piano, piano

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I've never written a blog before. Here it goes.
Have you ever stepped up to a vending machine and you had to select what you wanted by selecting a combination of letters and numbers? And no matter what letter or number combination you plugged in, you still got this skunky chocolate bar that you didn't want. Well, that's kind of how some of my month in Europe has gone.
Still, the good outweighs the not so hot. And generally, the lessons to be learned were valuable. Let me tell you about my favorite lesson. I HAD GALL BLADDER ATTACK and was taken to Assisi hospital by my family. I think it was a Sunday night. Then began the comedy of errors. The emergency door was locked. This was not a good sign. We finally caught a guy's attention. He motioned that we needed to move around to the garage door. So we did. That led us into a corridor with another locked door. The guy in the green scrubs opened the door about six inches, said something in Italian. Everyone started talking at once. He held his hands up as if to say, “Okay, okay!” and led us in. Then he disappeared and we began to wait. This went on and on with various people popping their heads in and out to see if we were still there. Half my family was stuck in the waiting room. And someone exited from the inner sanctum where things apparently got attention. And I managed to slip in. I sat on a bench in the hall. After several people walked by me back and forth, and ignored me, I finally got someone's attention and things began to move. Much Italian was being spoken. And they seemed to be discussing what to do with me. Finally, an orderly put me in a wheelchair and took me somewhere through a maze of halls, everyone talking in Italian all at once. They rolled me into the examination room.
The doctor came in. He spoke a little bit of English and told me to get up on the table. Before I tell you what happened next, it might be helpful to understand what a gall bladder attack feels like. It hurts. Your entire stomach area and abdomen is in pain. Now, back to the doctor. He immediately started groping my stomach area. This hurt. Finally, he found one spot in particular, motioned for me to take a deep breath, and then he jammed his hand really hard in this one spot, that definitely found the problem. He was happy.
He reached for his ultrasound paddle, greased me up, greased the paddle up, and proceeded to play, 'Let's see what's on TV'. He was happy. He pointed at a big stone, and an inflamed gall bladder. He was proud. If I could have given birth to the stone at the moment, he would have been delighted and named it. Probably Tony. I'll skip the next details, but I found myself in a hospital room shortly thereafter.
They stuck me on a pile of pain killers and an IV. And the next morning, the doctor on that ward started examining me. He was speaking in Italian and moving his hands over my stomach like a magician waves his hands over a hat waiting for the rabbit to come out. And he kept saying, “Piano, piano.” This became our mantra for the rest of the trip. My remainder of stay in the hospital was to calm down the inflammation needed to subside. Piano, piano.
The lesson we learned from this entire experience was to live life piano, piano.

Yours Truly,

Steve

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