The Old Demon - The Penile Implant Pt. 2

Upon hearing the words, “I’m in trouble,” I immediately picked up the phone and called my father to find out exactly what was going on.

When he answered, he struggled to breathe, and his breath was weak.

“Dad, what happened? Are you okay?”

“No. I feel like shit,” he said. “I can’t eat, and I can’t keep my eyes open.”

“Why don’t you call 9-1-1?” I offered.

He immediately waved away the suggestion. “No, I don’t need that.”

What did he need? At that point, I didn’t know. I had no choice but to drop everything and head down south to the Mexican border, where he lived.

Just a little recap for you. My father, the old demon, at age eighty-two, had just undergone an elective procedure to install a penile implant to help him achieve a reliable erection.

His procedure included two key components. First, two inflatable tubes were inserted inside his penis on either side of his urethra. Second, a saline-filled bag was positioned in his abdominal cavity. This bag allowed fluid release into the tubes through a control activation within my father’s ball sack.

Too much? It’s science.

Now, where did we leave off? Oh, right. He called me approximately two weeks later and told me he was in some kind of medical distress.

I can’t stress enough that my father never complained about pain. He might tell you he was feeling pain somewhere in his body, but he simply got on with it. So, when my father told me he was in trouble, I knew it was bad.

A man in his eighties, living alone without family nearby during a medical crisis must have been scary for him. He wasn’t totally alone. There were dogs. He always had a dog or two at his side. It was a great comfort to me knowing he had his furry companions with him. He loved them more than anything in his life, and they loved him back. The dogs, however, cannot do what I can do, which is to move into action to save him from himself.

I raced down the interstate toward his house. He lived in a cozy, hilly neighborhood in Chula Vista. It was an enclave of mostly Latinos and Spanish-speaking residents.

When I arrived, I parked my car out front and sat quietly for a moment to steel myself. I needed to put on my mental armor. Once fully outfitted, I walked inside the house to find him sitting in his chair, looking miserable.

“How’re you feeling?” I asked.

“The same. I feel like death,” he answered.

I felt his forehead, and he wasn’t feverish, but clammy. He hadn’t really eaten beyond a discarded attempt at breakfast and some coffee. It was pretty clear to me he was going to need to see a doctor. To be fair, it would have been pretty clear to anybody.

There is something you need to understand about my father and his generation. The very nature of his call meant he knew he needed medical intervention, but I couldn’t just force him into a car. He all but refused help from a doctor.

“What are they gonna do?” Was the only thing he would say. Of course, they would do a lot but years of dealing with him taught me I was gonna have to make this his idea.

I tried one more time. “Dad, I really think we need to get you to a doctor.”

He still wasn’t receptive to the idea.

You are probably asking yourself why a person would go through this charade. What exactly did he expect me to do when I came all the way down there? Why am I here, I thought?

No, this is going to take some Jedi mind shit. He was compos mentis and able to tell me exactly how he felt and what he wanted.

So, I bode my time. It was later in the evening, and my father announced he would be heading to bed. It occurred to me he might not wake up, and I would be faced with a corpse in the morning.

I did not sleep well that night in the guest bedroom. I never slept well while at my father’s place because the guest room was covered in dog hair and was either too hot or too cold. I refused to get under the covers because I was convinced there were spiders, fleas, bedbugs, god knows what else hiding beneath the surface. And mouse turds. Everywhere.

I eventually dropped off into unconsciousness and awoke to the sound of traffic driving down the street, pouring in from the open bedroom window.

I felt a bolt of anxiety race through my body. My mind was grinding back up to full speed. Then, a hint of relief.

I heard my father shifting around in the kitchen. Well, he was alive. That’s something, at least.

I got up and walked into the kitchen, but he had already made his way back to the den, where his chair and television were located. He kept the TV volume at about 85%, which was agreeable to him, but mind-ripping to anyone else. Once he noticed I was up, I physically muted the TV myself.

“How are you feeling this morning?” I asked. He looked no better and no worse than yesterday.

“The same.” He answered.

“Have you eaten?”

“No. I tried some coffee,” then shook his head.

It was crucial now to make my move. I thought it through during the night and was sure it was the way forward.

“Dad, you’re gonna need to show me something or we’re heading to the doctor. You understand?”

“Yeah,” he answered.

“Why don’t you try to eat something. Like a bottle of Ensure or something?”

“Yeah, I guess I could try that.”

I fetched the cold Ensure bottle from the fridge and opened it. I handed it to him.

He took a couple of long pulls from it and set it down. He made a face as though it was the worst thing he’d ever tasted. I monitored him to see how he fared.

It wasn’t long before I heard his stomach rumble, and a long, juicy fart erupted from the seat of his chair. He immediately moved into action.

