Gall Bladder

Blue Rock Station,
1190 Virginia Ridge Rd.
Philo Ohio 43771 USA
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It's Either Your Master Cylinder or Your Gallbladder

Two events took place in my life in recent weeks, and the ironic similarities were almost scary.

The first was that my poor old 1984 VW rabbit diesel had some brake problems and I had to take it to the garage. The second occurred when my wife doubled over with severe back pains and I rushed her to the emergency room.

Those of you who are married already know that I am in deep do-do with this analogy, but let's move forward nonetheless. I swear that the similarities were not between my wife and the car (watch as I dig an even deeper hole for myself) but rather with the way I was treated at both locations.

If you think about it, a garage and an emergency room are very similar. They are both staffed with many people, but only one really knows what he/she is doing. The others simply stand around and mumble. In the garage, the knowledgeable guy is named Chuck or Gus. In the hospital... it is Dr. Sidhartmandrumindum or Nurse Gladys. Every other person hanging around is either some distressed individual in search of help or a glacial former state employee whose sole function is to hand you form after form, which you must fill out as you leak oil or blood (depending on location), and then the forms are promptly lost before Gus or Gladys ever gets a chance to glance at them.

When I arrived at the garage, I told the head paper-pusher the symptoms. The brake pedal hits the floor as I cover my eyes, sure that I am about to hit that semi-truck that just slammed on his breaks in front of me. They call for Gus.

"Sounds like the master cylinder," Gus says with conviction.

At the hospital we went through a similar routine.

"Kidney stones," Nurse Gladys said, expressing no doubt.

Now the funny thing is, neither of these individuals even touched the patient before making their diagnosis. And, as it turns out, both were wrong. The fact that they were wrong, however, didn't impact the course of treatment in either case, not in the slightest.

The garage took out the master cylinder and called Matt at the parts store to run over with a new one. Matt came over about 45 minutes later with two replacements. Unfortunately, neither fit my fancy German import. After about two hours of searching the town, Gus gave up and put the old master cylinder back in.

At the hospital, they prodded and poked and took about seven gallons of blood. After about four hours, Nurse Gladys came back saying that the kidney that hurt looked fine, but the other one was kind of iffy. The end result...take some aspirin and hope the pain goes away.

There were some critical differences, however. The garage had chairs to sit in, calendars of semi-nude women hanging on the wall and even a soda machine served "YooHoo." The hospital only had a pamphlet on venereal disease and a sign that told us that the cafeteria would open at midnight.

There was another major difference. After Gus put the old master cylinder back on, I asked him how much I owed.

"Shoot," Gus muttered, "We didn't fix nothin' so we ain't gonna charge ya nothin'."

The hospital sent me a bill for $1,500.

written by Jay Warmke - October, 1997