Your Spinal Biopsy: Six Tips

(1) Pee before you leave your hospital room. After, they won't let you, unless you're willing to put up with a bedpan.

(2) You'll be lying on your stomach with your head resting on your hands, which is the only pleasant part of the experience. When the technician sends you repeatedly in and out of the CT scanner,  your elbow goes clunk-clunk-clunk as it collides with the tunnel. The radiologist told you not to move. But discreetly inching your elbow away is, according to me, okay.

(3) Try not to shriek when they spray something freezing on your lower back. Yelp quietly if you must. 

(4) The worst part is the needle shooting in the painkiller. I'm sure I didn't sound worse than the folks who were ahead of me, whom I could hear from out in the hall. 

(5) Once the radiologist starts drilling into your lumbar region, pretend it's not you. Visions of the sadistic dentists in Little Shop of Horrors and Marathon Man may fill your head; by the time they do, however, the procedure will be over.

(6) Now is when you thought you'd get to eat. You won't! You'll lie flat on your back for at least two hours. They prefer four. After two, I begged for food so piteously that they allowed me to sit up and eat. After which--yeah, another two hours. Reading Vanity Fair helped.

My At-Least-He's-Indicted Dinner

I had my cake and ate it, too:

Looks very real, doesn't it? But I felt the occasion called for something fake, so I made cake from a box--added eggs, milk, margarine--looks better than it tasted, but Prosecco improved it, and next time I'll do what I always do--follow a good recipe. I have the pleasure of knowing a fake's bad deeds have been officially challenged by the Justice Department. If he weasles out of a conviction or a prison sentence or both, well, then I'll consider this meal comfort food.

He who should not be named is pushing his luck, as he always does. But may truth win. Whatever happens, cake and Prosecco can help.

 

"I'm an Innocent Man Who Did Nothing Wrong"

The gangster king, whose morals are up there with the Bonannos, Colombos, Gambinos, Genoveses and Luccheses, surely has tricks up his sleeve--when did he not?--but maybe it won't be the tricks that carry him.

What may carry him is his absolute belief in himself. That impregnable certainty, that inability to doubt himself, inspires a certain astonished regard.  Even those who, like me, detest him, envy the ability to feel no shame, ever. To experience none of the humiliations of everyday life. Who wouldn't want that? 

Or maybe I'm counting my lucky stars that I feel them. Could I have a moral compass otherwise?

But it's always had a grip on the public, that bullet-proof self-confidence. Jesus seems to have had it, but then so did Napoleon. Hitler. Putin. The ones with political power were mostly male, but female narcissists have their sway--Madonna comes to mind, and I spent more of my youth than I'd care to admit wishing I could project that kind of power. 

Thirty-seven counts against the orange man (as of this writing) and at least two of his lawyers, John Rowley and Jim Trusty, quitting.

Another "Wow" moment, said a CNN reporter. 

I could sleep at night if I were absolutely certain the accused would be convicted and locked up.