I Art Phlegming





Dr. Peak Woo







Art Phlegming.
Okay, it's really Fleming.



Meyer Horowitz.
Okay, it's really Shakespeare.
Meyer Shakespeare.

 I had surgery on November 8th. I can't believe that I haven't blogged about it yet. After all, you'd think that surgery, no matter how minor, would be a relatively major event in one's life and, assuming that particular "one" was a blogger, one (a different "one"...let's think of him or her as "One 2") would expect the aforementioned surgery to be the subject of at least one post, possibly two. SENTENCE INVENTORY: The preceding sentence contains fifty-six words and uses the word "one" five times, which means roughly 10% of the sentence is comprised of the word "one". Just thought you'd like to know, and I figured that you probably have more to do than your intrepid blogger, what with kids and husbands and stuff to take care of, so I decided to do the counting and the math for you as part of the blog-related service. Now back to the subject at hand. Actually the subject at hand in many of the posts of this blog is birds. Not "are birds". It's "is birds", because it's referring to "subject" rather than "birds". Therefore I have cleverly included a picture incorporating both themes, the hand and the birds (see below). What a guy. Anyway, I've mentioned several times that since I got sick, I can't sing. While it was not a concern of the doctors who worked feverishly to save my life, it's been a concern of mine since day one. Aside from the fact that singing is a tried-and-true, albeit limited source of income for me, it's always been a huge part of who I am. So I went to see Dr. Peak Woo, a world famous voice doctor. Dr. Woo wasn't sure if my vocal problems were being caused by my tracheal stenosis (narrowing of the windpipe) or some minor scarring on my vocal cords. He felt that he could help me with a minor procedure whereby he would dilate the trachea (done with a laser) and perform micro-surgery to repair the scarring. Well, the surgery was over two weeks ago and I don't see any difference. In fairness to Dr. Woo, he said there was only a 50-50 chance that the operation would help; I'm upset about something else. I'm coughing and clearing my throat a lot and I wasn't doing that at all before the surgery. There always seems to be an abundance of phlegm in the back of my throat and it's a very annoying sensation. So I'm constantly trying to get rid of it, or as the bard of Stratford-on-Avon would put it, "I art phlegming". For all of you too young to remember (that would be all three of you), Art Phlegming was the original host of "Jeopardy", long before Alec Trebek was a gleam in his daddy's eye. Truth be told, Art Phlegming spelled his name F-l-e-m-i-n-g, but spelled that way it would not have been fodder for my incredibly clever play on words. Of course if one's audience has no idea who the hell Art Fleming is, the incredibly clever play on words ceases to be incredibly clever and instead becomes rather pointless. Well folks, the moral of the story here is clear: never have elective surgery, especially if the best doctor in the world tells you that there's only a 50% chance of success. For while I realized that the procedure might not help, I certainly didn't think that it could hurt. Apparently it has. I'm not a happy camper.

A bird in the hand, etc...