Monday, October 20, 2025

HONEST...THE NUDIST NEXT DOOR WAS TO BLAME!

 

It’s funny how one trivial incident can conjure up memories of a much bigger incident that happened years ago.

Take, for example, early last month when I had to decide on which fuel plan I wanted to use for the upcoming winter. Automatic delivery? Delivery only per request? Pay in advance? Pay monthly on the budget plan? Pay upon delivery?

At my age, I’m not good at making so many decisions in one day. My brain barely can handle even one major decision per year.

But after weighing all of my options, I finally decided upon the automatic delivery, mainly because I’d probably forget all about ordering fuel until I’d already run out and stalactites were forming on my ceilings. I also chose the monthly payment plan because…well, I couldn’t afford either of the other two options.

Anyway, all of this made me recall a time many years ago, when my husband and I lived in a mobile-home park in the country and also had to make a decision about our fuel. Our oil tank, because we had no basement, was located outside, above ground in the yard. It was a real eyesore, big and ugly and covered with so much rust, I honestly was tempted to paint it black and white like a cow and stick a papier-mâché cow’s head on it.

But the tank didn’t belong to us, it belonged to the park, so I couldn’t touch it. Keeping it filled, however, was our responsibility, and the kerosene and oil mixture it required was pretty expensive, much more than just regular heating oil.

We were on automatic delivery back then, which meant the fuel provider would pop up unannounced whenever he was in the neighborhood and fill the tank. I’m the type who likes to plan my budget in advance, and in my opinion, the fuel was being delivered a little too often. So when it came time for the next heating season to begin, I called the oil company and asked if we could be taken off their automatic-delivery list and put on their delivery-by-request list. That way I could control our expenses more easily because I’d be able to save up money for the fuel before calling them for a delivery.

The employee said there would be no problem.

But a week later, on a Friday morning in September while the weather still was warm, I woke up to find an envelope hanging on my doorknob. Inside was a bill for an oil/kerosene delivery, to the tune of nearly $500. Needless to say, I wasn’t pleased.

Even worse, when I let the dogs out into the yard, they went running out of the side gate…which apparently had been left wide open by the delivery guy. I ended up having to run the equivalent of the Boston marathon to catch up with the dogs and bring them back home.

Furious, I grabbed the phone and was fully prepared to call the oil company and say some really un-nice stuff to them before demanding that they come and siphon out about $250 worth of their crummy oil, but my husband told me to calm down.

“Oil prices actually are lower right now than they’ve been in a while,” he said. “They might go way up again later on this season. So this just might be a blessing in disguise.”

At that moment, the thought of having to cough up $500 I hadn’t budgeted for didn’t seem much like any great blessing to me.

That night, the temperature plummeted, and the next morning, I awakened to the strong smell of oil. I walked out to the living room where my husband was watching TV and asked him if he could smell it. When he shook his head, I realized I’d asked him a dumb question. In the past, countless baked chickens and casseroles had been unceremoniously cremated when I’d told him to keep an eye on dinner in the oven, because the man never smelled anything burning.

Trusting my own nose, I went outside to check the oil tank. To my horror, oil was spewing out of the top of the tank’s fill-pipe and running down onto the ground.

Our neighbor, Jennifer, an attractive blonde who’d just recently moved in and had introduced herself as a former exotic dancer who also was into nudism (much to my dismay and my husband’s delight), was outside at the time and said hi to me.

I asked her if she’d seen anyone delivering oil the day before.

“Definitely!” she said with a giggle. “I was doing some yard work and the guy couldn’t stop staring at me while he was filling the tank.”

I didn’t dare ask her what she had (or hadn’t) been wearing at the time, which probably would have explained a lot.

I dashed back into the house and called the oil company to complain.

“That’s impossible,” the representative said. “You’re not even on our automatic delivery list. You couldn’t have had oil delivered yesterday.”

“Well, I have a delivery bill for nearly $500 from you and a puddle of oil on the ground to prove it!” I shot back.

He finally said he’d send someone over.

A young man arrived about two hours later. He opened the fill-pipe and peered into the tank. “Wow!” he said. “This thing has really been overfilled! There’s no room in it for the oil to expand.”

THE PHOTO I TOOK FOR EVIDENCE!

Visions of the tank swelling up like a hot-air balloon and blowing my home to smithereens filled my mind.

