BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

(Continued from Haven’t We Been Here Before?)

They call it PTSD.

Me being me, I thought all I did was fall off a roof. So what? Big deal. I hadn’t gone to war, been shot at, watched friends getting killed, or anything horrible like that. I just fell off a fucking roof because of a plain old freak accident. Nothing complex about it, except maybe the landing. PTSD was something people who had experienced truly horrible traumas had the misfortune of going through. However, it seems that falling 15 feet and shattering a few things in your body is enough of a trauma to qualify. Color me surprised (and I am not being sarcastic… I really was surprised – and not in the good way.) I should also note that regular doses of FrimboToluScrambulene ZX shot into your veins does very little to alleviate it. In fact, it’s really just the opposite – it is sort of like a digital processor for flashbacks. They get brighter, more vivid, and run in an endless loop, all while the Frimbowhatistzshit plays its little “PSYCH! Not Really!” game with the pain.

I suppose maybe my body chemistry could be odd. I’ve always been susceptible to various side effects from medications, and I seem to have two settings – It works better than expected or it doesn’t work at all. So, the long and short is that your mileage may vary. All I can say is that my mileage was pretty horrible. On thing I can definitely say about FrimboToluScrambulene ZX is that it does, in point of fact, scramble your brain pan. (And yeah, I know I am making up all these drug names, but the reality is that the names I am not-so-randomly generating are far more descriptive of what they do than monikers like Dilaudid and Morphine.) What I am getting at here is that in addition to be a broken pile of novelist on a hospital bed, my brain was fried. I had zero head trauma, but it really didn’t matter. Between the THX Digitally Enhanced Blu-Ray Ultra HD flashbacks, the pain, and drugs that were only just barely taking the edge off said pain, my memories of the four days I spent in the hospital are pretty Swiss Cheese-like in scope. There are things I remember very well, and then there are long spans where I don’t recall much of anything. So, again, this is one of those “hit the high points” sort of installments to this saga. But first, some pictures, because apparently when you are tanked up on Framawhatzashitz and you have access to your phone you don’t really care what you look like and you take selfies anyway – and at all hours of the day and night.

 

The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe

I’m relatively certain that I’ve mentioned that this wasn’t my first go at doing hard time in the hospital. If I am wrong about that, well, there ya go – this wasn’t my first rodeo. This isn’t to say that I am a frequent flyer on ER airlines, because contrary to what many of my friends and loved ones will tell you, I am NOT the real-life embodiment of Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor. I don’t have my own room in the ER, I’m not on a first name basis with any of the docs there, and they don’t send me birthday and Christmas cards. In short, other than when I was born, I’ve only been in the hospital twice. Sure, I’ve been in a hospital visiting folks, but me being the inmate has only happened twice. Hell, Evil Kat has been admitted to the hospital more times than I have, so let’s keep a little perspective here. Now, that said, I did have a stint in a hospital many years ago when my appendix exploded. Among my most vivid memories of that experience was a nurse insisting that I eat my lunch (mostly because I hadn’t eaten anything other than Jello, juice, and coffee for three days). I looked at the lunch, looked at her, then pushed the tray a few inches toward her and said, “Tell you what – You eat some of that mess without vomiting and I promise I’ll match you bite for bite.” She looked at the tray, turned green, and then said, “I’ll talk to the doc about getting you something else to eat.”

So, that was my experience with hospital food – until the ToD was born. Of course, when she was born she wasn’t the ToD, mostly because she wasn’t a teen yet. She was basically a poop machine with an alarm than went off every two hours, but that’s a whole ‘nother story. My point here is that ToD was born at the hospital where they took me to die this time… Well, not die, really. But, you get the picture. 18+ years ago when ToD hit the scene the food in the cafeteria at Mercy was pretty damn good. More than edible, in fact. It wasn’t a destination restaurant for a night out, or an anniversary – unless that’s your kink, of course, and who am I to judge? – but my point is that the food was pretty good. Well, fortunately, that really hadn’t changed. The food was still good, and in fact, there was a damn menu in my room. Every morning I would dial the phone and read off what I wanted, then in 30 minutes or less (better than Domino’s) it would show up. Same thing for lunch, and for dinner. And, when EK was there she could order, too (for a price, but hey, they’d bring her a tray, too, so we would get to have dinner together.) Now, I should note, that whoever was at the other end of the line whenever I ordered was highly trained in linguistics. I know this because I’m relatively certain that three times per day I would call them up and say, “Hebbo. Ibba noom tree-fiddy. Mah hab skrimmed nag, kippee, notez, shoosh am bacon.” Yeah, I always managed to get the bacon out just fine, so I think maybe they could extrapolate from there. Suffice it to say, in my Frimbowhatzitz induced haze I was rarely making sense, but I always ended up with perfectly edible food that more than resembled what I thought (at the time) I was ordering.

