Heavy Metal Bruce

By now most of you know that Patrick Swayze passed away from pancreatic cancer.

Of the "common" cancers, the pancreatic variety comes in fourth place in terms of mortality rates.

Your number one cancer killer is lung cancer. By far. Which makes this bit of news quite encouraging, indeed.

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HEAVY METAL BRUCE

My doctor has informed me that I have Mercury (a planet more than 3,000 miles in diameter) in my bloodstream. No wonder I feel bloated!

Mercury is also a metal that remains liquid at room temperature, much like my mother's lasagna. I'll speculate, however, that mercury is far different from my mother's lasagna, in that the dog would probably EAT mercury. All the dog ever did with the lasagna was chew it a little before spitting it out. My dad would notice all the soggy piles of lasagna under the table and then we'd get in plenty of trouble for mistreating the dog.

The downside to having so much mercury in my bloodstream is that it can cause memory loss and, well ... other things. The upside is that I can always tell you what temperature it is.

I also seem to have a high concentration of another "heavy metal" in my bloodstream -- lead. No wonder I'm reluctant to throw away all my Deep Purple albums! People who have to pay a lot of speeding tickets are said to have a "lead foot" or a "teenage son."

Knowing that I've got all this lead in my body has changed some of my attitudes. For example, I'm no longer afraid of being exposed to things like radiation, or bullets. On the other hand, I don't dare go outside in a rainstorm for fear of rusting to a halt.

My doctor informs me that having such a toxic level of metal in my blood could mean a shortened lifespan, though the good news is that when I die my family can avoid the expense of a funeral and just dump my body in a recycling bin. He has put me on medication designed to fix the problem, in the hopes that a side effect will be increased mental capacity, so I can remember to pay his bill.

The treatment to extrude the metals from my body can take more than a year, which, to put it in perspective, is approximately the half-life of my mother's lasagna.

[copyright 2008 by W. Bruce Cameron via Mikey's Funnies; abridged by Mark Raymond; Mr. Cameron grants permission to send this to others with attribution, but not for commercial purposes]

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WONDER for YOUR WEEK: Why do doctors prescribe pain pills? Shouldn't they be giving out pain *relief* pills?

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