You Fat Bastard.

So I went to the Doctors the other day. He isn’t your stock standard GP either is my doctor, no I see a specialist because I’m special.

That doesn’t make him any more punctual than a GP mind you, although he has gotten better since the days I used to walk out on him for keeping me waiting an hour. Back then I’d wait for all the other hopeless cases like me to be seen by him only to get up and walk out minutes after sitting down in his office. It was like chess with he and I; a battle of strategy and wit.

Now days the wait is broken up by a few tasks that I have to do pre-consultation like blowing hard and heavy into a device that measures just how weak and feeble my lungs actually are. I do this three times and usually come very close to passing out, only to find my vital lung capacity has barely changed since the last time I was there. Talk about my iron lung.

Then I get weighed and it really is the money shot of the afternoon because it’s the most important of the lot, but not necessarily in a good way. It’s so important I will pucker my anus the entire morning leading up to the appointment, just so as not to loose a couple of hundred grams. I also have to try and remember if I had my keys and phone in my pocket last time because if so they should be weighed again. Hey every little bit counts.

Now those who know me will probably have noticed I am not quite All Black physique. Well not in this day and age where they are excellent weightlifters first, rugby players second, but back when Terry Wright played rugby people mistook us all the time despite him being in his mid twenties with a stache and me, nine.

I was a whole 2kgs lighter this time round which is great if you’re competing to be the biggest loser but not for me, so given my fast approaching runway model weightlessness I agreed to meet with the dietitian.

Normally I don’t meet with dietitians because if there’s one thing I know its how to eat. I always think that being a dietitian must be a depressingly sad job most of the time because you’re only ever going to be dealing with two types of people; the morbidly obese or the morbidly thin. Imagine throwing a party for that lot.

However this time I caved due to Mrs ClubDes being there with me and who rather strangely, doesn’t subscribe at all to the theory that I know it all. I don’t know why, I’m always telling her how I do. Anyhoo, I was pleasantly surprised because said dietitian turned out to look like Amy Adams and who doesn’t want to be told how to eat by her?

Not that I really listened to watch she said because, well, she looks like Amy Adams, but I did gain one titbit of info; that the powdered high calorie drinks I make myself daily should be a lot stronger than I’ve been making them so there you go, never let it be said I don’t follow instructions well.

Thus the end result of this story is that I’m now part of the wankers club at work, one of the many guys who walk around shaking a powdered drink in a manner that says ‘I’m so buff I can unwrap a Mintie with my buttocks, because I drink this powdered shit’. Only theirs are drinks called ‘Ripped’, ‘Shredded’ and ‘Mega Muscle’, whilst mine looks like baby formula.

I mix mine in a Celebrity Slim shaker too, just to really shit up those around me who think I should ‘fatten up’.

It’s ironic though, that like so much of my spectacular life, I just don’t fit with society on the whole weight thing. Whilst the rest of you fat bastards are counting your calories and buying 97% fat free everything, I have to try and eat like a fat kid at a party, all day, every day. And trust me, I fucken do.

And yet, I still look like Terry Wright. Oh well.

Terry was a skinny man amongst men.

Mortality Check

I never thought I’d be quite as pleased to have a discharge as I do today. Oh yes, its home time.

Here’s to at least another two years between hospital visits but with the chances of some bastard giving me swine flu again I won’t hold my breath. Besides, lack of oxygen is what got me here in the first place.

This visit has been unlike my last three, it was, in the immortal words of Big Chris, emotional.

I don’t want to over dramatise things because I hate wankers who do, but my first night in here was about as close to me checking out as I’d quite like to get for a bit, fuck you very much. I like to tell people that it wasn’t that hairy but if I were to be honest – and don’t tell anyone that I am now – but it was the retro minge of close calls.

And you know what my main thought as I lay there struggling to inflate my sad state of a lung sack? That I hadn’t yet put together a playlist of essential funeral songs for the missus to play, should this be it. Yep, priorities - I’ve got ‘em.

Now I’ve been in similar predicaments before and I’m not talking about Nam either. Oh sure, we got into our fair share of shit storm’s there, but there was no chance I was going to let someone with a name that sounds like an empty Coke can blowing down the street and an AK47 take out Noshow.

But when you’ve got little things like, oh, lungs and shit starting to cease what it is they should be doing, then there is a point where you have to man up and make a decision; do I stay or do I go?

Far be it for me to shatter any Mills & Boon dreams you might have about how that moment might present itself were you ever unfortunate to reach it, but here’s how it goes; there are no bright lights, no aliens in spaceships probing your anus (Maxi you will be disappointed), or sadly, nubile maidens in nearly-but-not quite see through cotton one pieces beckoning you into the water.

The chances are that when it comes you’ll have several tubes sticking in you, which always looks so ace on TV, but in reality makes the necessities of life, like sleeping, impossible. There will be a constant stream of people fussing over you the problem, not you the patient and despite all this activity there’s a very high possibility that you’ll be alone.

Nor will there be some gay, Greys Anatomy back ground music track playing but that’s a plus really.

It will be just you and the choice. Like Neo choosing between Trinity and Zion or Batman choosing Rachel over Harvey Dent and you lot know me, I’m a sucker for a good looking brunette so I chose to stay with mine. But it’s not the easier door to open, I won’t lie to you.

Yet open it you must because unless your penis has seen so little action that it’s retracted upon itself thus leaving you with a vagina, or vice versa depending on your gender, you will still have much to see and do. Personally I plan to write at least 4000 more blogs, coach more football and stalk so many more young ladies on Facebook.

Mortality is not something I contemplate too much because that would lead to eyeliner, striped jerseys, Adam Lambert CDs and crying over absolutely nothing, but every now and then you just have to look back and say “Shit in my mouth. That was a close one”.