 

My Cage At The Human Zoo

People came to look at the Merp. Well, not so much to look at the Merp, but to visit, cheer me up, and generally check on me. That was much appreciated, however, again I must cite the FrimboToluScrambulene ZX in all its glory. What I mean is, I have only vague recollections of these visits. I’ve heard that I talked to folks, but it’s really a purplish haze… or pomegranate… or yellow… or just pick a color. It’s foggy no matter what. The best I can recall is that Kitt (my supervisor from the Ethical Society), my Brother-in-Law John, Mikey and Anastasia, and my Father-in-Law came to see me. If I left anyone out, my apologies. If I remember someone being there who wasn’t, my apologies for that, too. Honestly the only constants I can really recall are EK and the ToD, a gaggle of nurses, and a crap ton of pain.

 

It’s A Moral Imperative

My good friend John Gramling (see blog post The Gramling Party) had his own stint in the hospital some time back. During his incarceration he started a tradition – one which has become a moral imperative for us old farts dealing with hospitalization. Apparently, given that there was free Wi-Fi, I was staying in touch with folks via Facebook during my own incarceration. Go figure… At any rate, I was reminded of the moral imperative and thusly it was executed. See below.

For all intents and purposes this has become the International Symbol of Grumpy Old Fuckers in the Hospital. For the record, it’s not directed at the staff. It’s directed at whatever put us there in the first place.

 

Walking On The Moon

Well, not really, but about as close as I could get given that I had been confined to the bed for a few days. I’d been fitted with my back brace and I had been allowed to sit in a chair. The physical therapist showed up and announced that she was going to teach me how to use a walker so that maybe I could escape at some point. Trust me, it’s a good thing she did because those things are NOT as easy to operate as one would imagine. At any rate, following some verbal instructions and demonstrations it came time for my first official lesson. I wasn’t going to be allowed to solo yet, but I was going to get to be at the controls with an instructor riding along.

The Physical Therapist said, “Let’s go to the door.” We did. When we got to the door she said, “Do you want to try to go up the hall to the next door?” I said, “Fuck the next door. I’m going to go up there and say hello to the nurses.” She said, “You know the farther you go the farther you have to get back to the bed, right?” I said, “Don’t worry, I’m not ready to escape just yet.”

 

Night Moves

Sounds interesting, right? I mean, anyone who knows the song would be all like, “Yeah, now you’re talking!” Well, yeah, I am, but not the kind of talking you think. You see, one of the questions RN’s will ask you on a regular basis is, “Have you had a BM today?” Well, truth is, they would have known already since I wasn’t allowed out of the bed without help once I had been fitted for the back brace. So, they usually asked me if I needed to. And, well, I did. I knew I did because food was going in, but no compost was exiting. Unfortunately, the FrimboToluScrambulene ZX also has the effect of giving the sewage treatment and disposal plant in your abdomen an unscheduled vacation. Here’s the other thing – they won’t let you leave until you take a dump. It’s a rule. On the one hand it’s a weird rule, but on the other – from a medical standpoint – it makes perfect sense. Well, I tried several times to reach the supervisor of my waste disposal plant, but he had turned his cell phone off and was enjoying a holiday elsewhere. I requested a tall glass of Citrate of Magnesium, neat, from the nursing staff, but unfortunately, even though it was something I could pick up for a dollar at the local Walgreen’s sans prescription I was not allowed to have it unless the doctor ordered it. Also unfortunately – for me at least – the doctor was playing golf… or backgammon… or attending a fundraiser for a new wing on the hospital… or what the fuck ever. All I know is that the doc really didn’t seem to give a shit if I shit or not. (see what I did there?) So, I did the next best thing – I groused about it to Little Red Riding Nurse, to which LRRN said, “That’s easy. Slam a glass or two of warm prune juice. It’ll clean you right out.” And so…

Evil Kat ran to the store and brought me a jug o’ juice of the desiccated plum, and the staff warmed it up for me. Funny thing, too – the vast majority of my nursing staff at the hospital were young. As LRRN calls them, “baby nurses.” It’s not that they didn’t know what they were doing, but there were old remedies that they weren’t up to speed on. As it turns out, a whole raft of them took notes on the whole prune juice thing because I slammed a couple of glasses in the afternoon, and by the time night rolled around…well, you saw the title of this section, right? At any rate, I heard about a half-dozen nurses say, “Damn, I gotta remember this prune juice thing.”

