The Sad, Long Song of the Shunt

I have a runny chest this morning. I can feel it. I hear it dripping like a faulty faucet. 

I was born with a condition known as hydrocephalus. It means cerebrospinal fluid builds up in this big ol’ noggin of mine. I was a baby with a gigantic head. My doctor once said, “You’re lucky your skull didn’t pop your brain straight into the stratosphere, heh, heh…” 

I looked like a villain from an old comic book or one of those gray aliens that visited Whitley Strieber so he could write a best-selling book about them. 

But my proportions are somewhat normal now. I do have a nasty scar on my neck that runs to my stomach but otherwise I look perfectly normal. Except my head is shaped like a large, upside down pear. But apart from that, I look perfectly normal. I do have a bald spot on the top of my head but other than that, I look perfectly normal. Although, I am only four-and-a-half feet tall. But, y’know, whatever…

While still in my infant phase, the doctors surgically installed an apparatus that sucks the mind-mud from my skull. If left as I was, my head would have filled with pressure and splatted like an egg in a microwave. 

The shunt system inside me drains the fluid from my cranium into my stomach. When it works it sounds like murmuring voices. Like voices from my past recorded in fluid. I sometimes wonder if some of my thoughts are getting sucked down the tube too. Am I losing memories? Will I forget how to perform long division? Will I lose who I am? 

I don’t want to get all boo-hoo-woe-is-me about my condition. It’s not that bad. I’m not being driven mad by the sound of my shunt, like some suffering, paranoid character in an Edgar Allan Poe story. Everybody has noises inside them. Mine are just more pronounced. And wet. Slurpy.

Probably the worst thing is the uncomfortable fact that the fluid drains straight into my bowels, which means I have to defecate a lot. I can succumb to sudden, surprise diarrhea at any time. Long car trips can be pretty inconvenient.  

I will spare you those horror stories. There are many.

And again, am I shitting out my time tables? Or the plot of The Great Gatsby? Will the memory of my grandfather one day rest at the bottom of a septic tank? 

When I was in college, trying to learn about economics, I worked for a man who was determined to drink himself to death. He owned a restaurant called Bob’s Gin Blossom. He was “Bob.” 

Bob’s Gin Blossom was an inexpensive, old-fashioned pub and I worked there as a fry cook. They hired me without any experience but I learned fast. I did a good job.

The owner’s name was Robert. Robert Gruenwald. He liked to drink. He would open the restaurant at ten a.m. and begin drinking screwdrivers (vodka and orange juice—mostly vodka) for breakfast. He’d drink those strong screwdrivers for the next twelve hours, then at the end of the night, he’d knock back a double shot of straight vodka and then drive (yes, drive) home with a fresh, unopened quart. It was as if the restaurant was just a front for his alcoholism. A place to drink for free all day.

His parents bought him the restaurant (they had mucho dinero) in the hope that it would give his life some direction and keep him occupied.  

When Robert returned to the restaurant the next day, he’d start the drinking process all over again. He averaged (conservatively) two gallons of vodka a day. His skin was sickly yellow. His jaundiced face and hands were swollen as if he’d been attacked by a beehive. Bob was deformed by a lifetime of constant alcohol consumption. His tissues absorbed the vodka like a loaf of raisin bread in the rain. His smile was frightening. Also frightening was his tolerance for alcohol. The guy never stopped drinking. 

Sometimes I wondered what caused his bottomless pain. 

I lost track of him after I left that job, but I learned a few years ago that he’d finally succeeded in drinking himself to death. He choked on his own blood after his liver shut down. 

But on a serene, quiet night I can still hear his slurred, murmurous words in the slurping, shunking, thunking of my shunt as it drains away my sad, diluted memories.