Take a Trip and Never
Leave the Hospital
Don’t know if I
have told this one before of the time when I was in the hospital and had spent
a week in bed with muscular contractions from my toes to my eyebrows , where my
muscles would pull indiscriminately rippling
my skin as and contorting me in pain. This as a result from an operation called
Chymopapain, where they inject the center of your spinal disc with a papaya
enzyme. This drug is in effect a meat tenderizer that eats out the soft inner portion
of the disc and relaxes the disc herniation off your spinal column eliminating
the pain I experienced when I first herniated the disc, that is, all in theory.
In actual practice it left me with muscle spasms that were uncontrollable and doctors
and nurses were helpless in trying to alleviate and even worse pain.
A little nurse
came on duty one night when I was bedfast still after a considerably bad day
and as soon as my time was up , as I had my shot schedule down pat as the Demerol
was the only relief I had , I punched the buzzer and the nurse showed up with
my shot of Demerol. It gave me relief but the day had worn on me, and she could
see by the look in my face that the shot wasn’t going to allow me much comfort,
as I had become immune to the effects of it. She asked if she was allowed,
would I try and see if some other drug would allow me a chance to possibly work
better. I said sure I was up for anything that would help ease how I was
feeling at that point.
It took a little while but she returned
with an injection of morphine and a rubber tube to allow me to take it
intravenously and I was for anything at that point. She wrapped the rubber hose
around my arm and found my vein and as soon as she released the band I felt the
warmth rushing up to my arm and into my head and suddenly I was transported into
another place, where pain was my friend. I settled back and enjoyed the ride
watching the Three Stooges on the TV, while the nurse brought me my liquid lunch.
This was a beef
broth undoubtedly where they had dipped the cow, shit and all, into a huge boiling
pot and brought the resulting concoction out to me along with stale crackers,
and a cup of tea, along with this arrangement, these green Jello cubes , neatly
cut into perfect 1 inch squares and placed in a champagne plastic glass holder
that when placed on the tray table would shimmer and jiggle with the slightest
movement of myself, or even the wind passing by.
In my altered
state I was more amazed by these Jello cubes than I was the Three Stooges even
though I have always felt a keen alliance with Curly. I would watch the Three Stooges
for a few minutes and then I would watch the Jello cubes as I would be laughing
at some stupid thing Curly was doing and shake the tray table and the Jello
cubes would jiggle and jump. At some point when I am not sure but I swore that I
saw them multiply in one of these jiggled moments. This increased my
fascination with the Jello and I begin to watch them more to see if actually
they were multiplying and at some point I jiggled the tray table to see if I could
encourage this action, and sure enough they almost doubled in size.
The next thing I
knew they were spilling over the edge of the champagne plastic glass holder and
accumulating around the base of the container almost shielding the stem,
almost three times as many as there was
before. This was unsettling to me as I am a mathematical type person and can
quickly figure some basic equations and realize that I would soon have a space
problem as in the time I was typing this, the Jello cubes had completely
engulfed the glass and were now spilling onto the floor. Figures of volume and
size of a cube entered my mind and the volume and speed at which they were multiplying
was increasing exponentially, as I tried to remain completely still to avoid
letting them multiply. But soon enough they would jiggle as if on their own and
a huge new pile of green Jello cubes would appear, filling the room to the
ceiling as I reached for the cord of the button to summon a nurse and
frantically started punching the buzzer.
I felt as if I was
in the last room at the end of a long hall and the nurse was nowhere in sight. Again
and again I would punch the buzzer eagerly waiting for the arrival of the nurse,
as the Jello cubes grew even higher. I begin to get sick as if I knew my fate
as if I knew that I would soon die from all these Jello cubes as they would
smother me, and then slowly retreat back into the dish that had brought my
future fate to me. Where was that nurse I thought?
In reality I was right across from the
nurse’s station and she had only left me minutes before maybe fifteen at the most,
and I was having a bad reaction to the morphine as a result of having been given
to me on top of the effects of the Demerol, and that I was tripping. Also I could
have easily slipped out of my bed and crawled across the floor at the worse,
and within fifteen feet ended up at the nurse’s desk as I was that close.
Still in my
frantic state I had no perception of where I was, and my mind to say the least
was playing a trick on me, but the sickness and nausea I felt was real. For as
soon as my nurse stepped in the room I sent
a projectile stomach flush all over my bed and on top of all those Jello cubes
and instantly the room cleared, as the nurse ran and grabbed me a pan to
contain my enthusiasm of being relieved of the aggravating nausea within.
My nurse never
left my side for the next hour and even though she was a small woman she took
extra care to clean me up completely and change the sheets and gave me a bath. And
helped me through what was left of the ordeal. She would roll my huge frame one
way then another till finally I was able to drift off to sleep as I was nearly
as exhausted as she was. I never had a chance to thank her for the extra effort
as I never saw her again, and found out she was just doing some extra overtime
filling in for the regular nurse Ratchet who had the personality of a rubber
boot.
My wonder nurse that night did something for
me, besides make me sick and then clean me up. Instead she broke the cycle of
pain long enough for my muscles to quit contracting and within two days I was
home recuperating, after almost three weeks of hospital stay. I doubt if she is
out there reading this but my thanks to her and all her fellow nurses who chose to make nursing more than a job, and
try to help comfort, when it seems as though everything else has been tried. My
thanks to her and all like her.
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