Memento Mori in General

Momento mori

So I did this thing.

After months of tests and planning I got up at 5AM and took yet another shower, using this weird presurgical soap that they warned me about getting in my eyes of my crotch.

I had packed my backpack the night before. The same backpack that has been with me all over the world. Two pair of underwear, two pair of socks, toiletry kit, charging cables for the phone the iPad and the iPod. Notebook. Will and testimony. Volume 3 of the complete works of Richard Matheson, because what the hell I had not finished reading the cheesy 60s stuff he was writing back then. Still one of the most influential writers to this day.

June 11th was a dreary, drizzly June Maine day. I got in dad’s car and we hit the highway, and finally made it to the hospital.

I will say I am thankful for this COVID horseshit protocol because I am not, nor ever have been good in medical settings.

Dad dropped me off in front of Maine Med.

Maine Med is what locals call Maine Medical Center, this monstrous hospital set on a hill in Portland that you can see for miles. The entrance was somewhat unimpressive.
I went in and they screened me (again) for COVID-19, and sent me on my way.
At the admissions desk, standing on a six-foot line from the desk, answering questions.

I had the first panic attack of my life. My breathing got shallow, and I realized I was in full fight-or-flight.

The admissions nurse said we needed to head for the second floor. I said let’s go. She said we’ll get you a chair. I said I don’t need a chair, let’s go. Then I looked at her for a long minute and asked:

“What’s the right answer.”
“Chair.”
“Okay.”

I realized at that moment I was handing my life over to a bunch of people I did not know, and I was very defensive.

They put me in a wheelchair and whisked me up to pre-surgery. Where I got to lose the rest of my dignity and get naked in public, weighed measure and vitaled before laying on a gurney for a hour before I got played twenty questions until the anesthesiologist screened and cleared me and they gave me a big dose of lorazepam.

Then I lay there for another hour, wondering where my shit was while watching CNN with the sound off until they wheel me to the OTHER presurgery.

At which point I had no idea what was going on. There were people wandering in an out, and I was right near a main passageway where doctors and nurses, or at least people in scrubs were passing by nearly constantly.

Then abruptly, they wheeled me into an operating room. At this point I have two IVs in and I honestly don’t know what I had in my system. I was introduced to the surgical team, and I joked “You know I am not going to remember your names, right?”

They laughed.

I stared at the surgical light, which seemed overly bright while the anesthesiologist chatted along.

I heard him say “Here we go…”

And I was sitting up, awake. In recovery. Anesthesiologist Doc was there asking me questions.

God knows what I said.

I do remember him asking me “You woke up during the surgery, do you remember that?”

“No.”

I have to say, on the pain scale the worst pain I have ever felt was when I broke my arm at 14. I call that an 8, because surely there is something worse than that.

Even getting my sternum cracked open, my heart stopped, my aorta replaced, my aortic valve replaced, and everything put back together in 4 hours my pain level was never much past a 6. Sure there were twinges.

I was walking the halls the next day and chomping at the bit to get discharged.

I was transferred to the CICU, where for a day I had a room mate who had had the same procedure as me. He had an episode (never did learn what happened, but I was on my own after that.)

I am sure I was a total shit. For five days all I did was complain like a shitbird, then apologize. I felt like hell, and I wanted to go home.

The nurses were a mixed bag. Some were terse and all business, and I can appreciate that.

The others were just sweet.

I had the luxury of being catharized not only during the surgery, but five more times.

They claimed I wasn’t peeing enough.

So. Just when I had the prettiest nurse ever she declares I need to be catheterized.

Gawd, why couldn’t she be ugly.

Insult to injury, it became a teaching moment. So there I am, naked as the day I was born, with five young nurses watching my hottie nurse shove a tube up my dick.

To be continued.

I just bonked, for the unfamiliar it is a weight lifting term when you run out of steam

Last updated August 19, 2020