, the other team came out like gang busters. They scored a couple of power play goals, we responded with a goal, so now it’s 6-2 with about 8 minutes left. The realization that there is no way to win is settling in with the other team, so they are starting to head hunt and have knocked two of our key defensive players out.

Now, as the defensive coach, who’s apparently coached for something like 30 years, wouldn’t you start to think about the fact that you’ve got another game next week? Maybe now would be a good time to rest your starters, put out the big guys (our son’s 6’ 4”, and another boy is 6’ 2”, both of whom he never plays) and just try to get to the end of the game without anybody else getting hurt?

Especially when the head coach has specifically come down to the end of the bench and told you to do this?

Oh no. Not Mr. I-used-to-coach-Cornell’s-club-team-and-nobody-can-tell-me-what-to-do defensive coach. Not only does he not send the cannon fodder players out to spell his “star” players, he shortens the bench and only sends out his top remaining four players.
Genius. I drove 5 hours to see this?

It got to the point where one of the offensive coaches came down, grabbed my son and dragged him to the other end of the bench, told him not to get any penalties and sent him out on the next shift change. So, for the last 3 minutes of the game, the biggest, strongest, defensive player we had, played offense, banged people around, kept the puck out of our zone, and the other team never got a shot on goal during the last three minutes.

We’re walking out and people are congratulating us on how well our son played. If everyone else can see it, why can’t this coach?

And now I’m at this point where I’m completely conflicted. Where I can’t be that excited about the team making it this far, because of the utter bullshit that my kid has had to go through, and continues to go through, because of this idiot of a coach.

One more week.