Due to stress in her personal life, TV writer Joey Slamon develops a cyst in an unfortunate place.
Joey Slamon has worked as a writer and producer on shows such as Arrested Development, Those Who Can’t and Bobcat Goldthwait’s upcoming Misfits and Monsters. She is currently working on season two of I’m Sorry for TruTV. Despite no formal training, she will happily give you medical advice if you ask for it.
This story originally aired on January 11, 2019 in an episode titled “Stress.”
Story Transcript
I am the daughter of a Syrian doctor. That’s not a brag, the doctor part. Syrian is not a brag anywhere these days, but the doctor part is also not a brag. It’s just a fact that my dad is a doctor.
I inherited a lot of things from my father, most of them come from the Syrian side instead of the doctor side, unfortunately. I have a very strong opinion about things that I will change on a dime based on nothing at all, much like my father, which really worked out for my dad.
My dad is an oncologist, as I said, and he believed that chemotherapy is the way to treat his cancer. That’s what you do. Then one day he was like, “I fucking hate chemo. Chemo is the worst. Chemo is for losers. I’m going to figure out something else.” And he did and it’s great and it works and whatever.
I do it a little differently. While my dad was making his breakthroughs in medical science or whatever, I was really into Saved by the Bell. I love Saved by the Bell. Saved by the Bell was the best show ever. Then one day I saw NYPD Blue and I was like, “Saved by the Bell is for losers. Saved by the Bell is for assholes. NYPD Blue is everything.”
So we’re very similar in that way. Do you know what I mean? Really we’re adaptable and it’s our opinion in fact. There's no opinion, it’s just fact.
Another thing that I inherited from my father, I mean, lots of things like my sense of humor, which is dark because of the Syrian thing. I also inherited his weird genetic thing that Aryan people are more predisposed to which is a pilonidal cyst. It’s basically an ass cyst. There's no nice way to say it. It’s a cyst that lives on my ass. It’s genetic. Like I said, it’s not something gross. It’s not that I don’t shower. And it’s not in my ass, to be clear. It’s on top, like where your tailbone is is where this cyst lives.
The thing that brings on this cyst usually is poor hygiene, which I don't have, but also stress, which I have a lot of. I have a very stressful job. I get stressed very easily. Things stress me out. But it didn’t really manifest itself until I started making life choice decisions where I would have an opinion, it’s my opinion, then all of a sudden it wasn’t and it was the opposite then I would stress out.
So I was with my boyfriend for 11 ½ years and it was a long time and that’s okay because I was a cool girl. I didn’t want to get married because marriage is for losers and assholes and I wasn’t a loser and an asshole. Like my career mattered a lot more than marriage so fuck all those people getting married. Until one day I woke up and I was like, “Why won’t you marry me? What the fuck is wrong with you? What the fuck is wrong with me? Life is a nightmare. Everything I know is a lie.”
I kind of pour this out to my boyfriend and he was like, “Yeah, I didn’t think you were super into the marriage thing based on the fact that you talked about how much you hated it all the time.”
And I was like, “Don’t tell me what to think. Don’t tell me what to do. It’s my body, my choice. I’m going to get married so figure your shit out.”
So I was really stressing out because this is kind of the first time since the Saved by the Bell/NYPD Blue incident where I had really changed. All of a sudden I started really stressing out emotionally, which is something I don’t do. I’m very good at compartmentalizing my stress. But this stress manifested itself in a very real way on my ass.
The good thing about my dad being a doctor is he's the head of hematology oncology UCLA, which is a pretty prestigious job. No big deal. So I called him and was like, “I have this thing. I can’t sit for a long time. It really hurts to drive or live or breathe or be on my bed or whatever, so I need to do something.”
He was like, “It’s not a big deal. Nobody cares. People have real problems.”
Then like a month later he was like, “Why didn’t you tell me about this before? You're probably going to die. It’s probably infected.”
Again, that classic Syrian fucking move of like all of a sudden it’s the biggest deal and I’m probably going to lose my legs.
So I was like, “Okay, I'll make an appointment.”
And he's like, “No, I’m going to find you somebody. You have to get this taken care of, like yesterday you needed to get this taken care of.”
So he calls in a favor which was the head of… he was the surgical resident in UCLA, which is a pretty big deal. This guy has worked on everybody. He's done every type of surgery. He's like the guy for surgery in California and my dad made him look at my ass, which didn’t feel great.
The guy was so busy. Actually, he was this really sweet older man. He didn’t have any time because he was busy dealing with lung cancer and brain cancer that his practice was all full so he was like, “I can meet you on my lunch break for 20 minutes. That’s how long it should take. But I don't have a surgical suite available so we’ll do it in an office.”
It turns out his office wasn’t available because he had consultations that were important so we met at this 16th floor conference room at UCLA which is this big beautiful bay windows and this gorgeous 16-foot mahogany desk, like leather chairs, medical journals and then me and this guy.
So he was like, “Okay, let me take a look at it.”
I was like, “Great. Just focus. Get it over with.” So I drop my pants and my underwear.
And he was like, “Oh, no, I don't need to see… I’m sorry. I should have been…” and freaked out.
I was like, “Oh, God. I just inadvertently flashed this guy everything.” So I scramble to pull up my pants.