“Got anything I can use to siphon off some of this oil?” he asked. “That’s crazy that it’s so full. The guy must have fallen asleep or something!”

I already had a pretty good idea what the “or something” was.

I couldn’t believe he was asking me for a siphon hose. I mean, I figured he’d at least have some kind of hose with him in his repair truck.

Coincidentally, I’d just bought a battery-operated liquid transfer pump for my aquarium, to make cleaning it easier, and it still was new in the box. I didn’t know if it would handle oil, but I figured it was worth a try. I went inside, opened it, shoved some batteries into it and then handed it to the guy.

He removed the hose from the pump, stuck the hose into the tank and then used his mouth to suck up some of the oil. He then proceeded to choke and spit it all over my lawn. Still, no oil flowed into his awaiting bucket.

“Um, maybe if you connect the hose back onto the pump, which is battery-operated, it will save you some trouble…and prevent you from getting an oil slick in your stomach,” I suggested.

Sure enough, the pump, which had cost me only $15, pumped oil into the bucket with lightning speed. By the time the guy was done, he’d taken five gallons out of the tank to release the pressure. I made a mental note not to pay for those five.

“That’s a great little pump,” he said, handing the oily, drippy thing back to me. “I’ll have to get one!”

“I’ll sell you this one cheap,” I said, frowning at it. “I don’t think I want to use it in my aquarium now.”

He didn’t take me up on my offer. Instead, he set to work digging up all of the contaminated soil around the tank and then washing the tank with some kind of biodegradable product and sprinkling the soil with a powder.

When he was through, he handed me a bill for $225…$200 for labor and $25 for supplies.

I, for the first time in my life, was rendered speechless. “You don’t seriously expect me to pay this, do you?” I finally managed to ask.

He shrugged. “I just hand out the bills, and this is considered an emergency weekend call. You’ll have to take it up with the office on Monday.”

The minute I opened my eyes on Monday morning, I reached for the phone, called the oil company and asked to speak to a supervisor. When the woman answered, I blurted out everything – the unwanted oil delivery, the gate being left wide open, the oil spill and the bill for cleaning it up. I think I might even have thrown in the word “lawsuit” for effect.

The woman sounded extremely sympathetic. She told me I definitely didn’t have to pay the service bill. She also said she would deduct the cost of the five gallons of oil that had been siphoned, and best of all, she would give me a substantial discount on the unwanted oil that had been delivered in the first place. All in all, we ended up paying only $175 for the full tank.

So I hate to admit it, but my husband was right. The delivery did turn out to be a blessing in disguise after all.

And we owed it all to Jennifer, the nudist.

I sure wish she lived next door to me at this house because I really could use her as a distraction for my next fuel delivery.

On second thought, she'd be about 65 years old now...


 #   #   #                                                        

Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.










 

 

Posted by at No comments:

Sunday, October 12, 2025

NOW THAT I FINALLY KNOW WHAT TRICK-OR-TREATERS WANT, I CAN'T AFFORD IT!

 

For a while now, mainly because the stores have had their Halloween displays out since the end of July, I've been thinking about what I should buy to hand out to trick-or-treaters this year.

My past efforts to buy treats I hoped would make the kids squeal with delight, however, have been slightly less than a rousing success.

Take, for example, the year I decided to give out packs of stickers instead of candy.  The stickers were decorated with smiley faces in all sizes and colors. And what, I thought, could be happier than those? I was certain the trick-or-treaters also would have smiles on their own faces when they saw them.

I was wrong.

The really young kids didn’t know what the stickers were and tried to eat them. And the older kids’ expressions clearly told me they had better things to do than play with stickers. Although, the next morning when I spotted smiley faces stuck all over my car out in the driveway, I managed to convince myself that my stickers had helped unleash the children's hidden creativity.

So the next year, I bought small paper Halloween bags that were decorated with bats, witches and pumpkins, and painstakingly filled each one with exactly 10 pieces of assorted wrapped candy (fireballs, root-beer barrels, caramels, Tootsie Rolls, lollipops, etc.) then stapled them shut.

The kids actually looked scared when I handed the sealed bags to them.

“What’s in it?” one little boy asked as he hesitantly accepted it from me.

“It’s a surprise!” I said.

“Will it bite me?” he asked.

