Three weeks ago I lifted a bag of photo gear with terrible form (always always always lift with the knees) and felt something pop. The result of this pop was a pain that stayed with me every waking second of every single day. If you are a fella, make a loose fist and just sort of tap your right ball with it. Smarts for a few seconds, right? Now multiply that sensation by 30,000 minutes and you will understand my own personal, groinal hell.

By minute 30,001 I was pretty sure I’d given myself a hernia. My doctor confirmed it and referred me to a specialist surgeon to fix the problem. BORING EXPLANATORY PART YOU CAN SKIP IF YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT A HERNIA IS There are a set of muscles that hold in the intestines. They’ve got some latin name, but we both know you’re not going to remember it so let’s just move on. If you tear one of these muscles then the organs on the inside start to poke out and that’s what causes the pain. The tear gets worse and worse the longer you go without surgerizing it (especially if you’ve got a job where you’re lugging heavy gear around on a daily basis). The way the surgery works is they make an incision in your abdomen (tummy) and graft a little teensy mesh thing onto the hole. Eventually the mesh will be absorbed into your body by which point the hole will be all gone. I only get into this because every one of my friends was convinced that my balls were messed up and that I was having a ball operation. Sadly, not the case.

I had the surgery this past Tuesday. The staff in the OR agreed to take pictures with my camera for me once I’d been thoroughly konked. I sort of thought they’d be put off by the request, but I guess when your job is to drug another human, slice open his belly, and insert tiny bio-absorbable screens into his muscleage, it’s pretty hard to “weird” you out.

The last two things I remember before going under are the surgeon saying, “I’m putting on Joss Stone,” and then the wacky anesthesiologist with a thick Eastern European accent saying, “I am going to give you the good stuff before you fall asleep since you are an artist. This is not for everybody, just for you the artist. You’ll feel so good on this stuff you’ll come back for to me just for more of this”. I have no idea exactly what I was responding with at this point, but I feel safe in saying it was something to the effect of “yyyyyyeah mannnnnnn let’s parrrrrtyyyyyyy SLURRRRRRRRRR” followed immediately by lights out.

I figured the nurse would take like one or two pictures and that would be that, but she really went for it. I told her beforehand “i don’t care how gnarly it gets, just shoot everything”, but never did I expect a whole roll of film filled with close ups, wide shots, different angles, funny posing, them messing with my drugged-ass, me looking like I am dead, and so on… Stunning. I could not be more proud of her. Keep in mind that this photo shoot does not exist to me.

The next step was three days of recovery at home. I am writing this during the tail end of that. Kinda boring actually. First it hurt like violent stabbing from hell that I cannot even describe, then it hurt less, and soon it will stop hurting completely. Oh, and while I was under, they shaved my pubes off. Total bonus.