There's only ever one door worth opening...

Hospital Bed Clarity

The world is a crazy place isn’t it, what with earthquakes in Crimechurch, floods in Pakistan and the cell phone thief who uses the stolen handset to take pics of his wang which he then sends to everyone in the contacts book.

Personally I don’t know why the guy has to commit a crime to facilitate such a joyous task, why not just pick up a mate’s phone when he’s not looking? I know I do. I don’t send mine though I just leave them there for the significant other to find one day. It beggars the question though; just what would you do if you got a cock pic from the phone of your best mate...?

Angelina Jolie visited Pakistan this week in one of those poignant but utterly fruitless celebrity endorsements of a cause. Her revelation on seeing the place was that yes, it was quite shit and yes, something really needs to be done about it. And who says actors can only be told what to say aye?

There’s probably several reasons why people aren’t flocking to help the Paki’s like they have other nations affected by natural disasters, but consider this; in the same week we were hearing about the floods we had the Pakistani cricket team being exposed, yet again, for the cheating bastards they are.

So what are the cricketers doing for their fellow countrymen at this time? Living the high life, pretending to be rock stars and taking bribes to bowl no balls, that’s what and Ms Jolie wonders just why it is no bugger wants to lift a finger to help?!

Of course it’s easy for me to have this clarity when locked away in Ward 5 where I spend my days not concerned with the poor and impoverished of the world, but instead getting angry at really important things like the gay designers on 60 Minute Makeover and their decidedly piss poor taste. Since when did being gay mean that you automatically lose any semblance of colour coordination?

But then it’s easy to be a gay interior designer when its someone else’s money isn’t it? Oh how the real rimmers amongst us must cringe when they see the ‘Fabulous’ branch of the movement out in the public eye fucking it up for everybody.

Angelina doesn’t have the time to have my clarity. She has a family and a career of course and must fret dreadfully over just what to do with all those millions she makes from lame movies like Salt. Personally I liked her a lot more when she was edgy, bi-curious and prone to getting her nungas out in movies.

Everything up to Tomb Raider was cool but it’s all gone a bit mediocre since then I reckon. Mr and Mrs Smith was a good wank the first time round but I struggled to rub one out during consequent viewings.

Sadly I haven’t yet had a nurse that comes close to being even remotely attractive as Ms Pitt, yet. The closest so far is tidy, but she does have a passing resemblance to a colleague at work who just happens to be a dude. Which is like fancying your best mates younger sister who is hot and the opportunity is always there, but yet so is the family resemblance...

So what can Angelina do to make a change in Pakistan other than state the obvious I wonder? Maybe she could fly Mayor Bob Parker over when he’s done with being the hero of Crimeschurch and he could do his stubble and Icebreaker orange jacket thing over there? It seems to be working well here.

Or maybe she could bribe some Pakistani cricketers to fuck off home and help out with the cleanup.

Bloody gay interior designers, always getting it wrong...

Breaking Through The Bubble

Hey, which are you sick of hearing about more; me being sick or the Christchurch fucking earthquake?

Personally, for me, it’s the latter although I’m just about over the former too. It doesn’t help that I’ve been in isolation for five days watching wall to boring wall coverage of the quake.

Thankfully I am now out of isolation and the doctors say I’m on the mend but given that I didn’t once think of playing with myself in that entire time I’m not so sure...

Why I’ve even left the room a few times too, with Mrs ClubDes to make a cuppa and always with a surgical mask ala Michael Jackson. I don’t need to wear the mask, so say those that would supposedly know, but given the last guy admitted with my condition died on account of something he picked up whilst staying here I’ll keep it on, fuck you very much.

Despite being in a hospital I feel very strange in wearing one.

I can’t help but feel I must look like an Asian on my walk to work, which is a bizarre thing anyway when you consider that Asians are prepared to bombard their ovaries and testes with the gamma rays from any number of miniature electronic devices they profigate but yet, they stress over a little bit of airborne carbon monoxide?!

Of course being a fully fledged ninja I am well used to wearing a facial mask but then I’m used to being completely invisible when I do so too. Hence my anxiety.

It’s fair to say then that with my isolation and paranoia about cross infection I have become a little, shall we say, unhinged. Last night I ventured out by myself in the 9pm twilight for a simple char run and it all went horribly wrong.

The writing was on the wall when I passed the room where I could see two massive, black feet, face down and sticking out from the end of the bed. Was it a patient, I wondered, or was it some dear old lady getting railed by a six foot four black man, because that really would be alternative medicine at its most inventive...

Then there were the fire doors that were closed, thus blocking my way to the kitchen. Now usually I’m well aware that pushing the green button releases these things but for some inexplicable reason all logic went out the window and I panicked.

For two reasons really; I’m a little on edge as it is but also a good looking blonde nurse was watching what I was doing and possibly all the time wondering just how awesome a guy needs to be to get a Captain Awesome tee shirt issued to him like the one I was wearing.

Naturally I was eager not to disappoint her by failing to navigate a fire door because that would be distinctly un-awesome.

So I doubled round to the second set of doors and they too were closed. They even had a bit of paper stuck on them telling me to use the button but yet, I retreated back into the night and scarpered back to the safety of my room - my bubble - tea less and slightly concerned that my room was only one away from the black man.

Actually, come to think of it, if I’m having thoughts like that then maybe I am on the road to recovery after all...

A Week Of Firsts

Well. What a week of firsts it has been for your’s truly.

It’s the first time I’ve gone without anything resembling sleep for about five consecutive nights, food of any sort for three days, the first time I’ve actually felt quite close to carking it and my first time in the new hospital. Oh and the first time I’ve had swine flu, did I mention that?

