OWhata

Okay, I’m going to jump right in explaining what’s happened since I last wrote about my post-tonsillectomy woes. Be warned, gentle reader - there is some graphic content ahead.

On Saturday it had been 3 days since the 1st emergency surgery. The Doc said the healing was looking good and I even felt alright. He said I could eat a little something, as long as it was soft and cold, like my ego. So I scrambled up some eggs and for flavor added some chopped meat. 2 hours later the left side of my throat (the one that had NOT given me any problems yet) turned into the Might Mississippi of blood. I don’t know if any of you have ever had a hemorrhage of any sort, but believe me…you’d rather play 7 Minutes In Heaven with George Burns’ corpse. Gushing is one adjective, but yet it lacks some panache that captures the immediacy of the issue. Friends and foes alike - I literally had thick - THICK! -, vibrant red, and piping hot blood flowing out of my mouth. And flow it would for the next 90 minutes…

So when I looked in the mirror and realized Mount Left Tonsil had erupted, I quickly banged on Mikie’s door, awakening him the gorefest of me with blood all over my mouth and chin. Poor bastard - he had slept in til 1pm because he was still drunk. As Mikie drove me to the hospital I was trying to staunch the flow with ice water - haha…UNEFFECTIVE!! All the while, I was spitting the blood/ice water mix into the small silver trash can I had grabbed off the bathroom floor. By the time we got the ER, there was about and inch of standing fire-house red in the bucket (*note: probably more than half was water, but the blood was like the Thick Rich One, Heinz, and you couldn’t tell any water was present.)

It is NOT consolation when the ER staff recognize you… For the next twenty minutes I sat in a wheel chair doing the volcano routine. You should have seen the people in the ER - all suffering their own ailments, some in visible pain (even moaning “owww”), but I had their attention. Fuck, I think I even had their sympathy and permission to cut in line.

So we get into the actual ER and I’m put in my curtained room. Dude, I was like an amalgamation of the Bearded Lady, Lizard Boy, Rhino Andy and Two Headed Calf - not even the staff could stop gaping and pulling the curtain open to say something worthless like “Are you okay?” Other patients seemed to instantly feel salved after seeing me. Mikie, we should have charged. Then I threw up for the first time - it was like an oil slick with gravel in it (both look and feel). That’s when you could visibly see that the staff realized, uh, this guy is NOT a hypochondriac.

Okay, that pretty much went on for about an hour. In that time my brother showed up, we’d emptied the trash can twice, I’d puked four more times, and I actually asked the ER doctor if I should make out a will. The worst part - and you can skip the rest of this paragraph if you’re already queasy - was when The Chunk came up. We lovingly call it The Chunk out of sublime metaphysical sensory overload - it had been hanging in the rear of my throat for the first few vomits, but I didn’t tell anyone because I could feel it was still attached somewhere in there. I could tell it was significant and figured it must be scar tissue. Then it came out (god, I’m getting nauseous writing this). It was AT LEAST four inches long, scrolled, meaty, and resembled one of those tasty tubular wafer cookies that I don’t know the name of. Rich saw it. Mikie saw it. I saw it. I think a 90 year old man with tinnitus 2500 miles away on Rhode Island heard it hit the inside of the can. I will reveal this fact now that I have kept to myself - I almost reached in to see what it was. Not out of curiosity, but to make certain it wasn’t my aorta or trachea. I hesitated only because I thought people around me would commit one mass Hari Kari if I did that. By this point, the place was a miniature Bedlam and me lifting The Chunk up out of the well of gore would just have been too much - heads would have imploded.

Then the ER doctor notified me that I might not survive surgery.

Quietly. Calmly. Without drawing anyone else’s attention to it. Mixed in with a few other insurance and legal documents. A pen. A piece of paper. My signature on it to prove that I had been notified that I might die during this surgery.

You know that moment in movies when the drama is all built up and people are going nuts, its noisy, maybe there’s smoke in the air, but the main character suddenly hears nothing, is distracted by nothing, is no longer really involved in the current action of the situation but has moved onto some other emotional and mental platitude to consider some more significant issue? Trust me - those moments are in movies because they are real. I couldn’t hear anything. I couldn’t feel the blood in my mouth. I did acknowledge that some stranger was removing my clothing or that another was putting a needle in me. I was at peace. ‘James…James…knock, knock. It’s time to make a choice: Live in fear or live in love.’

I won’t go into great detail about my choice. If you’ve ever listened to The Soft Bulletin by the Flaming Lips, you know which one it was. And you know that I’ve survived. And now I want to say thank you - yes, you. You know why, just think about it.

And then there was anaesthesia. The doc tells me that when they pulled the tube out of my throat I projectile vomited a “scary” amount of blood across the OR. I don’t recall that and am glad I don’t. I do recall thinking one of the assistants was my friend Spencer and I lunged at him from the table because I really wanted to know just how the fuck Spencer managed to sneak into my surgery.

Then I went to ICU for two days. Now, I don’t want to kick Tempe St. Luke’s around - they have some great staff who really care. However, my experience of ICU was just not …settling. Not that I think it’s some utopian delight with Ambrosia fountains and Unicorn calliopes. I get it - people are at death’s door here. They’re suffering and miserable and ask for Morphine again and again and again… And by the way, I’m not a Morphine fan. Something about the way it creeps down the marrow of the skull to the throat to the ribs - it feels like some fiendish relative moving in. Anyway, at night in the ICU it sounded like Godzilla and Rodan were playing a heated round of Mahjong somewhere across the room and a remodeling show was being filmed in the adjacent dormitory. I shit thee not. I heard a hammering.

And there were unpleasantries that are private, so get your own drama. After 2 days of that I went home. The Internist notified me that I’d lost more than 3 pints of blood, mostly in the ER, and that I was “borderline” for transfusion, but luckily my hemoglobin count never dropped that low. They actually told me I could start eating immediately. Uh… Rest easy, friends, I am taking it sloooow and eeeeasy. Nothing but protein drinks (lactose free), iced fluids, antibiotics and iron pills. I’ve even developed a new theme restaurant based upon this diet. It’s called “You’ll Wish You Hadn’t”. Yeah. Everyone gets their own sweaty t-shirt and phony beard to wear as soon as they enter. Then they have to lie down to begin eating. If you dine there long enough your tongue atrophies from lack of use.

Okay. It’s Thursday now, about 4 1/2 full days since the hemorrhage. I’ve lost about 17 pounds since this all started (I was 185, you do the math, my brain is tired). I’m getting my blood back. I’m only allowed to take a cold shower, so I stink. I look like I’ve been trapped in a mine for a few weeks - pale, bearded, thinned, haunted. I barely sleep, but I’m constantly resting. Last night I had some oopa doopa hallucinations, very spatial/temporal shit where the walls moved and, at one point, I was in the civil war. If you didn’t know it, surgery scars itch - try having that in the back of your throat, Jenna Jameson. But I’m here, I’m alive, I’ve got stories to tell. I’ll talk to you later.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 10:30 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.