You might get to keep the knee

"You might get to keep the knee." the doctor said. "They just won't know until they start to amputate. One thing is for certain. If we don't remove your leg within the next few hours, you're going to die, and it will be a slow and painful death."

Fucking doctors! I was so mad I could have chewed 16p nails and spat machinegun bullets. The results of my bone scan had just come back and the results weren't pretty. My right leg was black all the way up to just below the knee.

I had a gangrene infection working it's way up the marrow of my leg bones, and all of the muscle tissue and skin too. My foot had turned black, and was about the size of a regulation football. My leg was a deep shiny purple mottled with patches of a sickly creamy color, the color of infection.

Red, angry, veinous runners ran up my leg to the bottom of my thigh.

I had gone from healthy as a horse, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, to half-way dead in about 36 hours.

This was the 6th time I was in the ER in that time. Most of 'em being seen by this doctor. This doctor who had sent me home five times with keflex and tylenol.

This guy had given me such sage and accurate medical advice before, that I gave his words the due consideration that they were worth now.

With great gravity I replied to him: "If I lose my leg you lose yours. Not only will I sue you and the hospital for everything you've got, but they'll put my name on the front of this place and I'll own your first born child. But before any of that happens I'll go home and get my shotgun and you'll lose a leg too you son of a bitch. You'd better come up with a better goddam solution than that." The thought of losing my leg had me just a little bit pissed.

I spent the next 10 days flat on my back in a hospital bed on IV antibiotics that were brand spankin' new. They were so new I was the first patient in the whole town to even get 'em, ever.

Imagine that. Those just happened to be sitting there, waiting for some VIP to need 'em or something.

But I was gonna lose a leg before they were gonna break 'em out until I got nasty about it, and swore a blood oath of revenge.

Infuckingcorrigible.

The day came that they were going to want to take that piece of dirty Rebok out of the bone in my foot it was laying against. I had stepped on a nail in my garage while building a speaker box with a built-in arms locker for my '77 Cougar with the tinted windows and the Cragar mags, and the nail had gone all the way through my foot.

Well I wasn't gonna walk around with a nail and a 2x4 stuck on the bottom of my foot, so I pulled it out. It was just a good puncture. Didn't even bleed much. I cleaned it with peroxide, dabbed it with some neosporin, and wrapped it in a cut up clean t-shirt and duct tape. I even ate an old tylox I had laying around.

Shoulda been fine, right? Well there we were and these ghouls who wanted to cut off my leg were now wanting to put me out so they could go get a piece of rubber the size of a pencil eraser.

I wasn't in to it. I didn't trust these folks as far as I could punt them.

The last ten days had been pretty hellish. Since I was on new IV drugs and they were running them in me like a river, they had this sweet little thing sitting with me and writing something down every ten minutes or so.

She didn't like me much. She said I was a pig, and a sexist, and my cigarettes stank. Damned hospitals. Just becaused they had banned cigarette smoking even in private rooms a few months before they thought a guy hooked up to an IV pole who couldn't get out of bed was gonna suddenly quit smoking.

They shoulda known better. My friends made sure I got bourbon with that tight little twat sitting there. Pizza too. I got anything I wanted. It's good to have people. The little nazi nurses tried to take my cigarettes one time. Only one time. Funny how I remember it always being the same pinch-faced little candy striper, and not more than one. Bah. I was on a lot of painkillers too.

I wanted these quacks to get that piece of tennis shoe outta me, but I didn't want to go to sleep for it. I just knew they were gonna take off my leg.

I really had this phobia that if I let them operate on me asleep, I was gonna be a pegleg. It was unreasonable. It was irrational. It was a real pain in the ass for me to act like that and I could plainly see that these folks were professionally offended by my suspicions of them.

And I didn't give a single damn.

That's my leg.

And I'm keepin it.

Can't you guys just do that spinal block thing, like they do for c-sections on women?

The docs looked at each other.

And I relaxed a little bit.

That afternoon I sat and watched, my girlfriend holding a hand mirror for me, while two surgeons opened up my right foot, removed a piece of rubber, and scraped the crud from a bone in my foot with a knife.

But...

I got to keep my whole leg. I'm kinda fond of it.