The new digs are very nice by the way; a vast improvement on the old, but the same old design flaws make this modern day version the biggest mastabatorium since Dougal Macs time at boy’s school.

Like all the sinks which are still delicate poised at crutch height with hairline triggers for taps and which pick up the slightest change in air pressure anytime your hand goes near them, thus dumping a pulsating stream of water into the sink, the wall and your crutch.

It would be all a little bit erotic if it didn’t leave you looking like you had been playing with yourself rather than doing whatever it was that you were supposed to be doing. Incidentally that’s one first I haven’t yet rattled off in the new ward, a wank, but yet, the stay is still young…

I have however had two, yes two, up close and personal space contact moments with nurses which included some accidental boob touching. Unfortunately they were both of the morbidly obese build so I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the pleasure was all theirs.

And please let the record show that as far as the two aforementioned incidents go, I was more concerned - as is usually the case with such encounters - of the weight shifting ability of the said nurses were gravity to get involved. How many incidents of death by accidental smothering by obese nurses go unreported in hospitals I have since thought.

It doesn’t seem right does it, that nurses are allowed to be obese? How is that supposed to inspire anyone to get back to full fitness? Now topless nurses on the other hand..

The one thing they don’t tell you about swine flu is that it is the biggest trip you can have legally and for good reason too because imagine if that news got out?!

Young people would stop trying to look like they’ve got hepatitis (as most of them seem to do) and start trying to cultivate the pale, emaciated, dead behind the eyes look of the H1N1. Now that really would be a trip.

So it has indeed been a week of firsts. Although what with the blood, sweat, hallucinations, Filipino nurses and choppers landing on the roof it’s all been very much like my time in the evac hospital at Hanoi in 1970.

Only without obese nurses.

The movement has begun...

Shaven Sideburns: The Ultimate Contraceptive

Have you ever noticed how some guys shave the bit where their sideburns should be? Not give it a trim mind you, but cut it nice and high, far too high to be sane really. And have you also ever noticed that the kind of guy who has just such a cut, doesn't half look like he would be right at home standing outside your bathroom window watching whilst you shower?

A whole bunch of dudes like that work at the hospital, deep in the bellows where they can't frighten the already weak of heart patients, unless you have the misfortune of waking in the middle of the night in time to see the ones who like to stand outside of your bedroom window watching you sleep. Not that I ever did, but just because I didn't see him it doesn't mean he wasn't there!

Kind of like if a fat girl falls in the woods is it still funny? Ponder that.

Anyhoo, I have from time to time bumped into the shaven sideburn squad. They're the guys who get to push heavy trolleys full of shit (sometimes literally) through the warren of tunnels that link the many hospital buildings. They are, quite frankly, the oil in the machine. If they weren't their skulking their way about day after day, freaking out the young nurses who use the tunnels as shortcuts to get about, the place would fall to pieces. But knowing that doesn't make it any less scary when bumping into one, especially at night.

I had to ask one for help a few weeks back whilst trying to locate the pharmacy. I had foolishly thought it would be clearly sign posted and had thus assured my doctor that I could find it, no problems. It wasn't and I couldn't, hence my flagging down Lurch for assistance. He was happy for the interruption - his type always are - and dutifully informed me that a) the door was unmarked and secure and b) that I had just walked past it. I wasn't too happy that he then advised me to walk in front of his flatbed truck of a trolley till we got there but I figured hey, if he runs me down in an instantaneous, uncontrollable savant rage I was in the right place for it.

He wasn't wrong, on both counts. The place was locked down like a nuclear missile silo. I had to get through two intercom controlled doors but my god was it worth it, because inside, at least from what I could see from the little service window, the place was full of beautiful young women packing pills like some clandestine drug lab. Which of course it was! The reason for all the security suddenly became abundantly clear; I thought it might've been to keep any semi-determined P cook from ever finding the place in a drug fuelled raid, but no, it was to protect the gorgeous girls from Lurch and his homeboys.

In all seriousness though, it was one of those little moments in your life that you know you will never be able to explain in sufficient detail to anybody, ever. Why right now I have a chubby at the very thought of it but I bet you haven't.

Not all guys choose to have the 'burns chopped so unceremoniously half way up the head. It's one of those sick jokes that barber plays on their unsuspecting captive customers. If you have the pleasure of visiting a real barber and remember, real men do, then you really should avoiding saying "no" to the innocent sounding question "Are we keeping the sideburns sir?".

But at least you'll be asked. When you're ten and struggling to attract the opposite sex as it is the last thing you need is the setback of having white skin showing from the bowl cut down, something that doesn't cross the mind of the bastard with the clippers. If being taken to the barbers at 6am and having to spend the rest of the school day smelling of old man and the sanitiser the barbers cleaned their kit in wasn't bad enough!

They don't cut hair like that any more though and boys are reaping the rewards. Maybe that’s why 5000+ teenagers gave birth last year but god knows how. I was trawling through some Facebook photos of friends younger and far more attractive than myself - the only point of FB really - and I was absolutely blown away by the self presentation of the young 'gentlemen' on show. These guys haven't made the slightest bit of effort in getting ready for whatever piss up they're at and I can see why, the coherent state of the girls deteriorates well before I hit the second page of photos and that folks is why we have so many teen pregnancies in New Zealand.

That would never happen if you shave your son’s sideburns. Or your daughters for that matter. Trust me, I speak from experience.

Hello, is your daughter home?

The House Always Wins.

Discharge can be a dirty word, especially when used in the same sentence as ‘accidental’, ‘oily’ or ‘gusset’. But yesterday I had the only good type of discharge, the one from Ward 17.

And so ended the third admission of the year. I don’t mind admitting that the novelty has well and truly worn off and much like a movie trilogy that has gone one movie too far, I am fucken over this failure of my lungs to well, work.