The next morning I found dozens of the empty bags scattered across my lawn. Apparently the kids hadn’t been able to wait until they got home to tear them open and see what was inside.

And apparently the kids also were a bunch of juvenile litterbugs.

But through years of trial and error, I finally found something that no red-blooded trick-or-treater could complain about…full-sized chocolate bars. The first time I handed them out, I finally got the reaction I’d been seeking for so many years.

“Wow! Big candy bars!” one trick-or-treater after the other shouted. “Awesome!”

Not so awesome, however, was my husband’s reaction when he had to eat things like canned spaghetti for dinner three nights in a row because I’d spent all of the grocery budget on Halloween candy.

“Exactly how many chocolate bars did you give out anyway?” he asked me as he lifted a forkful of spaghetti up to his mouth and then stared at it as if he were trying to conjure up some magical super-power to transform it into a T-bone steak.

I shrugged. “I don't know...about 75, I guess."

His eyebrows shot up. “Really? There didn’t seem to be nearly that many kids, judging by the doorbell.”

“Well, that's because a lot of them had sick sisters and brothers who couldn’t come out trick-or-treating,” I said. “So they asked for candy bars for them. One poor little girl, her brother told me, broke both of her arms. And another one fell off her bike and lost a few teeth. So I made sure to send home a Hershey bar for her rather than a Snickers. I mean, she wouldn’t be able to eat those crunchy peanuts without her teeth.”

My husband rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Those kids were pulling the oldest scam in the book on you! There are no sick sisters or brothers. If they like your candy, they'll make up stories like that just to get extra for themselves. Either that, or they'll run home, change costumes and come back for more candy later on.”

I paused for a moment before saying, “Now that you mention it, there was this hairy-looking, deep-voiced fairy princess who kind of resembled and sounded like a pirate who’d been here earlier...but without the eye patch.”

So the next year I bought fewer chocolate bars and vowed not to give out any extras for sick brothers or sisters. If the kid wasn’t well enough to go trick-or-treating, I decided, then he or she probably should be eating chicken soup, not chocolate anyway.  

Unfortunately, it rained so hard that Halloween night, the only kids who ventured out were dressed like the Gloucester fisherman. So I ended up with loads of chocolate bars left over. My husband and I ate so many of them during the next few weeks, I actually could see the cavities popping out in our teeth and hear our arteries clogging.

Alas, this year, with Halloween just around the corner now, I once again am faced with the dilemma of what to buy for the trick-or-treaters, mainly because the price of chocolate currently is high enough to qualify it as gourmet fare. 

“I was thinking that maybe I should just get a bunch of quarters and give one to each kid,” I said to one of my friends the other day.  “After all, what kid doesn’t like money? And it will be much cheaper than buying Halloween candy.”

“Quarters?” he repeated with a laugh. “Are you still living in the mid-twentieth century? There's nothing a kid can buy for a only a quarter nowadays." He lowered his voice and his tone grew serious as he added, "But hey, I do have a great suggestion, and it will save you tons of money."

He'd piqued my interest. "What? What is it?"

"On Halloween night, just do what I do...lock the doors, shut off all the lights and don't answer the doorbell.”

I think Mr. Halloween Grinch could use a smiley-face sticker.

And I just happen to still have plenty of them...

 #   #   #

                                                                  

Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.










 

 

 



Posted by at No comments:

Monday, October 6, 2025

OCTOBER WAS MEANT FOR FUN...RIGHT?


October always reminds me of my late husband because it was our favorite month – not only because it was part of autumn, our favorite season, but also because it was the month of both my birthday and our wedding anniversary. So we designated it to be our “fun” month every year. Part of the fun included taking a week off from our jobs and either traveling somewhere for the week or staying close to home and venturing out on day trips every day.

The only problem we had when it came to day trips, however, was my husband and I often had different ideas about what we considered to be fun.

For example, I love zoos. I could spend hours just watching the animals. But for some reason, my husband always thought zoos were about as exciting as spending the day cleaning out the roof gutters. So he was less than thrilled the first time I convinced him to take me to Southwick’s Zoo in Mendon, Mass., about a 100-mile drive from our house.

The weather that October day was perfect – sunny and crisp with bright blue skies.

“Isn’t this great?” I said to my husband after we paid our admission and stepped into the zoo area.

