Meet my pal Foley. Foley and I met two weeks ago and we immediately became attached to each other. In fact, we became inseparable.
Though I did not realize it at the time, our bond was foretold a few days prior when I assumed the ritual position before the porcelain altar, as men do, and not much happened. Ten or 15 minutes later, I felt the urge to repeat the performance, with the same non-result.
This went on for three days. At the end of the third day, I was feverish. Left to my own devices, I would count on my body to sort itself out. My wife is more proactive. She called the Advice Nurse, who, upon hearing my symptoms, counseled a visit to the emergency room.
The next several hours were a blur of nurses, physicians’ assistants and maybe even a doctor, all of whom poked, prodded and pricked. Their conclusion: benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), aka enlarged prostate. The cure: meds and our friend Foley. Foley’s full name is Foley Catheter, but none of the medical personnel used the C-word, probably because it freaks patients out.
It is an odd moment, if you are a heterosexual male, when a young female nurse grabs hold of your tenderest part. During adolescence, this was all one could have wished for. In the present circumstances — the nurse introducing Foley and me to each other — the erotic charge was less than zero.
Thus tethered, I prepared to go home. Then I passed out. Which changed things. Now I was admitted to the hospital for observation – and more tests. My main concern was how I was going to watch the conclusion of Subu Vedam’s hearing before an immigration judge.
At 8 a.m., I ate the worst scrambled eggs in the long history of human-chicken relations. Just in front of 8:30, my wife, bless her, brought my computer and so, lying in my hospital bed in my hospital gown, Foley and I got to hear Judge Adam Panopoulos, bless him, find that continuing to punish Subu for crimes he committed as a kid 40 years ago was ridiculous. Thus he ruled that Subu, who has spent all but the first nine months of his life in the United States, should not be deported to India or anywhere else.
Hallelujah. At that moment, I forgot all about my faulty plumbing and those bad eggs, and rejoiced. There was, for a change, justice and humaneness.
As I was about to leave the hospital, my phone rang. The urologist’s office calling. Great, I thought: They’ll see me in two or three days, at which time Foley and I would cut ties, no hard feelings.
This was on April 2. Urology was proposing that I come in on April 20. Surely, I thought, I cannot be expected to remain on such intimate terms with Foley for such a long stretch.
That was exactly what they expected. I pleaded for sooner. I should have been grateful. In January I tried to make an appointment with a podiatrist about a painful pinky toe. They gave me one – for June 2.
I went home and slept and moped for the rest of the day. At bedtime, I effected the first switch-out of the leg bag, which lets you go out and about without anyone knowing that you’re hauling a sack o’ pee, for the night bag, which, being more capacious, allows you to sleep through the night.
When Paul Simon sang, as a young man, “how terribly strange to be 70,” he didn’t know the half of it.
The next day, Friday, was to be a day of cleaning and cooking for a Passover seder. Incongruously, I thought of an ancient Frank family story about my sister Meryl clinging to my dad’s leg while he tried to play volleyball. Foley, I decided, would be too much of a hindrance. We postponed one day.
Saturday morning, we discovered our refrigerator had stopped refrigerating. Remember how frigid the weather was a few weeks back? Had our fridge crapped out then, saving our perishables would have been a simple matter of stashing them on our screen porch. Instead, it was the warmest day of 2026. Out came the coolers. Off we went on an ice run. Online we went to shop for refrigerators. Oh, and we canceled the postponed seder.
This, by the way, was my wife’s birthday.
To salvage the day, we went to Spring Creek Park to sit on our favorite rocks with our feet in the water. As soon as we settled ourselves, it began to rain.
The world, friends, is not designed to our specifications. It is well to keep this fact in mind when everything suddenly goes kablooey.
Occasionally, though, one catches a break. The fridge was reparable. So was I. Foley and I have parted company after one week, not three. It was not a fond farewell.