I had it so good for so long, that’s the real kicker. Prior to this year I hadn’t had a hospital admission for something like 12 years. That’s unheard of for a person with my condition. Respected medical professionals couldn’t believe it when I told them; they had to have my file dug out of the archives just to confirm I was telling the truth. Lying about the length of time between admissions is rife, apparently.

Once word spread I was the hottest show in town; crippled folk were being wheeled into my room in the hope that my touch would cure them, children down in the paediatric ward were told of my exploits at bedtime so that they wouldn’t cry at night and in some far away third world country cave dwellers were etching my image on their stone walls using their own excrement.

But that’s now all gone down the shitter. My name is mud these days and I’m just ‘that guy again’. Even the eye candy was particularly disappointing this time round. Physiotherapy, for so long the home of the lost tribe of the Amazon women of the nursing profession, this time provided me with Conan, a six foot something young man who was surprisingly gentle for a fella his size. I never did get round to asking him why his Mum called him Conan but I was interested to know if it was because he was a big baby or did he feel he had to grow into the name? He was a cool guy though, despite not being a blonde with great boobs. In fact he couldn’t have been more far from it. He’s one of those chaps that look like he is wearing a woollen long sleeved sweater under his polo shirt. He is a hairy young man.

Even the tea lady didn’t even have to ask how I liked it anymore, she would just hand me the mug with a sigh. Incidentally the rumbling of the tea trolley was one of the few chances of a perv I got this time round, but only when Swedish Sofie was on shift. I think she had a twinkle in her eye every time she handed me a banana for morning tea which left me gagging to ask her if it was true what they say about Swedish girls – that they all love Abba? The one thing I dig about Nordic girls is that they really know their football and Sofie was no exception so we had many a chat regarding the state of play in the Euros.

But that was about it. The highlights were unfortunately few and far between. Maybe it was just a case of me having to be in a again so soon but the little quirks I laughed about the first two times really started to piss my off this visit. Nurses who couldn’t speak English at all well, then gave me the wrong medication, or left me waiting for due medication. Anybody who took the time to put the mandatory rubber gloves on, only to ruin the token effort by then thrusting their hands into dirty pockets or by touching dirty surfaces whilst wearing them. Other people’s nosy fucken visitors who simply can’t help but slip a few vertebrae craning their neck to see in your room and noisy, inconsiderate other patients who treated the ward like it was home. This is the shit that drives those that can afford it into private health care, but you shouldn’t have to pay twice for good health care in this country.

I thought that one of my night nurses fancied me – she was very giggly whenever she came into check on me. Admittedly I did have my top off; I was in bed after all and that’s usually enough to make anyone laugh. I told my wife about it last night and I think she’s still laughing hysterically even now. Apparently were I to post a topless pic of me on ‘hot or not’ I would only get two votes for ‘hot’ – hers and mine.

See I think staying in hospital is a bit like playing at a casino; you have a few nice nurses - a few nice wins - but at the end of the day its Arvin that gives you the bed bath and Conan who gets to pound you till you’re red in the face.

The house always wins in the end.

Stalag 17 - Life Behind The Wire

Hospital food gets a bad rap in my opinion which is a shame because it’s good, honest, reliable food. It is the steady shag of the culinary world. It might not be the best looking girl at the party but it’s the one you’ll end up going home with.

Nutritionally I reckon it would be better than most of the food we eat too. Taking a dump was never as easy as it is when you’re on hospital food. Almost too easy. I wonder if they lace the stuff with laxatives, the benefits of which would be twofold; patients get a good ring clean every day and the nurses have something to do between talking about what happened on Greys Anatomy last night by having to clean up those that can’t get out of their beds in time.

I never get enough to eat though so I supplement my menu with processed crap from the real world which always comes out looking the same as it went in. It’s made for some impressive flatulence too, this mixture of nutritional and garbage. All weekend I’ve unleashed the fury from my bed like an old man physically incapable of keeping it in even if he tried. I figure if you can’t fart loud and proud whilst in the hozzie where can you aye? I was quite impressed with my crescendo of the puckered anus right up till the moment I happened to make my way out to the kitchen and realised that an attractive young nursing student had been camped outside the door of my neighbour, only meters away, the whole day. Bugger.

My neighbour has some sort of round the clock suicide watch thing happening, hence the student outside her door 24 / 7. She sleeps most of the time but spends the rest of it calling at the top of her tiny old lungs for her daughter to come rescue her from the kidnapping she believes she’s caught up in. Ms Conspiracy Theory doesn’t appear to have a high opinion of the nurses that are trying to help her either and likes to claim that they are assaulting her. It’s amusing the first few times you hear, a bit sad the next few times and just downright annoying every other time after that. Perhaps the 24 / 7 watch is to protect her from the other patients sick of the performance?

Maybe she thinks she’s in a prison camp. There are some similarities I’ve noticed. Including an ‘us’ and ‘them’ attitude which cultivates camaraderie between patients who only really have the one thing in common – none of us want to be here. It’s a camaraderie that has people who probably wouldn’t otherwise look twice at their neighbour lean over to ask ‘how long you in here for’ or ‘where did you get hit’ or even ‘fancy a shared shower’.

It’s the same bond that has a morbidly obese guy in a revealing hospital gown and pink cardigan lurch into your room one morning whilst half way through a bowl of cornflakes to ask if you know who won the rugby. I didn’t as it happened but I suspect it was all code speak anyway and what he was actually letting me know was that tonight was the night of the big break out. I seriously hope the escape committee has a backup plan to tunnelling though because we’re seven stories up.