He frowned as his eyes scanned our surroundings. “Have you noticed how many steep hills this place has? If I have to climb all of them, I’ll be grunting so hard, some wild African boar might break out of its pen and attack me, thinking it’s a mating call!”

I suppose he did have a reason to be concerned. After all, his idea of a strenuous workout was raising and lowering the footrest on his recliner.

“I see benches everywhere, though,” I said. “You can just sit down and rest whenever you feel tired. There’s no rush.”

As we walked past the wallaby and kangaroo exhibits, I “oohed” and “aahed,” but my husband barely gave them a glance. He was too busy staring at the next bench and judging whether or not he’d be able to make the distance to it.

When he finally plunked down on one of the benches, I noticed a nearby booth with a peephole in it and a sign below it that said, “Red Bat.” 

“While you’re resting,” I said, “I’m going to go look at the bat!”

I climbed the steps up to the booth, cupped my hands around the peephole so I could get a good look, and peered in. There, hanging on the wall, was a baseball bat…painted red. I couldn’t help it, I started to giggle.

I ended up giggling a lot while at Southwick’s…at everything from the silly antics of the monkeys to the “Do Not Feed Fingers to the Animals” signs on the exhibits.

But what made me laugh the most was something that happened in the reptile house after I'd quietly walked in and stood looking at one of the snakes. I was the only person in the building, other than two female employees, who didn’t even notice me.

One of the employees disappeared into the back room and then called out, “Hey, Jane! (or whatever her name was) Quick! Come back here!  You’ve GOT to see this!”

The other employee went out back, then immediately rushed back out, rolling her eyes and shouting, “Why on earth would I want to see two animals having sex?”

“Because it’s been so long since you’ve had it, I thought you might have forgotten how!” the other one said, cracking up laughing as she emerged from the back room.

At that point, I laughed, too. Both women’s heads snapped in my direction. Never have I seen such deer-in-the-headlights expressions.

“Oh, God,” the one who’d made the comment groaned in embarrassment. “I’m so sorry…I didn’t think anyone else was in here!”

I still was chuckling when I left the reptile house and headed over to the next bench where my husband had parked himself. 

“All set?” I asked him. "Let's go check out the deer forest.”

Online, the deer forest had been described as acres of peaceful forestland where the deer roamed freely and guests could sit at picnic tables and enjoy the day just watching the animals or mingling with them. 

“If it's more than 10 feet from here,” my husband said, “I'll never make it. You can go. I’ll just sit here and wait for you.”

“I’m not going to go sit all by myself at some table in the woods!” I said. "You've had time to rest now, so you'll do just fine. Come on, let's go."

To my dismay, the climb to the deer forest was longer and steeper than I’d anticipated. I could tell by my husband’s huffing, puffing and profuse sweating, there was a strong possibility he wasn’t enjoying the hike.  

“Look, water buffalo!” I said brightly in an attempt to distract him from his complaining as we passed by the African Plains exhibit. “And zebras!”

He grabbed onto the fence and clasped his chest. “Where the heck are the deer?” he wheezed.

“Up there.” I pointed to a gate at the top of the hill.

He groaned. “Then just leave me here to die with the water buffalo.”

But I refused to budge another inch without him. When we finally made it to the deer forest, he plopped down at the first picnic table we came to, even though it wasn’t in the most scenic spot in the area. Then we waited to see all of the deer.

Fifteen minutes later, we still were waiting.

I walked over to one of the nearby deer-food machines and got a handful just in case a deer finally did decide to show up. The minute I turned the crank on that machine, deer magically appeared from everywhere, popping out from behind trees and leaping over bushes.

ME, IN MY GLORY!

By the time we left the deer forest, I was covered with deer hair and drool, but I was smiling. My husband was smiling, too – not only because the walk back was all downhill, but also because we finally were leaving and heading home.

I had a great time at the zoo. In fact, I already was planning a return visit.

“Can we go back to Southwick’s next October?” I asked my husband later that night. “I really enjoyed myself today.”

He grimaced. “I’ll let you know once my calves, knees, back and eyebrows stop hurting.”

We did return during future Octobers…two more times. But as a trade-off, I had to go with my husband to two model-train shows, which were his choice of fun.

Granted, the train shows were interesting, but I think they would have been a lot more exciting if they’d have added a few live animals to the exhibits.

Just sayin’…

 #   #   #

                                                                  

Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.







