Back on my first go, I had gotten a vasectomy, too. In an incredibly selfish way, our accident, with Marilyn losing the baby and being unable to have any more children, had spared me having to go through it again. It is nowhere near as enjoyable as they advertise!
First, you aren’t unconscious; they do this all under a local. You are laying there with your legs up in stirrups, and the doctor says, ‘You’ll just feel a pinch, like a bee sting.’ Well, it wasn’t a pinch, and I’ve never had a bee sting me there! Next, while you are looking down between your legs, he’s slicing and dicing you, and then while the vas deferens is exposed, he is cauterizing that. Wait until you see smoke rising from a place that smoke is never supposed to rise from!
Afterwards he slaps a Band-Aid on everything and you get to wear a modified jockstrap to support everything and go home with. He also gives you some painkillers, and they aren’t enough and they are nowhere near as strong as they need to be. You are going to be off your feet for about a week and you are going to be in pain for three to four weeks.
Ahead of time you are told, ‘It’s no worse than getting kicked in the balls.’ That is perfectly true. What is left unsaid is the fact that no man yet born has ever volunteered to get kicked in the balls! Then, the next morning, when you start moving again, it feels like somebody kicked you in the balls all over again! It’s like this day after day for almost a month! Forget about sex! Nothing down there is going to work for weeks!
Also, by the way, don’t let your dog sit in your lap. The doctor told me this and I asked ‘Why not?’ He told me how one of his patients when home, sat down in the recliner, and his St. Bernard jumped into his lap. The stitches gave way and everything kind of squirted out through the opening. He ended up in an ambulance going to the hospital!
I grinned back at my friend. “I’ll bet that made riding a motorcycle an exciting experience!”
Tusker rolled his eyes. “Like you wouldn’t believe! Come over to the house sometime. I’ll kick you in the nuts and then we can go dirt biking on a motocross trail!”
“You make it sound so appealing! I can see why you do so well in sales.”
Tusker laughed, again probably for the first time in a month or more, and then went off with Tessa to talk to some of their guests.
The good news was that after Carter was laid to rest, the Tusk family settled back down again. Without the stress of his failing treatment, our friends went back to normal. It had seemed at one point like they were on the verge of splitting, but it all just calmed down and they stayed together. A few weeks later, he showed me a small pamphlet from a memorial company, and pointed out the stone they were getting for the grave. It was going to be a large stone, but one with spaces for three names, Carter’s and both his parents. They had bought the plots on either side of his.
Later that fall, we were having dinner with the Tusks, and I asked, “Back when Carter first got sick, and you guys started taking him down to Johns Hopkins, do you remember how I did some checking if there were any treatments available that he could get?”
Tusker and Tessa looked at each other and then Tessa said, “Yes, and you said there wasn’t anything that could be done that we weren’t already doing.”
“That’s true. What I didn’t say, because it had nothing to do with Carter, was that the doctors I spoke to all said that the one thing I could do was help get them the funding for more research. I was thinking, I mean, yes, in Congress I can do that, but what about just as a private citizen? I talked to a guy down at Johns Hopkins. If you would agree to it, I want to create a professorship for research down there. We’ll call it the Carter Henry Tusk Chair, or something like that.”
They looked at each other again, and it was Tusker that answered. “Uh, yeah, I guess so. How much would that cost?”
“Well, nothing. I would simply endow a chair and send them a check.”
“Okay, but how much is it?”
I had been hoping to avoid that, but it was a legitimate question. “Four million.” I had discussed this with my wife of course, especially considering she was the trustee for the Buckman Foundation, and would be writing the check.
Tessa’s and Tusker’s eyes snapped wide open! “Four million?! Dollars!? You can’t… I mean… Are you kidding me?!” gabbled my friend.
“Tusker, I can’t take it with me. Maybe someday something that professor figures out can save me, right? Besides, money isn’t something I covet just to be rich. It’s a tool, and what better way to use it than something like this,” I responded.
“Holy fucking shit!” he exclaimed, which set all of the kids to giggling.
Marilyn looked at our offspring and scolded them. “Just because Uncle Tusker said a bad word doesn’t mean you get to.”
“Do we get to wash his mouth out with soap?” asked Charlie. Bucky was grinning and nodding.
“You bet, as soon as you figure out a way to wrestle him to the ground,” replied Marilyn.
Charlie eyed Tusker, who gave him a menacing look in return. “Maybe later.”
“If you’re getting a professor, why do they call him a chair, Uncle Carl?” asked Bucky.
I had to blink at that. “I’m not really sure, Bucky. I think that they used to give you a really fancy chair to sit on at some old time colleges, but I never asked that before.”
“Oh.”
Thus was born the Carter Henry Tusk Chair for Pediatric Oncology at Johns Hopkins. There was a fair bit of paperwork involved, and then the university had to hire somebody to fill the chair. That we couldn’t decide, on the theory that none of us knew anything about pediatric oncology. That was pretty much true. The professorship would become effective in the fall semester of 1994, and we and the Tusks were invited to attend the grand opening, or whatever they called it. That would be for the future, though, almost a year away.
In the meantime, I needed to get back to my job as one of the leaders of the free world. I won’t say that this had been a distraction from that. It was more like being a Congressman had been a distraction from being a friend. Still, I needed to get back to Washington and start fighting for my Defending the Second Amendment Bill, which was planned to be the formal name.
I had some fairly specific thoughts in mind for the bill, which we were abbreviating as D2A. I had a few very specific things I wanted in the bill, and my biggest foes were not going to be the Democrats, but my fellow Republicans! The Democrats wouldn’t allow anything I wanted, plain and simple, but after 1994 they would be in the minority. They could vote against it, but the odds were that we would have enough of a majority to ram through even vetoed legislation. Putting any kind of sensible restrictions on guns, however, was the sort of thing that the NRA would never allow. What I had in mind was:
* Require all states to be ‘shall issue’ states rather than ‘may issue’ states for concealed carry permits.
* Require all states to recognize each other’s permits.
* End the assault weapons ban (which wasn’t law yet, but would be next year. It would be one of the last gasps of the Democratic Congress.)
* Limit all civilian weapons magazines to a maximum of 10 rounds, no matter what the actual weapon could fire.
Some of the items would be near and dear to the Republicans, and would pass without any question. For years there had been discussion of changing the rules on concealed carry. After my experiences with Hamilton’s stalking of Marilyn and Charlie, I was all in favor of this. I also knew that some of the more liberal states, like Maryland and Massachusetts would be a very tough sell. Still, I figured we could count on Congressional votes from the more rural and conservative districts of those states.