This week: a crash course in the carceral system’s conjugal aspects.
Meet Ed, 54, of Palm Springs. If his story does not end up being a Love After Lockup crossover, pop culture will have failed us.
Ed is dating Katrina, whom he met online. She’s currently in prison, and has requested that Ed get a bump on his abdomen taken care of before her imminent release. He’s been emailing her pictures of it! Anything to make the days go by faster.
Dr. Lee compared Ed’s cyst to a nipple and co-signed his comparing it to a deflated balloon. As she removed it and its sac, she quizzed Ed on the ins and outs of dating an inmate.
She had scissors in his abdomen and was all like, “Can you guys FaceTime or anything?” Extremely casual-like. She said it’s fascinating that Katrina is allowed a tablet in prison, and you know what? That is fascinating. I had no idea.
Also featured were a fairly routine lipoma removal from 37-year-old Tanisha and a rather uneventful steroid treatment of 28-year-old Justin’s dissecting celluitis (a rare condition resulting in areas of inflammation of the hair follicle that causes pus with “interconnecting sinus tracks,” which yikes). Most remarkable was the cyst of James, 46, of Millville, NJ.
James sells cars, and his coworker Fabio likes to joke that “he’s got two heads and no brain,” in reference to Jame’s golf-ball-sized lump. “It’s no fun if you can’t have fun,” said Fabio on his teasing, and that is the most South Jersey philosophy I have ever heard spelled out.
James’s bump, Dr. PP noticed, had properties similar to that of memory foam.
The imprint stayed for a while, see, before bouncing back to its natural shape.
The removal of the pus from James’s head was truly outrageous, as it came out in a sheet that reminded me (I’m sorry) of fresh pasta being made.
From the hair in it, Dr. Lee determined that this particular cyst was a dermoid cyst, which people are generally born with and in addition to hair, can contain teeth or bone. On one hand, I’m glad that James’s cyst didn’t go there. On the other, it doing so would have made a great headline to this recap.
Dr. Lee determined that the contents of James’s lump were like “mashed-up banana from your drain in your bathroom.” These are getting increasingly abstract and, in my opinion, increasingly artful.
The pop is resoundingly successful as James’s follow-up segment shows no signs of that which took up facial real estate for some 16 years.
After his treatment, James had a message for all you clogged-up people out there: “Other people when they see this I hope they understand: Get it looked at, get it checked out, do not hold it in.” It, in this case and only this case, being the mashed-up banana in your forehead.