Posted by at No comments:

Monday, September 29, 2025

THE HEAVENLY PANTS AND THE MUTANT EGG...AND I'M FINALLY HOME FROM THE HOSPITAL!

 


I honestly could write at least another five blogs about the adventures (misadventures?) I had while in the hospital this past month…but you’ll probably be pleased to know I’ve decided to spare you the details and finally end my saga with this one.

I mean, I think I’ve pretty much covered just about every bodily function known to science by now anyway (and even a few that aren’t).

Speaking of bodily functions, last week I left you hanging. I’m talking about the fact that everyone in my hospital wing, or so it seemed, was waiting for me to pass gas – a sign that my bowel blockage was unblocking on its own and I likely wouldn’t need surgery.

Alas, I’d been in the hospital since Saturday morning, and by late Sunday afternoon, the “big bang” still hadn’t happened. I was getting worried, thinking I’d probably end up celebrating Halloween, or maybe even Christmas, in the hospital at the rate I was going. So I decided I’d walk a few laps up and down the hospital’s hallways in an effort to stimulate my intestines into doing their thing.

First, however, there was something I really wanted.

“Is it possible to get pajama bottoms or maybe some drawstring pants like I’ve seen the male patients wearing?” I asked one of the nurses. “My hospital gown would fit a Sumo wrestler, and I’m pretty sure I'm flashing everyone! I’m also feeling chilly with my whole backside exposed.”

It was no surprise I was feeling chilled, and not just because of the huge gown that could have doubled as a tent for a family of five. My bed was located directly beneath an overhead air-vent that blasted cold air 24/7, even when the temperature dropped to 40F degrees outside at night. That also might explain why my temperature was 97.6F the entire time I was in the hospital. I practically could see my own breath.

“Hmm, I’m not sure if I can find any bottoms for you,” the nurse said, rubbing his chin. “But I’ll go look.”

He returned a few minutes later with an enormous pair of boxer-type shorts that looked and felt as if they were made of recycled newspaper. They also were men’s size XL.  I put them on and they were so big, I pulled them up to my chest. And even then, they still were so baggy, they made me look as if I had two rear-ends…one in the front and one in the back.

My roommate and I were having a good laugh over the shorts as I modeled them, when another nurse walked in and asked where on earth I’d found them.

I was tempted to tell her I’d stolen them as part of my plan to make my escape that night by jumping out of the window and then floating gently to the ground as the shorts caught air and acted like a parachute.

“I’ve been feeling chilly,” I explained, ”so I asked for some pants, and these are what I got.”

“Well, those won’t keep you very warm,” she said, shaking her head. ”Let me see what I can do.”

To my delight, she returned with some thick, warm, fleece-lined sweatpants. They were so soft and cuddly when I put them on, I could swear I actually heard the goosebumps on my legs thanking me. They also fit perfectly. The nurse then brought me two new pairs of cushiony slipper-socks. I felt like a new woman.

And an hour later, following my walk through the halls, I was stretched out in my bed and feeling warm and cozy, thanks to the sweatpants. That was when it finally happened…the trapped gas made its grand entrance into the free world. It wasn’t the earth-shaking blast I’d anticipated, merely a tiny “poof.” But nevertheless, it was there. And I’d been told to be sure to let someone know the moment it happened.

There were two nurses in my room at the time – one tending to me and another tending to my roommate – when I made the big announcement.

You know, all of my life, I’ve always wanted to do something that would be worthy of excited cheers, thunderous applause and a standing ovation…but never could I have imagined it would be for something like passing gas. The response was so enthusiastic, I expected a bottle of champagne and a local TV news-team to arrive at any minute.

My victory celebration was short-lived, however. Passing gas meant the blockage wasn’t blocking me 100 percent any longer. That was the good news. The bad news was everything that still had been backed up in my digestive tract and hadn’t been sucked out yet by the NG tube, now was free to “go with the flow” and come out of my southern end.

In other words, the flood gates had been opened.

...All over my lovely, warm fleecy sweatpants.

Talk about a mixed blessing. I didn't know whether to celebrate the unblocking or to mourn the much-too-early demise of my precious pants.

I spent a good portion of the next six hours in the bathroom. And then, when the doctor decided to do another scan that required about a quart of contrast solution, which he said probably would cause diarrhea, I spent about another 6 hours in the bathroom.

