6 Degrees Of Me

The picture shown above is the primary reason why there hasn’t been a post or any sort of activity on this blog for over one week. What you just witnessed is a result of 2 hours of surgery and a fabulous 5 day 4 night stay at the illustrious Saint Barnabus Hospital Short Term Stay Suites.

I mentioned somewhere back when then I was having all sorts of “physio/nervous system issues” that have been plaguing this adonis-like-physical-specimen for about 9 months now. Well I finally got in contact with the right parties and was able to start the healing process. Unfortunately step #1 in the healing process required a team of elite medical professionals to put me to sleep, put a hole in my chest/rib, pull a piece of very valuable lymph node out, and stick a rubber tube in the hole before closing it up.

I won’t bore you with all of the minute details over the past few days. I’ll just provide a blow by blow of the main events over the span. Unfortunately, I neglected to bring a camera with me to photodocument this moment in history. Thus any pictures of strippers the nurses, living conditions chimpanzees, and hospital staff can only live on as warped visions of my memory.

Day #1 – I was told to arrive at the hospital @ 12pm. I got a call @ 11:15am letting me know that the doctors were ready and requested that I get there sooner. Pissed that I was told that I had a 2pm surgery but couldn’t eat anything after midnight the night before, I assured them that I would do my best to get there earlier, then took my sweet freakin time.

I got to the hospital and was immediately rushed around by a doctor that looked like he was 5 minutes from going on vacation/retiring and I was the key piece keeping that goal away from him. By the way, I will no longer say that a person, if he’s good at what he does, has a right to be conceited/overconfident. That’s just plain stupid. What a jackass Mr. Doctor is.

Fast forward a couple of hours: I’m in the recovery room bouncing in and out of consciousness. Helpless and frail like a newborn kangaroo but slowly wiping away the potent groggy inducing effects of the anesthesia. By the time I was fully alert it was night time and not a moment’s too soon. Time to sleep.

Would someone help me!?!? Please… can somebody help me?!?

I was shaken from my divine dreams by a wailing. Apparently guest #3 in the Barnabus Suites wasn’t very happy with her accommodations and wailed about it. Constantly. A nurse would help her. She would stop wailing. And then start right back up. 2 hours of this. And no sleep for me. And even less sympathy. Luckily I finally realized that the morphine that I was given for pain also had some interesting sleep inducing tendencies. A couple of thumb clicks, a 5 minute wait and suddenly it was a couple hours later. And I had to pee.

I had so many wires and tubes attached to me that I was restrained to the bed. The nurse advised me to use the thermos shaped bedpan and if I couldn’t they would just insert a catheter. So yea, I was using the bedpan. I hadn’t urinated in bed in a couple of decades so I had some mental obstacles to overcome as well as physical ones. I seemed to be a master at wetting the bed when I was a kid but it took the physical application of pressure on my bladder to relieve myself. I didn’t really care how much it hurt urinating that way or how much permanent damage it was doing; i was certain it hurt more to insert and extract a foreign body into my member. Easy decision there.

Day #2 – The wailing guest appears to have a nocturnal wailing habit. Now that the sun was out the wailing had gone into hibernation. Day 2 began the string of blood pressure/temperature/oxygen tests that seemed to occur every 1 1/2 hours. The surgeons came in to check on me and asked me to do some simple tasks like take deep breaths and cough.

I thought deep breathing and coughing was like riding a bike or swimming but apparently after lung surgery neither of the two is particularly easy or pain free. After a couple of attempts my eyes began wandering the expanse of my bed for my morphine button. I had blocked everything else that came out of the doctor’s mouth out of my consciousness. He mentioned something about the tube being removed tomorrow. It was time for another nap.

Night 2 was the rebirth of the “can somebody help me” songstress”. Me being in a drug induced a-hole decided to pipe in at this point.

Give me one second. I’m on my way to help you. Just be patient for one and less selfish.

So I’m going to hell for that. Paradise isn’t forever anyway. Or is that peanut butter?

Day #3 -The barnabus suites was home to 4 guests in one room separated by curtains. The wailer lay across from me. There was another, quieter, pain tolerant chap in the far corner. There was also the loudest, skinniest, portuguese dude lying next to me. He lay in bed all day complaining about his pain. I can’t blame the guy. It looked like he had the same procedure as me, plus diabetes, plus an organ transplant. The Borg would be so proud.

He was generally ok. But when his wife came around. Holy shizer! I started to believe that he was in the hospital just to get away from her. Fight fight fight day and night is all they did and not quietly. Day 3 made me realize how much I appreciate my privacy.

Between the Portuguese couple, the nurses taking my bio reading every 4 minutes and asking me about my bowel movements when the room was most crowded, I was longing for home.

Bright spot. I got a nice visit from Ramya and her friend Nirali. They actually visited for a little bit the day before too. Nirali’s pop is in the same hospital and she was there visiting him but stopped by. I was uber glad to see my girlfriend too. She has long fingers and can hit a morphine drip button with the best of them.

Not so bright spot. The surgeons advised that my lung still had a leak. If the tube was removed my lung might collapse. They didn’t take the “I don’t give a rat’s ass” stare that glazed my face into consideration. They asked me to cough a few more times which prompted to me to take out hits on all of their lives and those of the nursing staff for good measure.

Day #4 -

I was now gathering up all of the tubing and wires to make my way to the bathroom. Life was great. The surgeons came to remove the tube. Surgeon 1:

We’re going to remove the gauze and pull out the tube. It hurts for literally one second

That’s pretty much the advise I would give someone who was about to step into the ring with Mike Tyson. Partially true but not very believable. When I say I have never experienced pain like before you will gloss over this sentence. For guys, imagine someone taking a running start and kicking you in the nuts. For girls, imagine watching your father get kicked in the nuts after a running start. My nuts hurt thinking about the tube removal process.

When I asked how much of the tube was inside me, the doctor said not much and then showed me about 10 inches of bloody tubing. Now I can truly sympathize with my girlfriend..

Day 5 – Have you ever gone on vacation and were ready to go home by the last day? That was Day 5. At that point the only way I was staying was via a straight jacket. Luckily I got my walking papers, gave moms a shout and was home by 5 pm. There were a number of key points taken away from my hospital experience:

1. Pain is King. Nothing else matters when you’re in pain. Not money, not prestige, not your dashing good looks.
2. Doctors: I’ve noticed that older doctors are arrogant and have horrible listening skills. Hopefully my young doctor friends who are good and kind read this and take notice.
3.Hospitals: The sick get sicker. Besides these “strange happenings” in my body, I haven’t really been sick in years. I knew the longer I stayed inside Barnabus the less of a chance that would remain true
4. Bed Wetting: Stupid Bladder almost got me catheterized
5. Morphine: Morphine has my first Vote over Obama in ‘08

Popularity: 22%