 

Who Needs Sleep?

This part isn’t funny. Not that any of this is really funny, but I AM trying to find the humor in it. However, this part is horribly sad. If the FrimboFramaWhatsutol XR and flashbacks weren’t enough to screw me out of anything resembling real sleep (not to mention the hourly blood pressure, temp, etc checks), there was some poor woman down the hall who likely had some form of dementia. I’m not sure what she was there for, other than given the floor I was on she had likely had back surgery or something of that sort. At any rate, it appeared she had no idea where she was or what was happening to her, and she would scream all night long for some person to come help her. I cannot remember his name, but I can only assume it was her departed husband – or maybe not even departed. At any rate, she would scream over and over and over, “FRANK (for lack of a better name), HELP ME!” This was constant, and was only broken up by interludes where instead of screaming for help she would scream obscenities and begin throwing whatever she could get her hands on against the walls and out her door. It was disturbing, and worse than that, I really felt for her. She was trapped inside her own head and there was nothing anyone could do.

 

And so, with the Night Moves done and the Moon Walking under my belt, there started a rumor that after four days of incarceration I was going to get sprung. As much as I liked the nurses and the food, I was ready to go home, so I began making plans for my escape…

 

More to come…

 

(Continued from With Six You Get Eggroll…)

And so… People in official looking hospital type clothing streamed in and out of the room for the next day and a half… Well, not really a day and a half, but as noted in the previous blog, around 6 hours. One ego would be telling everyone how it was going to be, and then another ego would show up and they would piss on each other for a minute or two, then I would interject a word or two about how, ya’know, it was MY body we were talking about so maybe we could all get on the same page. Of course, that didn’t work – except with the RN’s. They were the real heroes in there. And, I missed the ER Doc in Charge, but she was off saving other people and I had been turned over to the maintenance staff.

By now, we had progressed into late afternoon. It was just me, my ice chips, the FramoLiptoTriptoDiFremulene XQ, morphine, some truly fantabulous RN’s, the egos, and a shift change. By shift change I mean a shift change. My team of RN’s changed up, and so did my on-site family, as EK left work an hour or so early and came to the hospital to relieve the Teen of Doom and check to see if she could collect on the life insurance yet.

Just kidding. She’d definitely wait an appropriate amount of time so that it didn’t look suspicious.

JUST KIDDING. I don’t have any life insurance.

DAMMIT… I’m just kidding, for reals. Y’all know Evil Kat really isn’t evil. She just plays Evil on my blog and other places you don’t really need to know about.

So, anyway, yeah, full on shift change – except for the egos, although, there did seem to be a few new egos added to the mix and some other egos had disappeared – not all, but some. I don’t know if some of them just lost their pissing matches, or if I just wasn’t a “Dr. House” worthy anomaly that would get them the recognition they thought they deserved. However, it really didn’t matter. There seemed to be an endless supply of egos to replace the ones who had gone tooling on home in their BMW’s.

Now… let me again state, there are some truly fantastic docs out there who don’t have swelled heads. I’m actually good friends with a couple. Not only that, my primary care physician is a pretty cool guy. I am currently – or was, because as of this writing I have been discharged by two of them – seeing some docs of various specialties given the range of my injuries who are personable, down to earth, and even pretty damn funny. They listen to my concerns, and even my objections and decisions about my own care given that I have a team of RN’s, a couple of Paramedics, and a Doc who are long time friends who have been conducting their own “Remote Care Regimen” on me via Facebook Messenger, Text, and Phone. Granted, they were a bit taken aback the first time I told them, “I don’t think so, because Little Red Riding Nurse says XYZ instead…” I did have to stop and explain that I had every reason to trust LRRN and the rest of my FB medical team, and really no reason at all to trust them, which might have been a blow to their individual egos, but instead of huffing and puffing, they rolled with it and said, “Yeah, I can understand that, and this Little Red Riding Nurse person is right about XYZ, but can we do ABC in conjunction with that?”