Believe me, when I later saw a new patient being wheeled into her room and she was holding a four-pack of Charmin Ultra-soft toilet tissue in her lap, my first thought was, “This woman definitely has been here before." My second thought was to offer her all of the cash in my wallet for just one roll...or even just a few sheets of her private stash.

I commented to one of the nurses about how the toilet paper in my bathroom was rough enough to sand the rust off metal. She laughed and said, “That’s because our toilet paper here actually is paper…you know, like the kind you write on.” 

She was joking, but I and my extremely raw and sore backside were more inclined to believe she was telling the truth.

She then took pity on me and brought me a pack of wet wipes and a tube of ointment…for diaper rash.

The news turned out to be good, however. My latest scan showed clear sailing from one end of my body to the other. No more blockage! No surgery needed! 

Actually, that really wasn’t news to me. After all, I previously had been experiencing the proof of the “clear sailing” all night.

I was sure I’d be allowed to go home the next day, considering the blockage was gone, but I soon learned it wasn’t quite that simple.

“First,” a nurse explained to me, “we'll want to make certain your NG tube is no longer draining anything at all before we remove it. Then once it’s removed, we’ll start you on liquids. If you can tolerate those, then we’ll try soft foods. And if you don’t feel nauseated or vomit after the soft foods, you’ll be able to try small portions of regular food. Of course, we’ll also want to make sure you can have a bowel movement before we allow you to go home.”

“Have a bowel movement?!” My eyebrows shot up. “What have I been doing for the last 250 hours?”

“Getting rid of all of the old backed-up stuff,” she said. “Now your system hopefully will be able process and digest any new food you put into it.”

I sighed. I was beginning to think I just might end up eating Christmas dinner in the hospital after all.

But things moved along pretty quickly, to my surprise. The NG tube didn't drain anything else – probably because all of it had raced out of my body in the other direction when the dam broke. So the tube, to my relief, finally was removed. My much-anticipated first drink of ice-cold Poland Spring water, however, hurt a lot because the tube had made my throat so raw.

And as a celebratory gift for the removal of the tube, one of the nurses went on a search that took her down three floors in the hospital until she found another pair of those fleecy sweatpants for me, as the only ones still available on my floor were a men’s size 2-XL. 

I was thrilled to get the new pants and to feel warm and cozy again.

The other sweatpants, the ones I’d messed up, I tossed into the laundry bin in my room. I mean, they belonged to the hospital, and the laundry bin was where they flung all of our soiled hospital gowns and other washables, so I figured why not?

Well, the employee who gathered the laundry for washing, came into my room and was putting the laundry into a big bag when she suddenly came across the sweatpants and held them up using only two fingers. She cast an accusing glance at me and said in very broken English, “Thees belong you's?”

I said no, they were the property of the hospital. She only stared at me, not understanding. I could tell by her expression she thought I might be trying to get some free laundry service for my own street clothes, which made me wonder what the other patients who had those same pants did with theirs when they were dirty. Trash them? Hide them under the bed?

A nutritionist met with me a short while later and told me to call room service and order a real egg and have the cook crack it open and then scramble it in a dry, ungreased pan, for my first soft food. Not those eggs poured out of a carton, she said, just a fresh, plain egg, scrambled. So I called and ordered it. The person who took my order said it was no problem and they’d send it right up.

Ten minutes later it was delivered to my room. I lifted the lid on the dish and immediately could tell the egg had been cooked in grease...that had black specks of something in it.

“Is this a fresh egg?” I asked the guy who’d delivered it.

He shook his head. “Nah, it’s powdered.”

Normally, I would have complained, but these were far from normal circumstances, so I wasn’t about to be fussy…not if I wanted to go home before 2026. So I ate two bites of the egg.

Funny, but when you haven’t eaten any food whatsoever, not even so much as a breath mint, in over 5 days, even powdered eggs in second-hand grease can taste like gourmet fare. But I didn't dare to eat more than those two bites, just to be safe. I mean, the last time I vomited was way back in the 1970s, and I wasn't eager to break that record anytime soon.

Fortunately, the powdered egg in recycled bacon grease stayed down.

I was officially discharged from the hospital late the next day, after I also managed to keep down a few bites of an al-dente baked potato. 

Hate to admit it, but I was in such a hurry to leave, I didn't even bother to put on my jeans. I just wore the hospital sweatpants home.

