Moronidae Abdominus

Give it to me straight, doc. It's bad, isn't it?

Well, there's definitely a problem. Tenderness. A bit of swelling. The early onset of some significant subcutaneous bruising. Does it hurt when I press here?

[unprintable response]

Okay. It’s near your appendix, but I don’t think that’s the issue. Appendicitis would have started closer to your navel, not there between your ribcage and right hip. It’s definitely too low for ulcers and I doubt that there's a blockage of any sort, especially if you’ve had a decent bowel movement recently.

It was the highlight of my morning.

Then this is something else.

You don’t think it’s… it’s…

Now, let’s not jump to any dire conclusions until we’ve explored all possibilities. Do you have any other symptoms?

None that I'm aware of.

I have an idea. Let's see your right hand. Yes. Look. Abrasions at the inside of the joint on your index finger and on the pad of your thumb. And do you feel that tightness in your forearm? Tell me. Have you been in or around Weldon, NC at any time in the past few days?

Actually, I was. Friday. How’d you know?

I thought so. It’s the epicenter of a nasty outbreak we’ve been seeing lately. I’m quite certain that what you have is something called moronidae abdominus (in layman’s terms, “striper belly”) and is caused by repeatedly grinding a 9wt's fighting butt into your midriff when leaning into big Roanoke River rockfish. You caught a lot of them, didn’t you?

As a matter of fact, we did. A lot.

Then that's definitely the problem. Thankfully, this affliction isn’t serious, though contagious as hell. I could give you a prescription for something called Tenkarin, but, honestly, it’s pretty lightweight and more effective on folks of delicate constitution. I think that if you just take it easy for a few days and limit your activities to, say, 3wts for bluegill or trout, you should recover quickly and be back to fighting real fish in no time.

Before the spawning run ends?

You can try. Let your pain be your guide.

It usually is, doc. It usually is.

The Cure

Two days of Sudafed didn’t cure my vertigo.

My regular doctor had no opening for me this morning and I hate emergency rooms so I agreed to go to Mary’s doctor, who (how can I say this nicely?) I consider a bit of a flake. You know. “Holistic medicine.” At Duke University, no less. But I had to stop the world from wobbling and if it took crystals and magnets to get it done, so be it. I'd try anything.

I can hear the medical insurance claims processor laughing now.

The examination started out normally enough (as long as you discount the spinning of the room) with the asking of a few questions regarding the dizzying symptoms, the taking of blood pressures, and the shining of little lights into my nose, mouth, and ears. But as she pulled the otoscope from my right ear canal, she began to poke and pull on the lobe and outer ear.

“How’d you get that?” she asked, referring to the fresh puncture wound on the upper part of my ear.

-- o --

I guess I need to break away from the story, here, to make an embarrassing confession. With an upcoming fishing trip to Mexico, a friend suggested it would be a good idea to get some practice casting with big wind. We’ll be fishing the east coast of the Baja peninsula, into Bay of California surf, and when the fishing is good the wind comes out of the south/southeast, pushing a right-hander’s cast into his body. I needed to be ready for that.

So, last week, on a cool, blustery day, I carried the 9wt, an intermediate sink line, and a big chartreuse and pink clouser down to the pond, put my right shoulder into the wind, and practiced. I threw for about fifteen minutes before a perfectly timed gust imploded a lengthy backcast and stuck the heavy tuti-fruti streamer squarely into my right ear.

Thank God for barbless.

Stop laughing.

-- o --

“Interesting,” said the doctor, who then turned and pulled from a drawer a small case that, when opened, revealed a set of varying sized needles; wire thin to the size of a fat toothpick.

“How big was the hook?” she asked.

“Ummm… A 1/0, so, pretty big,” I responded uncertainly.

She nodded and pulled from the case the biggest, nastiest looking needle. She examined it closely. “About this diameter?”

“I guess so.”

She looked at me earnestly. “You see, the ears are chi crossroads and are the polar focal points on one of the body's prime energy meridians. They’re a pivotal tipping place and I believe that when you stuck that fly in your ear you blocked and interrupted the even flow of chi across that meridian, which, of course, includes your inner ear and brain. What you did with that errant fly was to apply some inadvertent acupuncture. To fix things we simply need to restore balance.”

And before I could fully grasp what that meant she grabbed my head and jammed that big honkin’ needle into my left ear at the same precise point at which the fly had skewered my right.

“What the HELL!” I screamed...

...and the room stopped spinning.