'Can you pee?'

I had my last pre-op appointment yesterday, a four-and-one-half-hour extravaganza of waiting, obtaining various molds of my mouth, measuring my face, waiting some more, talking with my doctors, a bit of waiting and visiting Memorial Hospital at UNC-Chapel Hill, where I'll have the surgery Tuesday and where I was officially registered, gave up various bodily fluids, got X-rayed, EKG'd, and, of course, waited.

They made two different sets of impressions of my mouth. The first one -- actually two sets of the same thing -- was a standard impression of my teeth. In case you've never been through it, essentially they mix up some goop that's the consistency of soft bubble gum and tastes like window caulk and cram a large wad of it in a U-shaped container designed to fit over either the top or bottom set of teeth. That's held in place long enough to make a mold of that set of teeth. The process is repeated to get the other set of teeth.

The second impressions involved a two-step process to develop models from which they'll make splints for my mouth. The first part was very mysterious. The doctor put a couple of dabs of some blue gunk on a U-shaped piece of metal, which he had me bite down on with my back molars. Then, he attached this to some sort of gadget that looked kind of like a large caliper with a head strap and some sort of doohickey sticking out of the front of it. He fitted the contraption over my head, with the ends of the calipers sticking in my ears. The doohickey (not its technical name) had a clamp to which he attached the U-shaped piece of metal as I held it in my mouth. Really. I'm not lying. He said this was needed to make the splint, but it is entirely possible that it was being videotaped and is being uploaded to YouTube right now for the amusement of millions of viewers like yourselves.

The second step was a bit more straightforward: I bit down on two planks of warm wax, one for the top and one for the bottom.

Sometime after that (this was one of the waiting portions of the day), I got to chat with Dr. Blakey, my surgeon. That's when we got down to the details of what he'll do. We're going to move my upper jaw forward about 3 mm and my lower about 12 mm. They'll fit together because, thanks to genetics and about 16 months of orthodontia, I have a 9 mm overbite. Then, we're going to take my chin and move it forward a bit as well. That's to bring my tongue forward a bit and, ultimately, give me a bigger airway. I keep saying "we." I'll be doing the lying down part. The surgeons will be doing all the work. At this stage of the game, anyway.

After all of that, they sent me with paperwork over to the hospital, which is a few buildings away. Right after I got out of the building, I looked at the top sheet, which was my schedule. There, it said I was to have my surgery on "04/11/06." See something wrong? Anyway, I went back, got that straightened out, and headed up to the hospital. After some waiting, I registered, then waited, and was ushered into a room to wait for a nurse. Actually, I didn't wait more than a couple of minutes until she arrived with a tray of tubes and a needle. She drew blood and then a second nurse came in, evidently a specialist. After she asked me an apparently random set of questions, she left and came back with that familiar little plastic beaker that anyone who's applied for a job recently knows on sight. She held it out to me without saying anything. I looked at it. She looked at me.

This is EXACTLY how the conversation went. Really.

"Can you pee?" she asked, as a second nurse came in.

"Well, I've been practicing for about 44 years, so I'm pretty sure I can do it," I said as I took the cup, smiling to show I was joking. She didn't smile, but just stood there.

Honestly, I was starting to think they really doubted I could pee and wanted to see it for themselves. "So ... uh ... where ... ?" I started.

"Well, not here," she said.

"Right. So, the restroom is ... ?"

She showed me to the restroom, where, for the record, I did, in fact, pee.

Anyway, after a relatively quick set of chest X-rays and EKG, I was sent on my way. Just in time to hit the afternoon rush hour traffic through Raleigh.

So, all that awaits now is the trip to Chapel Hill on Monday and checking in on Tuesday. Between now and then, I might post a pre-op, small-chin picture of me. Otherwise, don't expect to see much of anything until late next week at the earliest. Then, assuming all goes well, I'll let you know how I did and, probably, how I look.