RKS Health: The Great Hernia Adventure:  What Exactly is the Hernia Club and How I Will Make a Fortune Out of it: Hernia Pay for View Event

Not to exaggerate but hernia surgery is big business so why not cash in!

I am close to finalizing a pay for view event “Hernias the Agony and the Ecstasy” with Fightview International based in Pineville, North Carolina.

There will be three event viewings.

View one: “The Scourge of the Hernia Plague”

View two: “Hernia Surgery’s Deadly Dance”

View three: “Secrets Unlocked to Avoid Continual Pain and Suffering of Hernia Surgery”

$59.99 per view. $120 for the “Three View Package” with a Restorative Hernia Tea sampler package included.

I have lined up the best hernia surgeons from Moldova, Cuba and Punai. Hernia sufferers are a dime and dozen so I look for those with best agonized voices and fear ridden faces. Scientists from the Wuhan Viral Laboratory will elucidate on the plague of hernias far worse than COVID.

Victims of botched hernia surgery will groan and wheeze followed by undertakers explaining jammed packed funeral parlours burying and cremating hernia fatalities.

Secret remedies for post hernia surgery will be explained and sold with an emphasis on the insidious ED consequences rarely understood by those being wheeled into hernia operating theatres in the world.

The Hernia Help Hotline will be pitched to viewers.

Fear drives revenue!

RKS Health: The Great Hernia Adventure:  What Exactly is the Hernia Club and How I Will Make a Fortune Out of it: A Global Hernia Help Hotline?

Given that hernia surgery is one of the most “common surgeries” in the developed world and the citizens in the developed world have massive amounts of cash to squander on consumer goods why not create a global hotline assuaging and profiting from Hernia Fear? Where there is medical fear there is money to be made isn’t that what Tony Bobbins once said?

Imagine a 1-888-666-7777 Hernia Help Hotline accepting all credit cards. Train hotline staffers and as the porn hotlines are struggling help is cheap. Research “fear points” prepare standard answers. Build on a myriad of fears and create further fear and doubt. $99 USD for five minutes. 10-minute minimum chats with “Hernia Victims” and “Hernia Survivors”. $599 for 30-minute chats with Sri Lankan hernia surgeons. The business model is simple all answers must lead to the augmentation of Hernia Fear! An endless source of revenue.

Hernia surgery packages to Bangalore, Mumbai, Tirana and Fairbanks Alaska!

Merchandise too! Pickled hernia sacs, T-Shirts and coffee mugs!

RKS Health: The Great Hernia Adventure:  What Exactly is the Hernia Club and How I Will Make a Fortune Out of it: A Surgical Resort?

Your admission into the Hernia Club (Inguinal Division) commences from the day you emerged from the shower and noticed a bulge just above the waist. Membership ends upon your death. There is no initiation fee, annual charge or minimum bar and restaurant tab required. No need to worry about global inclusion and diversity. The preponderance of Hernia Club members are old white guys but lots of ethnic representation and women too!

I made the effort of patenting and trademarking “The Hernia Club”.

I have received inquiries from readers which lead to a possible conclusion there is money and possibly moral redemption in The Hernia Club!

A consortium of Albanian tourism operators pitched a very profitable idea to me about combining a hernia surgical centre and beach club on the Albanian Adriatic Coast. Take a Shouldice Hospital approach. Surgeons are airlifted in from Cuba. Sort of a cut and coast philosophy. Spend time at the beach for a minimum of 7 days after your hernia surgery. Eat executive chef prepared meals, play shuffleboard, mini-putt and receive healing massages from an Albanian masseuse. You return home with a tan and will be walking about like a spring chicken. Fortunately, I had my friends at Interpol perform a check on the individuals behind the consortium. Seems all have a “worrisome past” dotted with human trafficking, prostitution and food fraud i.e. the old Calabrian trick of making mozzarella cheese out of plastic.

I prefer a similar offer from crack hernia surgeons in Southern California for a Hernia Club Desert Healing Resort in Rancho Mirage. Surgeries will be at the Eisenhower Health Centre in Palm Springs and recovery will be at the resort. Healing desert sunshine, protein miracle Date Shakes and loads of activities for spouses including a lavish Three-Day Post Hernia barbeque (with open bar) to celebrate a migration from bone broth, white rice and hummus to hormone and antibiotic rich squab, squid and organic whole wheat spaghetti.

