By Bob Johnson
As a savvy kid, I always knew when the latest edition of Reader’s Digest had arrived in the mail because Dad would come sashaying into the kitchen and offhandedly say something like, “My, that bowl certainly has a plethora of vegetables in it.”
Reader’s Digest was the world’s most widely circulated magazine at the time, and among its numerous departments was one called, “It Pays to Increase Your Word Power,” which at some point was rebranded simply to “Word Power,” apparently a nod to readers’ ever-shortening attention spans.
While Dad loved learning new words, I, the future writer in the family, gravitated to another Reader’s Digest department: “Laughter, the Best Medicine.” It was (and is) a compendium of jokes, humorous observations and amusing anecdotes. An example: “I know a frog who thought he was 100% German. He was wrong. He’s a tad Pole.”
When Dad was done with each month’s issue, I’d glom onto it and memorize three or four jokes to share with friends at school. I was not the class clown; I did, however, come to appreciate how a sense of humor equated with popularity. And safety. The school bully left me alone because he knew I had many allies.
A different genre of humor has served me well over the course of my career in journalism, a career that has included writing more than 200 extended obituaries. It’s called gallows humor, something shared with only a small cadre of co-workers primarily as a coping mechanism. For example, when finishing an obit about a lawyer, I might quietly utter to a colleague, “Case closed.”
It’s inappropriate, hardly funny at all, but makes the writing process more bearable.
Gallows humor is also common among doctors, nurses and hospital support staff. I know this to be true because a former oncology nurse has shared countless examples with me. And I get it. As difficult as it can be to write about someone who has passed, imagine what it must be like for the front-line professionals who fought to keep someone alive… and lost.
On that happy note, let’s go back to the fall of 2023 when a bunch of lab work, an MRI and an ultrasound confirmed to an endocrinologist that my thyroid needed to be removed. This came as a surprise to me because, until a few months prior, I did not know what either an endocrinologist or a thyroid was.
The reason for the surgery: there was a possibility that the glob (that’s the scientific term) affixed to the thyroid (a butterfly-shaped gland in the neck) could be cancerous.
Ah, there it was – the C-word.
“But don’t worry,” the endocrinologist told me. “Thyroid C-word is a slow-moving C-word.”
Don’t worry.
About the C-word.
Perhaps when the C-word is hanging out in someone else’s body it’s nothing to worry about, but when it has decided to show up in one’s own body, worry becomes… something. And unceasing.
Perhaps I should mention at this point that we were still living in Las Vegas at the time of the diagnosis. It’s a city that has seen the population overrun the medical infrastructure – too many patients, not enough doctors. It was a good thing I had a slow-moving C-word because the time between appointments could be months.
Perhaps I also should mention that I did not like my endocrinologist at all. Because of the medical situation in Vegas, it’s a “take who you can get” scenario when it comes to doctors and especially specialists. The one I ended up with seemed as if he were tutoring his medical assistant rather than counseling me during appointments.
Fortunately, he was not a surgeon, and I was referred (internal medical term: outsourced) to a different doctor who would perform the actual procedure (medical term: cutting).
Six months passed between the first time I saw the endocrinologist and the day I met the surgeon for my pre-op appointment. (Did I mention things moved slower than a desert tortoise in the world of Sin City medicine?) But from the moment he walked into the exam room, I knew I liked him better than the endocrinologist – a short bar, to be sure, but I took it as a good sign.
He said he always liked to perform an ultrasound with the patient, and in my case that meant with the patient and the patient’s loving and supportive wife. He fired up the screen, rubbed some greasy stuff on my neck and placed the transducer (medical term: transducer) in the thyroid area.
“Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?” I asked in my best “Laughter, the Best Medicine” tone.
He seemed to be taken slightly aback by the question, given that we were dealing with the C-word, but he smiled and said, “Maybe twins.”
He kept moving the transducer around and then said, “Well, it’s pretty good sized, but I’ve seen a couple bigger ones today. Honestly, it’s not that big for a guy.”
My reaction was unplanned and immediate. I looked at him and said, “Did you really just say that in front of my wife?”
At that point, the surgeon lowered the transducer and started laughing. I got the sense that it wasn’t common for a patient to interact in such a way – with gallows humor – when the C-word was involved. He seemed relieved.
I pressed on. He looked to be in his late-40s or early-50s, and I asked whether he’d had much experience with this type of surgery.
“Probably around a thousand of them,” he replied. “I’ve been working six days a week because of the shortage of doctors in the valley.”
With an ever-so-slight smile on my face I asked, “Have you ever lost anyone?”
He paused, then replied with a sly grin, “Not yet.”
When surgery day arrived and I was wheeled into the operating theater, I couldn’t see the surgeon, but he spoke up almost immediately.
“Hi, Bob,” he said. “How you doing?”
“I showed up,” I replied.
Then he said, “I just want you to know that today is not going to be the day.”
He had remembered me. Mission accomplished.
Next, he introduced me to the anesthesiologist, another voice without a body.
“Bob,” he said, “in just a minute, I’m going to ask you to pick up that mask, put it up to your face, and then breathe in deeply and breathe out deeply. Once you do that about three times, you’ll be out. Any questions?”
I couldn’t help myself.
“Just one,” I said. “What exactly am I paying you for?”
“You’re paying me to make sure you wake up.”
Doctor and anesthesiologist on my side. A patient can’t ask for more than that.
Upon arriving in the Inland Northwest, it was determined that I would need another thyroid C-word surgery. Amazingly, I (and when I say “I,” I mean my wife) had been able to find an endocrinologist here very quickly. Within a span of just two months I was seen, evaluated and went under the knife at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane.
I can’t say enough about the entire staff there, a caring and professional group of people in every position from check-in to prep to surgery to recovery.
But the real highlight came in the prep room. As I lounged on the gurney before surgery, a pastor stopped in to pray with and for us. As he stepped through the door, I spotted a shiner under his right eye.
Pastor or not, I asked, “What did you do to tick off your wife?”
Without missing a beat he replied, “I brought her the wrong drink. I got her a Coke Zero and she wanted a regular Coca-Cola.”
Two C-words. Was it a sign that The Man Upstairs wasn’t ready to deal with my “humor” just yet? Or merely proof that laughter really is the best medicine?
A recipient of more than 90 national writing awards, Bob Johnson has covered sports, wine, music, travel, business and numerous other topics over the course of his 50-year career. Now, he’s looking forward to exploring the many aspects of his family’s new home in North Idaho and the surrounding area and sharing his observations with Huckleberry Press readers.