Compromise, man… It works.

But, now I am getting ahead of myself in the story, so let’s step back in time to the ER where we were before.

 

 

 

 

After a lull in the activity a mess of scrubby folks came in and and told me I had been chosen to star in a remake of the Star Trek (TOS) episode, City On The Edge Of Forever. Okay, so not really. What they actually said was, “We’re going to take you for a CT scan.”

Now, this is one of those things you always hear on the medical dramas when they are yelling out the gimme this, gimme that, while calling for 3 million units of whole blood, epinephrine, sodium bicarb, and shocking asystole – which any medical professional and most any writer who did an ounce of research will tell you is a lost cause, as it won’t restart your blood pump – but, I digress. What I am saying is that in just about any medical drama, while all of the above shit is going on, someone usually demands a CT Scan of something. Seems like it’s usually a head CT or some such, but there’s always a CT scan happening on TV. BUT… (saw that coming, right?) we don’t usually get to see it happen. They just holler out for it. So, I, like many others, don’t really know off the top of our heads what it looks like to get one.

Well, in my case they weren’t just sticking with the head (not that they were going to find anything in there anyway) – they were going for the full motherfucking monty. Every last inch of The Merp was going to get passed through a big ass degaussing coil. OR, as noted in the title – a time portal.

 

 

So, yeah, my SciFi Geek side thought of the above. My electronics tech nerd side, however, thought of this:

 

 

Admittedly, I was tanked up on morphine and Framostatotriptofromulene ZX or what the hell ever, but the brainpan was still firing. In reality, the machine they used on me looked like a giant, white degaussing coil just like the one above, all except that it had a motorized table that passed back and forth through it. Now… Unfortunately for y’all, at this point the RN’s had decided I was no longer amusing and therefore had upped my doses of Framostatotriptofromulene ZX to elephant killing levels just to shut me up. Seriously, though, they really had been pumping me full of painkillers due to the fact that the 6 kept turning into a 15 with an occasional 20. I actually heard more than once from those tending to my care that they didn’t recall the last time they’d encountered anyone with as high a pain tolerance as I seemed to have. I kept telling them that it was because they weren’t giving me bourbon. If they would just give me a bottle of bourbon everything would be okay. They opted instead for shit I can’t pronounce, even though I told them to just grab the cash out of my wallet and run down to the liquor store for a handle of Devil’s Cut.

Anywho, at this point I was still hurting like a sonofabitch, but at the same time I was drifting in and out of a twilight sort of state. Things were a bit hazy, but I recall that after passing me back and forth between 1938 and 2017 for several minutes, they rolled me around for a bit, and then took me upstairs to the psych ward. Okay, okay, it wasn’t the psych ward. I think – IIRC – that it was actually the neurology floor, because everyone on the floor had either broken their back or had back surgery of some sort. Seems that was a big ass concern for them – the fact that I had a compression fracture of my T12 vertebrae. They had even shown pictures of it to EK and ToD.

 

 

So… there I was… 6 hours later, admitted to Mercy hospital, in a room on the “I’ve Fallen And I Can’t Get Up” floor, and the RN and Tech assigned to me are oohing and ahhing over my story. Remember, all of this started right after I had shoved a handful of groceries down my neck at 11:30 in the morning. Now, as I said, things were a bit fuzzy, but IIRC – and I may not on this part – I think I said something about being hungry and EK asked them if it was possible to get me something to eat. Well, as the story goes it was past dinner time, but since there is no real schedule for idiots like me falling off of roofs, they keep some stuff in the icebox to reward us for sticking the landing – or not. A few minutes later I was presented with a cold turkey sandwich, some pudding, and a cranberry juice.

It was probably just an effect of the Framostatotriptofromulene ZX – and being sorta hungry – but it was a damn good turkey sandwich for being some dry ass turkey on a whitebread hamburger bun and smashed up in some cling wrap.

EK hung out with me for the rest of the evening while I tried to get comfortable, they took my vitals, and injected extra Framostatotriptofromulene ZX into my IV to keep me from running away.

Eventually, I started drifting off to sleep in the wake of a rather trying day and a whole lot of chemicals – and I am NOT talking about L-Tryptophan from the turkey.

However, as something resembling sleep descended upon me an entirely new kind of personal hell broke loose…

More to come…