Stay tuned for the final deal!

RKS 2025 Wine: Mencía a Pinot Noir on Steroids?

One of my favourite descriptors of a grape is attributable to Matt Kramer of the Wine Spectator many years back when he stated the Mencía grape reminded him of Pinot Noir on steroids. Whether that descriptor is correct is less relevant than the descriptor itself! You will find Mencía in Northwestern Spain and in the Dão region in Portugal where it is known as Jaen. 85% Mencía, 8% Grenache and 7% Sousón in this wine.

Aroma: Raspberry, cocoa, cranberry and Catanian cactus pear.

Palate: Brackish with a slight bitterness. Firm yet smooth. Tiny bit perky. Raspberry, sweet Ruby Red grapefruit, Santa Rosa plum and a hint of blackberry with a predominately short finish with some long fade elements. A slight chill (not The Big Chill) is essential

Personality: I am certainly no Pete Rose on steroids. Acidity (not out of control) gives me a perkiness.

Food Match: Pulpo Gallego.

Cellarbility: 2025-year end.

Price: $22 CDN.

RKS 2025 Wine Rating: 88/100. Natalie MacLean 90. Decanter World Wine Awards 97.

(Matilda Nieves 2020 Mencía, D.O. Ribeira Sacra, Spain, 750 mL 13%).

RKS Literature: Sex and a Gas Mask (Andrea Levy)

“All that lily-of-the-valley scent. Hours spent waving my hair and powdering my face to porcelain perfection. Silk stockings, red lips and hands as soft as lah-di-lah. And I was married to a man who wouldn’t have noticed if I’d come to bed in my gas mask. If I could have asked Aunt Dorothy, “Is that all that sex is?” I know what she would have said: ‘Well what did you think it would be?”

Andrea Levy, “Small Island”, 2003.

RKS Health: The Great Hernia Adventure: Surgery is the Easy Part: No Worries as We’ve Seen it All Before!

Newbies to the Hernia Club are frequently barking up the wrong tree once they decide it is time for surgery and keenly focus on the surgery itself to the exclusion of the healing process.

I will not review differing surgical approaches here as they are amply discussed on the internet.

It is perfectly natural to have qualms, misgivings or fears about hernia surgery.

How long will it take? What anesthesia will be used? Will I be compelled to stay in the hospital or surgical centre overnight? What are all the protocols and procedures involved? Is there any modicum of decency offered being sprawled out in all your glory on the operating table. What is the great “comforting” physician line, “No worries. We’ve seen it all before!” As a patient should we retort, “Well you may have seen it all before but I haven’t seen you seeing it all this time when I am on the table. I am not part of all in this theatre. I am me.”

My experience with an open repair surgery for an inguinal hernia transpired without incident. Prepped by a nurse with an IV and wheeled in the secret corridors of Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. An exclusive VIP tour!

Met anesthetist at the door of the operating theatre so kindly asking me if I would like to have a wee bit of a sedative to take the edge off. That went well and a brief meeting with the surgeon who promised me he would take good care of me and shave me down there right after the general anesthesia administered so I wouldn’t have to watch those who have seen it all before watching me.

A mask over my face and 90 minutes later in a surgical recovery ward waking up enormously grateful it “was all over”. Best part no headache and no nausea but a nasty sore throat. My spirit said, “Let’s do a victory dance!”. My body replied, “Easy there fellah!”

A couple of passes by the nurse asking what is your pain level out of ten. It was a measly 4! A couple of jabs of hydromorphone quickly reduced that to “Who cares”. I refused a third jab as I felt fit as a fiddle. A victory pee, ensuring waterworks in order. Boy that’s a nasty looking incision there but smaller than I anticipated.

A slow dress up with no help other than my son assisting me putting on my socks.

A trip home with a damn sore throat worsening. Those tubes down your throat.

Concerned familial quips of “You need to rest!” fell on deaf ears. The pain was constant but far from overwhelming. The best relief from the pain was movement so I walked around the house regularly like a hamster on a wheel.

