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Alotta Lip About my Hip
Alotta lip about my hip
On paper, phone, computer-drive.
The new one at my femur’s tip
Has generated verbal jive
Beyond my wits. I can’t contrive
The need for queries they should skip.
I’ve been forever asked of these:
“How is your pain? Drive you insane?”
“What is your birthday, if you please?”
“How are your bowels? Please ascertain!”
“Of breathing woes do you complain?”
Oh, Geez! Ask me no more, Louise!
And though I answer, ‘tis a chore
To scatter answers to and fro!
And just then, when the question-store
Went bare, I heard one final go:
“Now have you any questions?” “No!
Because you’ve asked them all before!”
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I Got Another Hip
I got another hip that gave me pain.
Now that makes two, if figures do not lie.
And listen here, I certainly disdain
The way I feel (Life sometimes goes awry!)
Until I heal. The pain meds make me high—
I swoon in stupefaction, half insane.
One day I’m fine; the next, I feel like crap;
The next, I’m well again—until I’m not.
And so goes healing’s harsh, tumultuous trap
Until I get to where I think I ought.
This stupefying Gordian-like knot
Will hopefully upon its own unwrap!
But in the meantime I am mystified
As though the elements of axial
And appendicular constructions chide
Each other, hosting tensions tactual.
Say I to me, “Suspend this push and pull!”
Distress abates—their next combat they mull!
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Jeff Kemper has been a biology teacher, biblical studies instructor, editor, and painting contractor. He lives in York County, Pennsylvania.
As one who has been through one such procedure I had to laugh, particularly at the questions. The nurse gave me three words to remember for a few minutes until asked what they were. That was a couple of years ago and I still remember “refrigerator, banana, and sun.”
That’s funny! I never remember those questions. Glad I could give you a laugh or two.
Jeff, best wishes as the tumult of healing subsides, and the new hip becomes comfortably functional. Your putting good rhymes in the right places bodes well for future footwork. The poems offer a somewhat confused give-and-take to characterize coming through the operation and gradually re-learning old skills with new equipment.
Thanks, Margaret. Actually over a decade ago. I still can’t get over what a difference an artificial hip still makes today!
Glad the replacement was so successful, Jeff. Enjoyed the poems. Hopefully that’s as close as I will ever get to the procedure.