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4th Mar 18
M. R. Sellars(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…