I have mixed memories of school camps as it happens. I was quite the sick boy back in my youth – not the deaf dumb blind kid who got leukaemia for Christmas sick – but only marginally better than I seem to be these days, so camping in a tent was not allowed. As decreed by my mother, the master respiratory consultant and authority on everything. So I had to bunk with the men. Two problems with this; Sleeping in a cabin is not really camping and the only time that that little arrangement is going to be beneficial to everybody is when you’re out camping with the American Man Boy Love Association (AMBLA).

No really, it exists, Google it. I dare you. Then sit back and wait for the authorities to arrive.

My one lasting positive memory of anything camp is that it led to quite possibly the first ever instant erection I can recall having. I was about 10 and the night before it had rained so heavy that the girls were all forced from their tents into the main hall of the camping area. Now me being a farm boy I was accustomed to an early rise and an early mug of tea so I had left the AMBLA cabin and made my way over to the main hall where the kitchen was located. Imagine my surprise – and arousal – to find 30 odd girls in the various stages of dress and undress that usually accompany getting dressed in the morning. Needless to say my head wasn’t the only big hairy thing sticking out of my jammies that morning.

Well it was actually because I was only ten and given that I would prove to be a late bloomer, I had quite the bald man purse right up till about the age of 17. I was never so ashamed to shower with my undies on after footy mind you, I simply waited till I got home to shower. Little did I know, back then, that several years later I would go on to remove all hair from the area willingly.

Sure made it look bigger though.

Mr Angry Checks In

My son’s school is peddling lipstick as its latest fundraiser. No seriously. Why? Because every woman uses lippy – or so says the pamphlet that came with it. Now I think we all know that isn’t the case but what an interesting train of thought to use when deciding what to use as your next fundraiser. All women poop too, so how bout fundraiser two ply?

It’ll never catch on but I’m wondering just how far they’ll go to get their hands on our money. Back in my day our fundraising consisted of selling calendars, school ones at that, which every relative would buy so that no matter where you went whilst on your holidays, you’d be reminder of school whilst you took a slash in Aunty or Grandmas carzie. Now it’s chocolates, hot cross buns, pastries and cosmetics. Next week it will be strap-ons and anal beads. Engraved with the school logo for your pleasure!

And I’m sure we only did the fundraiser thing once a year. Now it’s every other week. But then that’s the financial situation that most public schools find themselves in these days – in the red. They literally have to raise tens of, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own accord just to keep running. Now this is election year and we’ve already started getting fired up about just how big a tax cut we should all get but I reckon there is a more important question to be asked; What’s happening to the taxes that we pay because they sure as fuck don’t seem to be getting through to the places we expect them to go?! Like schools, cops and hospitals.

Don’t start me on hospitals. My week long gestation on the couch at home came to an end this week when I finally got the call up to return to Ward 17, the ward with the higher mortality rate than Ward 16, the ward where they put the people on deaths door. Go figure. Now I realise this place isn’t a hotel, but I can’t help but feel that when you’ve been given a time and date to show up the least the buggers could do is have a bed ready for you. They knew I was coming dammit; it was hardly a surprise admission! Terribly selfish of me to think that I know but that’s just how I roll.

Now four hours is a long time. It’s even longer when you have to spend half of it sitting alone in an empty triage room waiting for a bed to become available. Those rooms always look cool on TV, like in ER and shit, but there are exceptionally boring in real life. Even I was to open all the bagged up tubing and start a colonic irrigation on myself it would still be boring. Cleansing, but boring.

I spent the other two hours in the TV room where I was able to share in the delightful presence that was Andre. Andre is one of those guys that got himself heavily tattooed up and down the arms as soon as he was legally allowed to because it made him look like a hard bastard. Then he shaved his head and spent the next 20 years listening to Judas Priest to remind himself of just how hard a hard bastard he was. Now pushing 50, he still shaves his head, wears a puffy vest over a small boys tee-shirt despite it being freezing outside just so you know that he’s still a hard bastard. He no longer looks hard mind you, he looks like a scrotum, only with tattoos.

He likes to use the words ‘shit’ and ‘its fucked’ a lot, mainly when referring to the state of his cellphone and especially when in the presence of his mother who has to be pushing 70 just to remind her how hard he is. She didn’t seem to mind that young Andre has developed a bit of a potty mouth and infact promised to take him out for a roast dinner at the local takeaway. It doesn’t get much more hard than mum taking you out for a roast tea that’s for sure. Andre – as you may now have deduced – is a Mummy’s boy and is not at all hard. He does manage to succeed in pulling of a look though, the look of a fuckwit.

So needless to say the first day back was not a good one and any troubles I might have had in firing up the Mr Angry persona I was hoping to bring with me were gone in the first five minutes. Since then – and I write this on day two – I’ve even managed to piss off some hoighty toighty theatre staff by not being on the premises when they called for me. I had left the building and was actually on the sideline coaching my sons soccer team because personally and this might just be me, but I find stuff like that a tad more intrinsically rewarding than sitting around waiting to have a tube shoved up my arm.

I had four hours free yesterday in which they could have done that!

Angry Old Men, Alsatians & Pink Triangles

The Ten tenors are coming to town I notice. First question then; Why the fark is there ten of them?

Admittedly my working knowledge of opera is akin to that of my working knowledge of vaginal thrush – I’d rather not know - but ten fat buggers all singing the same song sounds a lot like a ‘choir’ to me. Three or four fat buggers singing the same song I can somewhat understand, but ten reads a little too much like ‘ten reasons to hike the price up’ as far as I’m concerned.

Anyhoo, my lungs have this week decided to revert back to the capacity of a 90 year old man and I was due to be back in Chateau Capital Coast Health today and not writing this. My specialist was all ready to admit me after our latest consultation until he was told by the Bed Manager that there was a "Code Red" in the hospital at that time. Given that the Westpac helicopter was landing on the roof fortuitously at that moment I half expected to see the Vietcong making their way up the hallway right then and there but no - apparently a "Code Red" in the hospital means 'we have no beds free’ – and not Charlie has broken through the wire.

