Chronicles of Round Two with the Rat Bastard

The chronicles of Round Two with the Rat Bastard took a hard, screeching left turn today—one of those tire-peeling NASCAR maneuvers that sends spectators diving for the barricades.

Just last Friday, the retinal doc herself called me, personally delivering her preliminary findings from the needle biopsy—always a phrase that makes you want to drink something brown, barrel-aged, and preferably flammable. She announced she’d be passing me along to the next specialist in the conveyor belt of ocular doom.

Fine. Good. Pass the baton, keep the relay of horror moving. Then suddenly—boom—I’m booked with the new guy, who turns out to be the same sainted professional who uninstalled my cataracts years ago. A reunion tour nobody asked for, but at least the man’s got steady hands and the appropriate level of gallows humor.

So I stagger into today’s appointment. He glances at my eye, the records, the PET scan, and probably the shrinking aura of my will to live. Then he drops the after-visit summary—medicine’s version of a bureaucratic haiku:

“Malignant neoplasm of right choroid (HCC).”

As far as I’m concerned, HCC stands for Holy Crap, Cancer —the kind oif thing that makes you start mentally drafting your will and wondering whether ghosts qualify for tax exemptions.

There’s no time for gentle chatter or soft-lit monologues—this isn’t Grey’s Anatomy. The man basically staples an eviction notice right to my forehead. Tomorrow, he says. Let’s not dawdle.

Finally—some damn urgency. Took long enough for the medical-industrial complex to lace up its running shoes.

Am I thrilled about losing the eye? No. Am I thrilled the rat bastard squatter named Charlie is getting ripped out with it? Hell yes.

So here we go again: another 30-hour fast. Clear liquids only, but this time they actually want me to take my meds, presumably so I don’t die before they can bill me. Blood pressure’s bound to be elevated—anticipation does that when you’re preparing to have a golf ball installed in your skull—but it still has to beat today’s numbers, which hovered somewhere between “mildly alarmed” and “volcano preparing human sacrifice.”

In case you’ve ever wondered what the polite, Latin-flavored medical jargon is for gouging out an eyeball, allow me to enlighten you: “Enucleation with 20 mm Medpor orbital implant, right eye.”

Quite a mouthful for: We’re about to make you a pirate.

At first I thought they planned to use the 20 mm Medpor implant to perform the enucleation—which conjured images of some surgical golf tee and mallet situation—but no. It’s simply the medically approved space holder. A bit of Googling reveals Medpor is high-density porous polyethylene. In other words: a medical-grade golf ball. Trust me, I stayed at a Marriott over the weekend; I’m basically a doctor now.

So tomorrow marks the official start of my Pirate-In-Training Phase of retirement. Afterward, I’ll have to learn to shoot left-eyed, like some backwoods sniper in a post-apocalyptic Walmart. And— ( next chapter goes here.)

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