And I have the feeling I’ll probably see them itemized on one of my bills...as designer originals for $500.

#   #   #

NOTE: I’ve been home for nearly three weeks now and it’s taken me a while, but I’m finally feeling better. My body had to recover from the effects of the NG tube, the drugs, the rough toilet paper, and a diagnosis of severe malnutrition, thanks to the blockage. But so far, I've gained back 4 of the 11 lbs. I lost. The first week I was home, my stomach sounded like the Indianapolis 500 when the guy shouts, “Start your engines!” because it was trying to get back into the routine of digesting food once again. It actually kept me awake a few nights, it was so loud.

But now I’m finally back to feeling about 90 percent like my old self.

And tomorrow I have an appointment with a new doctor for a check-up and a follow-up.  

So if you don’t see me on here next week, it might mean he found something else wrong with me...because he’s a perfectionist and 90 percent just isn’t good enough for him. 😉

Love you guys!










Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, September 23, 2025

MY ENTIRE FUTURE DEPENDED ON A FART?

 


Last week, I told you about my unexpected ride through the countryside in a luxury vehicle worth about $200,000.

I’m talking about my ambulance ride to the hospital, where I was informed I had a 100-percent blockage in my small bowel…and how the surgeon was going to try to unblock it by stopping the bowel from all activity until it finally screamed out from starvation to demand food…and in the process, unblocked itself.

This, he said, would be accomplished by putting a nasogastric (NG) tube down into my stomach and draining out all of the backed-up gunk, then allowing me nothing by mouth, not even a sip of water, for a “few” days. If, after all of that, the blockage still remained uncooperative and decided not to open up, I would need surgery.

This information instantly brought to mind the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for.” I mean, how many thousands of times had I wished I could drop some weight? Well, I’m no psychic, but I was pretty certain that what I was about to endure probably was going to make that wish come true.

And for the first time in my life, the idea of dropping a few pounds didn’t appeal to me at all.

My heart sank even lower when a nurse who was carrying a coil of clear tubing attached to a big plastic container entered the room and told me I probably was going to end up not liking her very much by the time she was through.

No argument from me there.

She held up one end of the tube. “The objective here is for me to insert this into your nose, where you then will swallow it until it reaches your stomach…hopefully without gagging. Remaining calm helps.”

Calm?  Easy for her to say! Just the thought of swallowing something even as thick as a strand of hair made me want to gag, never mind something the size of an entire braid! (Well, maybe a Barbie-doll-sized braid, but still…).

She handed me a cup of water and then explained that after she inserted the tube into my nose, she wanted me to quickly lower my chin to my chest and start drinking the water as fast as I could...and continue to do so until she told me to stop.

On the subject of gagging, I honestly never had been able to stomach the tap water at that hospital, so I was just about to ask if I might be able to get some bottled water instead, when I suddenly felt the tube slide into my nose.

“Now drink,” the nurse said to me. “And keep swallowing! Keep swallowing!” 

Panicking, I gulped down that water faster than if I were a dying explorer who’d been lost in the Sahara for a week. Before I knew it, the nurse said to stop. The tube was in place.

I just stared at her. That was it? I hadn’t felt anything, not even a slight urge to gag. And I barely could feel the tube in my throat.

“That’s honestly the easiest NG tube I’ve ever inserted,” she said.

Her words made me feel just smug enough to think this NG tube, the mere sight of which had terrified me more than the shower scene in the movie “Psycho,” actually was going to be a breeze.

How naïve I was…

Immediately, the tube started to drain out everything that had been backed up inside of me for…maybe the last 30 or 40 years, judging from the way it looked. I could swear I even saw a few prehistoric fossils in it. And most of it was a stunning shade of green. To my relief, as more and more of the stuff came out, my stomach pain finally began to let up for the first time in about 16 hours. At that moment, I think I realized how new mothers must feel after suffering through seemingly endless hours of labor pains and then at long last, giving birth.

The big difference, of course, was that the result of the new mothers’ pain was much, much cuter than the result of mine, which kind of resembled what Linda Blair had hacked up in the film “The Exorcist.”

I finally was wheeled up to the sixth floor to my new home. The room had a huge picture window with a breathtaking view of rolling hills, fields and trees. I was impressed. There was a bed near the window, but it already was occupied. So I ended up with the bed near the door…and directly facing the bathroom.