So I was sent home with a fistful of oral antibiotics and strict instructions to rest until someone karks it or leaves when I can then have their bed. I'd prefer it was the latter really but when you’ve suffered the ignominy of being rejected by a taxpayer funded public hospital – a bigger social burn than being dumped on Facebook – I guess you take what you get. I reckon the local homeless shelter would have had a bed free last night, so what does that say about our health care system aye?

But I’m not too fussed really, I prefer a few days on the couch at home with a big bag of Twisties than I do a few days in a hospital room doing the same. It’s the whole white linen thing really because Twistie prints seldom come out in the wash when on white linen. Incidentally I only ever buy Twisties for the articles. Funny, my wife reckons that I should refrain from writing about wanking all the time because it makes me out to sound like I’m a wanker. Which it would really wouldn’t it? I did suggest that to alleviate this perception I could write about her wanking me off but the response I got was lukewarm to say the least.

I had already decided that seeing as my body was playing old again I would too. This visit – once the hospital hits Code Amber and Charlie has been forced back to the tree line – will be my ‘angry’ visit. I’ve done the ‘happy’ and the ‘philosophical’ visit so the next step in the process is the ‘angry’ visit. I plan to answer every question with an annoyed answer of “whatever". I’m planning to blame everything, including the fact that I’ve soiled myself again, despite being perfectly capable of making my way to the toilet, on the Japs and the young people of today. I plan to cross the road at inappropriate places at inappropriate times. I plan to have the volume setting on my TV always at its loudest despite appearing to be asleep. I also intend making salacious comments to anything in a skirt - but then I already do that anyway.

Interesting isn’t it that you can do antibiotics orally and intravenously but not anally? Just goes to show that even the medical community doesn’t think you should be whacking anything up there, except maybe a suppository which is used to make you poop. Nuff said I reckon.

Speaking of bum fun, I had to laugh when seeing the one of the local lesbian councillors on TV last night complaining about the named and shamed taggers who have to wear pink vests when cleaning up their artwork. She reckoned that because ‘pink’ is commonly associated with being ‘gay’ then it’s like gays having to wear pink triangles back in Nazi Germany. News to me because I thought pink was a Tom Cruise colour and that he invented it?

Now you know that anytime someone starts comparing something back to the Holocaust that they do so because they don’t actually have a case to argue and they’re looking for the sympathy vote. Not that I’m gay bashing the councillor, but I know several lesbians whom I’m pretty sure would have not made the same link as her and I’m pretty sure that even now the comparison has been made, probably still don’t give a shit.

Now German Shepherds had it really tough after the war. People even called them Alsatians so as not to even refer to them as being German! Heaven forbid any post war Alsatian that followed its instinct and sniffed the crutch of some unsuspecting passer by without being portrayed as some testicle hungry, foaming at the mouth, devils dog named Kahn or Gunga, being held back by some 6 foot four foaming at the mouth Aryan psychopath named Kahn or Gunga. Thankfully that all changed in the sixties and seventies when ‘The Littlest Hobo’ TV shows were on air and everybody forgot why they were angry with German Shepherds in the first place.

Any way, make the taggers clean their crap up whilst in the nude I reckon. Their handiwork always looks as unattractive as I imagine a pale, semi-naked homie clad only in a pink vest would look like.

The youth of today huh?! They’re as bad as those bloody Japs!

Fancy A Wank?

You’d think that spending 10 days flat out on your back would be the perfect time to have a wank wouldn’t you? Well you’d be wrong. I imagine that when the guy who thought up the whole idea of hospitals came up with the concept he probably had masturbation on his mind, but I’m unconvinced at this point in time that he was pro-wank. Consider the following:

1. The whole concept of hospital is like a dream. Its all white, you’re always in bed, you have loads of alone time and mostly attractive young ladies tend to your every need. Very wanky.

2. Unfortunately the curtains in each room are half a meter too short so they never quite reach all the way across so that even were you to have a quick one, thus filling in some of that alone time, chances are you’d be watched. Anti-wank design that one.

3. Theres lots of touchy feely examinations that take place. If you’re lucky, it’s a sheila. Lovely, that will keep you going for a few days.

4. If you’re not, it’s a dude. Bugger.

5. The beds themselves go up and down, up and down. Very wanky. Infact the tip of your bed can be raised. Your bed can have an erection too!

6. But the sheets on the beds are so thin that no matter what position you lie in it looks like you’ve got a stiffy! I tried lying on my stomach but that just gave me a stiffy. If you wake each morning with one then the first person to see it is likely to be the cleaner and she’s more prone to whack it down with her mop. Not very wanky at all.

7. Every hand basin in the place is at teste height. Every tap is at chest height. It might make life easier for surgeons who want to scrub up to their elbows but for everybody else they just end up splashing water all over your crutch which can look like you just had a wank. Or that you wet yourself. Neither is a turn on really.

8. Similarly every food item that you get for lunch or tea that is white and lives in a punnet, like ice cream, will as a rule, explode all over you as you pull back the lid. Inexplicably it will cover your nether regions making it look too all and sundry like you just had a wank. Nothing worse than looking like you’ve just had one when you never did.

9. The paper towels rip off in 47 separate pieces all about the size of a potato chip, so you can’t even clean up the above. Frantically trying to wipe off white creamy stuff with broken tissue just makes the whole scene look more suss than it even is.

10. Finally, even in the case of an emergency such as a fire, there are masturbatory connotations as this sign indicates. Now I'd be confused. Do I help put out the fire or have a wank....?

