Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 
Equilibrium (and random things not to do with your nipples)

It's frightening how having a few quiet days to spend just doing very little of anything can feel so foreign. I can't recall when I had the chance to spend an evening cooking & eating dinner, and then arbitrarily deciding with Mel what to do next. Like take a 3 hour walk down to Dairy Queen for ice cream, or go see a movie, or do fun in-the-bedroom things all of you would rather not want to hear the details about.

I think I'm starting to get addicted to these low-paced days where all I'm required to do is enjoy the tranquility.

I suppose it's just as well, considering the last two respective months have been spent with every waking hour frantically doing something, whether it was for work, getting Mel prepped for submitting her Immigration application, or in preparation for Anime North 2004. (Which reminds me: I still need to do a Con journal on that.) For the last few weeks I have been craving some sort of return to the so-called normal life. No doubt this fragile sensation will shatter over the next few days, but I'm quite enjoying the chance to revel in the illusion that balance has been restored to my life.

Which brings me to the peculiar tale told to me by one of my co-workers yesterday. I know not how accurate this account is, as it's coming to me third-hand. Yet it boggled me so much that it regardless deserves to be shared.

She had been watching Montel's talk show, which talked about phony doctors and the patients who had unwittingly gone under their knives. After a few interviews, we come to one woman. If the world "gullible" isn't branded on her forehead already, it should be.

Late one night, this woman received a call from a man claiming to be her mother's doctor. Now in all fairness, her mother was rather sick...but even still, when the man doesn't identify his name or his hospital, but just as "your mother's doctor", shouldn't the warning bells start going off?

Anyhoo, this doctor claimed that some tests had come back showing that her mother had a good chance of having breast cancer. And as a result, it was very likely that, on a genetic level, this could be passed on to her. "You need to perform a breast exam on yourself right now," the *cough* doctor insisted.

Not having performed one before, the woman asked, "How do I do that?"

With ever the calm bedside manner, the doctor stated, "Take a razor from your bathroom, and cut off one of your nipples."

Yes, I can already see the shock and disbelief on your face. You're probably even laughing incredulously at the gall of this guy. Now I may not be the most medically-informed man on this planet; hell, anything I might even remotely know was gleaned from old Biology classes in high school and episodes of E.R. Even still, when a man I don't know calls me up in the middle of the night and tells me to lob off a nipple to make sure I don't have cancer, I'd tell him to do rather vulgar and nigh-physically impossible things to do with said razor.

But we're not done yet. Why?

Because the woman in question here did it. She went into the bathroom, grabbed a razor blade, and...you can paint your own graphic mental picture here. To add to the sheer dysfunctionality of this account, apparently the "doctor" was also quite the sadist, insisting that the procedure would be painful, so it would be okay for her to let out a scream when she used the razor. He insisted on the screaming three times.

At the very least, the woman didn't scream and give him that small pleasure. My co-worker tells me that as the woman is describing this, the look on Montel's face is probably akin to all of yours as you read this: a mix of horror, incredulous laughter, and sheer disbelief.

"That's terrible!" Montel exclaimed after. "We do have reconstructive doctors, and can reattach it for you without any charge. Would you at least like that?"

"Oh, I'm afraid you can't reattach my nipple," the woman said.

Montel stared bemused at her. "Why...not?"

"Because," she answered, "the doctor on the phone told me to flush it down the toilet when I was finished. And I did."

About here my jaw hit the floor in terms of dumbfounded amazement that someone could be this gullible. There's naivite, and then there's this. Forgive me for being so blunt, but if you fall for a stunt like this, I'd find it debatable whether you were even deserving of getting your nipple back.

The final kicker to all this is that, after shaking off his "You can't be serious" expression, Montel explained to her that they could still do some reconstructive cosmetic work, even without the nipple present. Whereupon the woman looked at Montel and said in a somewhat snarky voice, "I'll want to see your doctor's credentials first."

Well, I'm sure glad she's asking now. But when a talk show host is interviewing you about having suffered from a pesudo-doctor's sadistic thrill, don't you think he'd be making sure the doctors he brought in would be certified twice over?

As I said before, I'm not sure how accurate this story is. Even still, I'm still of the opinion that it's debatable whether she deserves to even have her nipple back after following a stunt like this.

Today's Lesson: there is a way to give yourself a breast exam. Hacking off a nipple with a razor is not it.


posted by Phillip at 6:56 AM