Yesterday, I learned the fundamental difference between my doctor and my dentist. See, when my dentists says, “That’s the worst of it” as he injects my gums, he means it. After that, my gums usually go numb and everything’s fine.

When my doctor (or more specifically, my doctor’s PA) says, “Don’t worry, that’s the worst of it” what she means is “for now.”

Yup, yesterday I got the suspected boil lanced by ye olde doctor’s PA (my doctor was booked, although he did come in in the middle of it and ask how everything was going before heading back to his next patient). In any case, they’re doing a bacterial culture on it just to verify whether it was a staph infection or not (the PA thought it probably was).

In any case, the procedure went about like this. First, due to the location of this cyst (i.e., my tail bone), when the PA and a nurse went to lance it, I told them, “I feel more sorry for you having to look at my butt crack than you should feel for me.” Of course they laughed because they knew how much pain they were about to inflict, which made me feel not in the least bit sorry for them after all!

It starts by them injecting a “numbing agent.” I think it’s “Agent Orange.” All I know is it BURNED. And they injected it almost directly into the cyst, although the surrounding area was swollen enough that pretty much my entire lower back felt like the cyst. Then the left for about fifteen minutes, at which point I almost went to sleep. This was just to prepare me for the cruelty of being woken back up.

At first, it wasn’t so bad. I felt pressure as they drained everything, but that was it. No real pain. Then suddenly… PAIN! LOTS OF PAIN!!!

The PA asked me, “Can you stand about twenty more seconds of this?” To which I responded: “AGHDFUASHFSJLKHDSALHLASUFHLJQWHFLJFSGASLKJDGH!!!!” She took that as a “yes” and kept going.

Apparently, she found a pocket that went right to the nerve. In any case, the nurse told me that I went completely white and they thought I was going to pass out at this point. It was, quite literally, the second most painful experience of my life (the first being when the Avs didn’t make the playoffs last year…okay, not really. But when I sprained my ankle a few years back, that hurt so bad I pounded my head on the sidewalk in a vain attempt (because I was wearing a bike helmet at the time) to knock myself out).

So to sum up, next time please waterboard me. Seriously. Drain the cysts of Gitmo terrorists so they can experience REAL torture. And never trust your doctor (or his PA) when they say “This is the worst of it.” They’re lying.