This, in retrospect, turned out to be a very good thing.

I was given painkillers, from morphine to dilaudid, through my IV, so I slept soundly until 3 AM, when I was awakened to have my vitals taken and also to have someone listen for “sounds” in my digestive tract. Sounds meant progress, but I didn’t have any yet. Not a rumble, a gurgle or even a squeak. I had to be patient, I was told.

Later that morning I awakened with the worst sore throat I’d ever had. When I was a kid, I often would get strep throat, which would be so severe, my throat actually would nearly swell shut and I barely could swallow even as much as saliva. The doctor finally had told my mother the only solution was to have my tonsils removed. But she refused.

Well, this sore throat was worse than any of those childhood bouts of strep throat. I even found myself wishing my mother had agreed to have my tonsils removed because at that moment my left one felt as if it had a porcupine sitting on it.

I rang for the nurse. After several medical professionals wielding penlights peered down into my throat, I was assured it was just an irritation from the NG tube, and it would improve as my throat grew more accustomed to it being there. In the meantime, they said they would add some Tylenol to my IV drip.

Tylenol? No way, I thought, was something that wimpy going to knock out my intense pain. I also asked if I could suck on ice to help soothe my throat.

No…nothing by mouth, they repeated. It was a wonder they didn’t find someplace to also re-route my saliva, even though I doubted I had any left at that point.

But to my surprise, the Tylenol worked, so I promised myself I never would refer to it as wimpy again. It actually made the sore throat bearable, which was good enough for me, even though my voice sounded like a 13-year-old boy’s who was going through puberty.

The next day passed fairly uneventfully. I joked with my roommate, who fortunately shared my sense of humor. I joked with my nurses, even if they didn’t share my sense of humor. They all were terrific, however, and treated me as if I were royalty. If I rang the buzzer, they immediately arrived. If I asked for a pillow, I got two. And I constantly was asked if I needed anything.

 I have to admit I really enjoyed the pampering part.

I watched a lot of TV, despite the fact most of my favorite stations weren’t carried in that hospital. I would have given anything to trade one of the sports channels for one of my favorites, like the Game Show Network, especially since I felt an urgent need to sharpen my drug-fogged brain cells.

I also walked laps around the sixth floor three times a day, which was difficult because every time I wanted to take a stroll to stretch my stiff muscles, I had to ring for a nurse to come disconnect my NG tube from the container it drained into, and then clamp off the end of the tube. That way, all I had to drag around with me was the IV stand with the bags of fluid and medications hanging from it. I called the IV stand George…after a guy I’d once dated who really annoyed me.

When I’m at home, I usually walk 45 minutes every day, which I enjoy. So I looked forward to my laps in the hospital. The only thing that ruined them, however, was the aforementioned clamped-off NG tube. It always leaked. So I left a trail of green slime wherever I went, which made me feel like some giant, mutant snail. It was embarrassing…and messy. The nurses tried a variety of different clamps and gizmos to make the seal tighter, but that stubborn sucker chuckled fiendishly at all of us and kept right on dripping.

And let’s just say it didn’t smell like roses in bloom.

My roommate was allowed to eat, so I lived vicariously through her and her meals as she dined on creamy fruit parfaits, fresh salads, grilled fish and even a cheeseburger with oven-baked fries. Oh, and iced tea. My throat felt so parched by then, I wouldn’t have cared if the tea had been made from toilet water, I still would have gulped it down.

I finally dared to ask a physician’s assistant how I’d know when or if all of my starving and suffering with the NG Tube From Hell might be working.

“The first sign will be when you pass gas,” came the answer. “After that, we’ll do another scan with contrast to see if the blockage is opening and if the solution clearly can be tracked all the way down to your rectum. If it can be seen all the way down, then the NG tube will be removed and we’ll start you on liquids. However, if the blockage is still there, our only other options will be to wait a bit longer to see if it still might improve on its own…or if it will need to be surgically removed.”

So all I had to do to get things rolling was pass gas? Then, no more tube? And I’d finally be able to drink something cold and refreshing?

Never in my life have I wanted to fart more than I did at that moment…

 

I’ll wrap up this saga next week and let you know what finally happened! But be forewarned…it won’t be pretty.


#   #   #

                                                                  

Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.









Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)