Back On The Wards

Regular visitors to Clubdes – yes, all four of you – will have noticed that the right hand side of this page hasn’t been updated this week. Rest assured its not through lack of inspiration because we at ClubDes are blessed with a fertile mind, unfortunately the body is not so well endowed. Except for the huge chopper that is.

So we’re back on the wards for another 10 days of fun filled excitement in what I like to think was a pre-planned sabotage of my last course of treatment by all the hot nurses who never got to give me the bed bath they were all clearly gagging for. That’s my story anyway and I’m sticking to it. Coincidentally, although I’m on a different ward this time round, I did notice my old murse Arvind had transferred wards too and he still has that glint in his eye…

It was quite the surprise to find that I was no longer on the ward where all the cool kids hang out. It was even more of a surprise to find that Ward 16 has a higher mortality rate than 17. Considering that two people died on my last visit to Ward 17 I’ve been expecting to witness a steady stream of bodies to start trucking their way past my room each day. It hasn’t eventuated and to date there have been no deaths which is even more amazing considering that in the week that I’ve been there I’ve been given the wrong medication - not once, but twice - and have even been ‘misplaced’ by my duty nurse. Admittedly I was on my bed the whole time but my room is a big place, I can see how she missed me there.

Infact it’s been all rather quiet and dare I say it – peaceful. That was until the lady with explosive diarrhea moved into the room next to me and started using the bathroom we share. There’s nothing quite as invigorating as hearing someone ablute throughout the day, especially when it sounds like they’re exploding every time they take a dump. To her credit though, despite sounding like a espresso machine on steroids, I never found the toilet in such a state as to look like one, so she either cleaned up big time or it was all for show. Thankfully her stay was a short one and my carzie has returned to sole occupancy.

The Beijing Olympic committee is my other neighbors. An elderly Asian lady is in Room 1 and true to form, so are 47 members of her immediate family. My Chinese is not what it should be but they seem to be coping well despite the space restrictions. I'm best placed for when the food starts cooking though, I'll be first in line for a Number 5 and some wantons.

What a multicultural world we live in aye? Why at this very moment I am typing this in an Internet cafe run by a Somalian couple. They run the wig and hair extension shop next door too which is handy really because I'm in the market for some braids. Unfortunately I still have the remnants of the ADHD boy haircut my wife gave me a few weeks back so it's going to have to be my pubes this time round.

Back on the ward there is a large Maori nurse that spends her evenings phoning the whanau from the front desk right outside my room and speaks to all 23 of them in turn. Sometimes they discuss the content of the Ngati Porou website she spends the rest of her shift surfing. And I can’t forget the Chuman who bought me mandarins (the fruit, not the people) on his visit with the Help Desk Massive last week.

So it’s fair to say that yet again, it’s been emotional. I can’t say that I’ve found this visit quite as inspirational as the last but I have had a few small highlights, my sexy blue eyed blonde Saffa physio, Sam, being one.

She’s worth getting sick again for.

Taking In The Sites of Ward 17

You sure do see some sights in hospital, especially when your room is first cab of the rank and every bugger walks by you to enter the ward.

The upside is that every hot young doctor / nurse / physio has to pass by several times a day, the downside is having every prick take a good long look in trying to see if what you’ve got is any worse than the poor soul they’re coming to see. It’s like some bizarre show and tell for the sick and infirm. Two people died whilst I was there too – I shit you not. That’s taking the game too far I reckon.

But I got my own back. In the morning, as the sun came streaming into my room, I would pull the curtain across the room and delicate poise my daily banana ration between the thighs. It made quite the silhouette I’m told. Other times I would simply lay starkers on my bed pretending to be asleep, or take leisurely strolls up and down the ward after a shower, clad only in a flannel, pretending to look for a towel.

But then you do things like that to pass the time. My wife and I had the most insightful conversations whilst sitting in the various waiting rooms for the various tests, answering the tough questions of life like: If you had to have only the one tube used but inserted into the nose, mouth, anus and urethra - what order would you have them do it in?

Sometimes I didn’t even have to make shit up. A Canadian guy, an orderly, came and took me to x-ray this one night. He spent the entire trip there waxing on about how hot the nurses were on my ward, especially the “cute little blond one with the tight ass”. Quite how he knew the circumference of her sphincter I don’t know because he was hardly Mr Personality or indeed Mr Physical Fitness so I seriously doubt he had ever had the pleasure. And to think that I thought it was his torch or something that keep banging the back of my wheelchair.

Another orderly, the one who looked like he had stepped straight out of a Huey Lewis and the News music video used to stand outside my window and fog it up whilst trying to watch the sports news on my TV. Now I liked to be watched by strange men as much as the next guy, but I would always make a point of waving him into the doorway but the moment I did his pager would always inevitably go off – as did he. Poor guy must have had tourettes or something cause he swore like a sailor. Which probably did nothing for the elderly lady on deaths door in the room next to me either but you never know, it might've been quite soothing. She probably got a lot of that back in her era, when men only had to tell their bitches the once.

The guy who came to empty my rubbish bins was one of those salt of the earth guys who is just simple enough to do the shitty job but enjoys it and takes pride in his work. I don’t think I’ve met anyone quite as excited to see a full rubbish bag or know so much about the literage of a plastic bag. Infact it made him so happy I seriously considered cacking in mine just so I could ring him and let him know it needed changing again. I thought I’d blown it though the day he came round after I had just taken an almighty high fibre diet induced dump in my en suite, but it didn’t seem to bother him, quite the contrary, he went back in twice that morning to check the bin he’d just emptied.