He's like, “You can just pull them down a little bit. It shouldn’t be that big of a deal.”
I was like, “Oh, this is really embarrassing. I’m sorry.”
So he's trying to make small talk and he's like, “Oh, are you married?”
Then I just burst into tears because I was like, “No, I actually am un-marryable for some reason because life is a nightmare.”
He had me lean over this desk sprawled out with my jeans down a little bit and he lances my cyst which takes him 30 seconds, which he will never think about again, and I think about it every day of my life forever.
So I’m like, “Okay, I got through it. It’s fine.” The bad news was it had to be packed with cotton. It’s not great, guys. I’m not proud of this. But it’s in a place where I can’t pack it. It’s like right here so my boyfriend had to pack my hole on my ass everyday for a long time. I was like, “Well, now he's never going to marry me.”
But he defied the odds and we got married. Spoiler alert. And it’s great and nice and it was fine because I was like, “Great news. That was the only life decision I ever have to make because everything else is falling into place. I definitely don’t want kids. Kids are for assholes. Kids are for losers. I know everything.”
Then my younger brother announced that he was pregnant. Well, not him but his wife was pregnant and I was like, “Why don’t we have a kid? What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with me? Everything is a nightmare.”
He was like, “I thought you didn’t really want kids right away.”
I was like, “Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t tell me what to do with my body. Put a baby in me right now or fucking get the fuck out.”
So I’m having this crisis again and while this is happening, sure enough, the cyst comes back. This time I’m like, no, I’m not taking that on. I don't have the mental capacity for it. I cannot face that poor doctor guy in that mahogany desk again so I’m just going live with it and it’s going to be fine and it’s going to go away and meanwhile I'll get pregnant.
Then everybody in my life was telling me how to get pregnant and the one scientific point to this story is if you are someone who has kids and somebody is trying to have kids, please don’t tell them what you did to have kids because it makes my uterus lock up. I know you're trying to be helpful but it’s the least helpful thing you can do.
So all this advice I was getting I was starting to spit out because none of it was working and we couldn’t get pregnant and it was terrible and my cyst got worse. It was like a baby growing on my ass but not cute and cuddly but filled with nightmare fluids.
So I called my dad again and I was like, “That thing is back.”
And he said, “Okay, I'll make some calls.”
I was like, “Oh, no. Not again, my friend. You're not calling that guy who’s the head surgical resident of UCLA.”
He was like, “Why not? I thought that guy was good.”
I was like, “No, that was my worst nightmare. We’re not doing that again.”
He's like, “All right. I'll get you somebody else. Don’t worry about it. But you have to come in today or else you're going to lose both your legs and probably never be able to walk again.”
So he called this guy. I couldn’t Google him. He didn’t pop up. He's like, ‘Lead Guy Who Saves Lives’. So I was like, “Okay, this should be safe.”
He's the head of robotic surgery at UCLA which is actually a very big deal. Robotic surgery is the nanosurgeries that they can do with wires and it’s very fascinating and technologically advanced and very important and very much not my ass.
So this poor guy I guess owed a favor to my dad or something or like lost a bet so I had to go in. This guy did have a surgical suite, thank God, and he was like, “Okay, well let me take a look at the cyst. I only have 15 minutes.”
I was like, “Okay, I got it.”
So I start pulling my pants down a little bit and he's like, “I can’t really see anything. I don't know what that is. Can you pull it down a little bit more?”
I was like, “Yup.” So I pull it down a little centimeter and then it keeps going on for a while because I’m not making the same mistake I did last time. Then I realized with horror that I’m doing this weird striptease with the head of robotic surgery for about five minutes. I’m slowly pulling down my pants while talking to this guy about his life.
And he was like, “I’m sorry. Can you just take your pants off?”
I was like, “Yes, I’m really sorry. Last time… it doesn’t matter.”
So I take my pants off and I wear thongs. Again, not a brag. It’s just a fact. I don't like underwear. It feels like pants.
But I wear thongs and I take my jeans off and he was about to say, “Oh, can you please remove…” and I could see in his face where he was going to say ‘underwear’ then he looked and saw a thong but then didn’t want to call it a thong so he just went, “Can you please remove your panties?” Which was the worst thing I've ever heard come out of any doctor including terrible diagnoses.
But I double down. I was like, “My panties? Of course I can remove my panties. I love removing my panties,” because I didn’t want him to feel bad because I already felt awful.
So I take my thong off and I’m standing there and he lances my cyst, which again takes about 30 seconds which I will never live down.
While we’re doing it he's like, “Oh, are you married?”
I was like, “As a matter of fact, I am.”
And he's like, “Do you have any kids?” Then I start crying.
He was like, “I’m sorry. Is it painful?”
I was like, “No, I just can’t have children,” which isn’t necessarily true but just felt very real in the moment. And I just said I can’t have children.
He was like, “Oh, well you're all set so if you want to put your pants back on, I'll leave you to it.”
So I left the guy’s office. Once again I was mortified. Once again this cyst has caused the second worst day of my life, first being the first time. But I realize that it’s okay that I’m changing my opinions and it’s okay that I’m changing my mind as long as the cyst doesn’t come back. Thank you.