January 27, 2011
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Le Hospital. (A Serial.) -Episode 7 -THE FINAL CHAPTER!
Thursday: The night before I was told that my surgery was going to be at 4PM. So I was going to be fasting for 14 hours. I wake up, and I hear strange news. I am told that my surgery will be at 10AM. I’m ecstatic.
On the way to the OR my transport nurse is a man named Jim. The way he talks about working at the hospital is when you go to a shelter to hear stories of what the war was like. He’s that character in movies who is on the brink of sanity, he knows too much that we can’t afford not to have him, but at the same time he could blow the whole operation. His voice was gritty, smoke-filled and sarcastic.
We start going down the hall and he starts telling me stories of past MRSA patients, all of them sound made-up and all of them don’t really sound like MRSA stories. They sound more like he substituted MRSA with other ailments. I start to giggle.
“Must have started you early on the valium…”
We get to the OR and I yet again get sectioned off. This time I’m behind a glass door, I feel like I’m in a zoo, but no one wants to see me. I’m just the sick lion.
They put liquid valium into my blood stream. As they’re carting me into the OR I’m afraid it’s not going to hit me in time. I break a sweat. I start breathing heavy. My mind races, I start to think of all the worst case scenarios.
What if his hand slips and he slices my achilles tendon? What if he puts a GPS tracking device inside my foot? What if I wake up with no foot? And I become a peg leg!? And I would have the same Halloween costume over and over and over again?!
Then they hitch my bed up like jacking a car to change its tire, so I can get on the operating table. I make the joke that my wheel is flat. And that’s the last thing I remember.
I’m then in my room. I decide to call friends. I tell all of them I feel like I’m Jimi Hendrix and I want to burn a guitar. I tell them that my foot doesn’t hurt and I could walk right now, but my brain told me it would be a bad idea. I told them my brain is always right and I’m usually wrong. I told them Percocet is the mother of all silly. I felt like I had to throw up.
The Recovery: This process is a challenging and frustrating one. Friday, Saturday and Sunday I’m on crutches in the snow and ice. Friday I went out with some real great friends to Worcester’s famed Hotel Vernon. It is a dirty bar with $1 drafts and a room shaped like the inside of a ship. If you ever want to have a real fun time in a room full of character go say hi to Bob and the Vernon.
Monday I’m told I can’t be on my crutches and I have to walk. I’m given an orthopedic shoe. I walk like Frankenstein. I had my show, the Sexiest Show in Town. And did my angriest set of my life. At one point I ripped into a kid who was wearing a Insane Clown Posse shirt for a good 3-4 minutes. “I hope you go outside for a smoke break and develop instant lung cancer.” Yeah…
So all in all this has been two weeks of absolute hell, utter joy, great new beginnings and nerve-straining pain. So as I steadily walk now there is this jaded part of me that squints and spits at certain things. But I realize that we’re all just fucking people and we all make those stupid ass mistakes. Girls secretly sometimes fall in the toilet. Guys sometimes get desperate and fantasize with dandruff shampoo that makes their member swell. We all do things. Things happen. Happenings are there. And what was M. Night Shyamalan when he made “The Happening?”