By far the funniest thing I’ve seen in a medical sense though was some years ago whilst waiting to have a blood test one Saturday morning at Valley Diagnostic, the place you go for all sorts of tests and the place where you can drop of all manner of samples. This old guy rocks up with a rather large brown paper bag. He’d obviously been told he needed to bring in a stool sample – but why bring a sample when you can bring the whole stool? Which he had, muddy water and all, inside one of those big preserving jars that your Grandad always kept his pickled onions in. The chick at the counter wasn’t phased in the slightest; she was probably just relieved he took the time to put it in a jar for her.

Now the question I’ve always asked myself is did he poop and scoop, or did he precision aim that sucker straight into the jar…..?

Fancy a Twistie Nurse?

A man can get through a lot of thinking when spending two weeks hold up in a hospital. He can get through a lot of masturbation too, especially when he has a resourceful mate like DougalMac who smuggles him in a stickmag and a jumbo bag of Twisties*.

The thought occurred to me whilst in there, that hospital life is in some ways much like what I imagine prison life to be. Basic, almost primal, metaphorically speaking. In both institutions, life is stripped back to the most simplistic of human instincts; survival. In both places who or what you are on the outside is irrelevant because it doesn’t count for anything once you’re in there. Hospitals are the most maternal of places - for most of us life starts in one and for most of us life will also end in one. The circle of life at it’s simplest really, the exiled programme returns to its source. If you’re not in hospital to die then you’re probably there to be healed, like a child returning to its Mother because it’s hurt itself in the playground that is life.

It’s really some deep shit when you think about it and I did, whilst on some pretty good drugs I might add.

There’s no fearing the shower in hospital of course. Any bum fun whilst going about your ablutions is going to have to be either a) of your own making, or b) if you’re the bedridden type patient who has assisted showers, you may be able to sweet talk the nurse into giving you a cheeky ring finger before she’s done. I did ask actually, but none of the female nurses were up for it. Murse Arvin on the other hand had a mischievous glint in his eye. I always made sure to shower before his shift started. Incidentally liquid soap is on offer in hospital showers, which struck me as a great idea for prisons, as it would take away that whole mystique of ‘dropping the soap’. Probably wouldn’t make much difference though, I suspect a resourceful buggerer would still find a use for liquid soap….

Nurses have a tough profession. Not only are they chronically understaffed and underpaid - like so many of our essential government services – but they do a job that is potentially, intrinsically speaking, void of fulfilment. Their daily work is to care for people who are at the very lowest ebb of their being, people who are sick, needy and a pale version of their true self. A nurse’s job is only done when that person is fit and well enough to leave and return to their normal lives again, meaning that there’s a good chance that the Nurse never really got to know or see the person for who they really were at all, despite having just been a surrogate mother of sorts to them whilst they regained their health. It’s a thankless job really.

I told you the drugs were good, this is some of my best work.

Now being in full control of all my faculties I was able to chat with all my nurses at length and they loved it. I can only imagine that they don’t get a lot of chances to talk about stuff of genuine interest - whether it be about themselves, their families, their work or just shit on TV - when you’re changing the sheets at 2am on the old lady next door who has soiled herself again, or propping up the morbidly obese smoker guy in the shower each morning. The nursing students in particular were gagging for conversation; they spent most of their time so petrified that they were going to fuck up taking my blood pressure and temperature that any distraction for them was a welcome one.

Nurses, like Cops, are a resource that we woefully undervalue. Why do we let successive politicians and governments continue to neglect the very people who do the jobs that are so essential to the wellbeing of society? Half of my nurse force was from Asia, from countries like the Philippines and Malaysia, that are subject to recruitment drives by our district health boards because there’s just no staff to be found here. Admittedly the career choices for young women in New Zealand these days are huge and nursing is not the bastion of potential employment it once was, but you have to believe that if Nurses were paid better and given the kind of resources you and I, the office wasters, have each day, then overseas recruitment would be minimal. Meanwhile, seven fat parliamentarians with small peckers – even the ladies –are off on an all expenses paid trip to Europe at the cost of two new Nurses. Go figure.

We could sure do with some more lookers on the wards too. Oh there were a few alright, but ironically I only ever had a ridicously good looking nurse on the night shift. Whilst I was asleep! Physiotherapy on the other hand is a branch of medicine that is blessed with more than it’s share of attractive young ladies, many of whom I am sure signed on so that they could end up squeezing the hips, thighs and buttocks of many a buff athlete. Instead what they got for the last 10 days was old ClubDes with his dodgy lungs and an orange stiffy under the ever so thin bed sheet. Oh yeah.

Actually my physio was an Asian man with eczema. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried, the drugs weren’t so good that I could hallucinate him into a blue eyed blonde girl with soft, curious hands.

*Alas, DougalMac’s fine efforts were in vain. Unfortunately print porn stopped doing it for me back in my teens, but the articles in the mag were actually quite good - I kid you not – so it wasn’t a complete waste. My wife ate the whole bag of Twisties too and rather disappointingly never once offered to give me a wank.

Ready for a Sponge Bath?

We’re taking a break here at ClubDes for the next few weeks due to unforeseen circumstances on the health front. Unfortunately the Architect didn’t bless this particular Matrix program with an All Black physique so I am in need of some running repairs to this life support system for a massive penis that others refer to as a body. And to think you wondered where I put all that food I eat aye?

Anyhoo, as the always accurate reflection of real life - the porno - would tell us, I will be spending the next few days with nurses that look like this



So it won’t be all bad. I’m not sure if they have internet at Chateaus Capital Coast Health but if they do I’ll probably be using it for porn, but I may get a posting in here and there because you never know, sharing a beige coloured room with five other men that cough, fart, snore and dribble their hours away may provide some inspiration. Then again it may not.

And no Bruiser, I am not going in for a sex change. You wish big boy, you wish.