This is Spinal Tap

Needle to Human Size Ratio

Not the band, mind, the procedure. What brings this up? A friend, an acquaintance really,  just had one and posted about it on Facebook. He has multiple myeloma and is surviving it. YEA DAN! He's met the struggle with humor, strength and grace.

Dan’s an impressive dude. Totally.

I had a spinal tap done. It was eons, multiple decades ago when my mother and cousin’s neurological team at Mass General were trying to establish whether or not I too had the family curse -- Neurofibromatosis type2. I was 22.

A lumbar puncture (LP), also known as a spinal tap, is a diagnostic and/or therapeutic procedure performed by a doctor. The procedure is performed by inserting a hollow needle into the subarachnoid space in the lumbar area (lower back) of the spinal column.

The test, the tap, was surprisingly not painful at all. They’d numbed me into the next century with some seriously tremendous dope. Still, the no-pain bit was a great surprise seeing as I'd gotten a nasty, close up gander at the damned tap needle beforehand.The damn thing's a monster!

I suspect, though don’t recall (this all having been done while Pterosaurs still gussied up the skies) that the good docs had shot me full of manatee tranquilizers.

Wise move.

Now, I got through the whole biz fabulously thanks to inorganic chemistry AND the monitor they had set up so that I COULD WATCH! It was fascinating. Way.

I was wheeled up to my room where I was to lay flat for, dunno, ever? Are lumbar punctures still inpatient? Hell, brain surgery is practically outpatient now. OK no, but I’m usually in and out within a five day span.

The laying flat would’ve worked fine EXCEPT for the newbie nurse who’d not read my chart and couldn’t hear my protestations over her good intentions. She kept insisting that I’d feel so much better if I was sitting up a little.

OY!

To be extra fair -- nursey may have been distracted by my visitors’ dramatics. My cousin Carmel was there -- Carmel who also had Nf2. Were it not for Carmel’s dogged diligence and persistence, her refusal to accept her docs' bullshit edict that, at 30, she was losing her hearing due to ‘premature old age,’ none of the rest of us would know about the evil bastard schwannomas and menigiomas lurking in our bodies.

It was truly lovely that she came to see me in hospital, to be supportive of me and mother during this mega stressful time BUT, on losing the last of her hearing Carm had gone a bit hatters. I don’t recall what precisely she was going on about (likely, how Jezuz would heal me and I shouldn’t be in the hospital at all -- this being her usual post deafening diatribe) but she was doing it at operatic volumes.

Between the nurse elevating the head of my bed (while I attempted to scrunch down on the flat portion, all the while crying out ‘no, no -- I’m to lay flat. read my chart! read my chart!’), Carmel’s yelling and my poor mother attempting to calm her -- the scene had become something out of a Marx Brother’s flick.

It was at this point that our shared neurologist showed up. My sister Celeste always said that Doctor Parker reminded her of Kermit the Frog. I could totally see it. He had this wonderful gentle smile which accompanied his always calm, relaxed manner.
Not this night though. He was clearly stunned when he came on the theatrics in my room. First order of biz was de-elevating my bed and reading Nurse Newbie the riot act. Next up, kicking Carm out of my room and letting her know that she needed to calm down or leave the hospital. Third was checking on me and administering monster painkillers for the giant headache that I was now rockin’.

and then peace.

Yeah, I didn’t get the last-minute-save diagnosis that I wanted BUT the whole experience was pretty wild -- by turns scary, fascinating, surreal, Dada-esque and hilarious.