Strangely ebullient I was. It’s done! Let a condemned man enjoy his last moments of delusion. The Great Hernia Adventure was only beginning.

RKS 2025 Canadian Film: “Do I Know You from Somewhere?” A Juxtaposition of Two Possible Realities

“Do I Know You from Somewhere” juggles two possible realities. It is what could have been where choice, fate and accident intersect and zig zag with the past, present and future. There is a healthy dose of ominous fantasy a la “Twilight Zone”.

Olive (Caroline Bell) meets Benny (Ian Otis Goff) at a relative’s wedding. Benny is a server and Olive is emerging from a break-up. Olive is outgoing and due to alcohol consumption at this festive occasion overpowering for the shy and reticent Benny but nonetheless they hit it off intellectually and physically.

Eventually they move in together. It is Benny’s birthday. But strange occurrences flood their quiet home including a fridge magnet number count down. The numbers keep decreasing without any human intervention. A wagon with a bow and then a plush stuffed rabbit appear again without any human intervention. The wagon gift card is addressed to Cece an unfamiliar name for both Olive and Benny. What is happening? Matters are becoming ominous.

Then a different scenario is thrust upon the viewer. At the wedding where Olive and Benny connected instead of meeting Benny she meets Ada (Mallory Amirault) a stage manager. Ada and Olive become lovers. Guess the name of their child!

Gradually all the strange appearances of the rabbit and the wagon begin to make sense. What is actual reality is left unexplained. There is no reality in the film, simply possibilities.

At times the film is more of a stage production than a film. The message may be life is but a theatrical presentation. The plot is an enjoyable journey lacking any clear destination.

Bell is compelling in her dual role.

Written and directed by Arianna Martinez. Digital/VOD release 27June2025.

RKS 2025 Canadian Film Rating 84/100.

RKS Literature: Frightened to Get in the Family Way! (Andrea Levy)

“All those warnings of things that could leave me in the family way. I’d been scared simple from the time my breasts first poked up in my jumper. Kissing at the garden gate, canoodling at the pictures. If he stuck his tongue in your mouth that was definitely a baby. If he touched your breast, well, that was twins. And what girl didn’t know you could fall pregnant sitting on a toilet seat. So sex every Saturday, Sunday and sometimes twice in the week for over a year should surely have left me with a child.”

Andrea Levy, “Small Island”, 2003.

RKS Literature: Butcher’s Daughter Stuck on the Farm in Rural England

“I should have been going to dances, larking with men who had Clark Gable hair and whispered in my ear I was as pretty as an English rose. My legs should have been caressed in silk stockings, a pointed toe and a delicate heel on my shoe as I stepped from a car. I should have trailed lily-of-the-valley scent, my hair waved, my face powdered to porcelain perfection. I should have been a lady. But I was stuck in a stinking farm. Muck. Muck. And every day the same. Until one day Mother said, “Queenie go and fetch father from the butchering shed.”

Andrea Levy, “Small Island”, 2003.

RKS Health: The Great Hernia Adventure: Surgical Options and Preparing for Your Big Date

Be aware there are several surgical options; open, laparoscopic and robotic. The method chosen may be totally your choice or it may be dictated by the type and complexity of the hernia. Take the time to familiarize yourself with the differing methods.

You may have the option to do nothing or wait. But circumstances may thwart your free will; be aware of the risk of a strangulated hernia. Research that.

There may be “natural options” you wish to research.

Let’s assume you have a surgery date. You can’t just walk in and say let’s get going! For your own safety and for prepping the surgical team who has the privilege of dissecting you it is almost certain you will have a presurgical appointment close to your surgical date. Your surgical provider will provide details pertaining to;

Items to bring with you on your surgical date.

What time and where you have to register for surgery.

How to prepare for your surgery which might include at home presurgical showers, what you can eat and drink prior to surgery, what to expect the day of your surgery, frequently asked questions about your surgery, medication instructions and post operative exercises and tips for a rapid recovery.

The Hernia Club has got hold of you as you are facing a date you’d rather not have. You’ll have a few things on your mind for sure and the stress and anxiety meter is moving upwards. Hint? Accept your reality and perhaps express to yourself gratitude you have taken a big step in your well being. A bit of self compassion is well deserved.