“I need the toilet,” he said as he got up and staggered to the bathroom.

I followed him to make sure he didn’t fall and watched him make it to the toilet and close the door.

I waited. And waited. I gave him a reasonable amount of time to take care of business, then went to the cracked bathroom door

.

“Dad, are you okay?” I asked,

A long pause followed. Then, “No…”

I opened the door to find my father completely naked on the toilet with his head in his hands. He was only semi-conscious.

“Dad?” I asked.

No response. Whatever I said after that, he didn’t hear or comprehend. It was time.

“Dad, I’m calling the paramedics.”

No response.

I stepped out into the hall and dialed 911. When the operator answered, I explained the situation, and she told me she would send emergency services. I thanked her and returned to the old demon.

“Dad?” I asked. No response. I called out louder. “Dad!”

“Yeah?” he answered.

“I just called the paramedics. They’re on their way.”

“Nooooooooo!” my father cried. He said it in the most disappointed tone I’d ever heard. “I told you not to call them!”

“Dad!” I asserted. “I told you I needed you to show me something. You couldn’t, so here we are!”

My father, still naked, still on the toilet, looked pathetic. I felt an incredible feeling of empathy for him. This was no way to live. Then…

“You’re right. I know,” he mumbled.

When the paramedics arrived, I let them in and escorted them to the toilet where my father was sitting. They asked him several basic questions, but he was delirious at this point. They knew he needed to go to the emergency room to be checked out.

There was only one problem. My paramedics downgraded my father’s disposition to “biohazard mess.” He had soiled himself, and when they told him they needed to get him on a gurney, he informed them he wasn’t done shitting.

This changed things for them, but only slightly. Within seconds, they had brandished and put down a tarp of some kind onto which he was lowered and carried out of the bathroom onto the gurney, which was waiting in the hallway. Once securely on the gurney, they wrapped him up in the tarp like a biohazard burrito. They loaded him into the back of the ambulance, and I watched them shut the door.

The paramedic then told me which hospital they were taking him to and gave me some other details. I nodded and thanked him, and then he was gone.

I stood there in the street watching the ambulance drive away, and I sobbed uncontrollably.

And it wasn’t out of a sense of loss, or fear that my father would die, or anything like that.

I had an obvious sense that this was really all the built-up tension and stress finally being released. That a decision and an action were taken. The outpouring of emotion lasted about ten minutes, but remained just under the surface, waiting for another chance to escape.

By the time I arrived at the ER and had time to see my father, he was being treated by nurses, putting in IVs, drawing blood, and cleaning him up from his earlier “mess.”

They relied heavily on me to answer questions as he was in and out of consciousness. They asked about medications, his home situation, etc.

“You know,” one nurse asked, “When we were cleaning him up, we saw some surgical staples. Did he have surgery recently?”

Here we go. “Um, yes,” I answered.

“What kind of procedure?”

“Yeah, it was a penile implant.”

All the nurses stopped and turned to me at once. They thought I must be joking. When they saw I was serious, they looked at the old man in the bed, and their minds raced with the hows and whys. He was far from the picture of health. This scenario repeated itself a dozen times as shift changes brought in new staff, or specialists needed to be engaged to have a look at him.

A couple of hours later, the doctor informed me that my father was septic and that he was a very sick man. Had he not come in when he did, he would probably have died at home. The infection was so severe that his kidneys had shut down completely, and his body was in a kind of toxic shock.

It was inconclusive whether the recent surgery was the exact cause or if it had been there all along. The remedy was intravenous antibiotics and a steady stream of blood tests every hour on the hour.

My father was mostly unconscious through most of this, but after a couple more hours of IV fluids and antibiotics, he came around.

The doctors ordered an ultrasound or an X-ray, and while they were wheeling his bed out for the testing, I heard a new nurse ask him if he’d recently had surgery.

My father, having no idea this had been asked a dozen times before, happily answered almost as if bragging.

“Yes, I did, as a matter of fact. I had a penile implant,” He waited for them to acknowledge him and then added, “You know what I always say? When in doubt, you just go bionic.”

Yes, for the record, the old demon announced that loudly for anyone and everyone to hear.

The nurses laughed out loud. They had the benefit of hearing it in his Scottish accent. Pain in the ass that he was, he still was charming the pants off of these nurses.

The hospital subsequently admitted him, and he recovered a little every day. I knew he was on the mend when he complained to me about wanting to go home. He felt so inconvenienced by the entire ordeal.

I had to smile. One moment, on the day of his discharge, my heart swelled with personal pride when the doctor came to see him. He told my father in no uncertain terms, “Your son, here, saved your life!”

My father smiled and nodded. If it sank in at all, it wouldn’t last, but I remembered.

I remembered it all.