Mmmm....Tasty

So when we last left our spunky heroine, she was spending her early Wednesday morning not on a plane to New York, but in a cubicle at Our Lady of Holy Christ, What Were You Thinking?, one of Chicago's premier Hood Hospitals.

(A word about Hood Hospitals. Chicago has many, many hospitals IN the 'hood. Many of these are absolutely gems of their kind--treating people in the most difficult of circumstances and doing it well. OLHCWWYT is not one of them. OLHCWWYT could be in Lake Forest and it would still be 'hood. Except it wouldn't be open, because Lake Forest-ites wouldn't put up with that shit for a second.)

Anonymous Medical Person #1 shows up with a bunch of vials and informs me that we need to run some blood tests. Okay, I say. And it is here that we learn a most-important fact, one that will recur, often, during my hospitalization. My junkie days? Are long behind me. Because every. single. solitary. vein in both my arms and both my hands has, apparently, shrunk up like a raisin. A small, shrivelled, fragile, impossible-to-pierce-effectively raisin. They had to go with the BABY baby needle and about seven tries to get those four little vials full. Then--because that's what happens in hospitals--they decide to start an I.V. to rehydrate me. Which, fine, great, whatev, don't care. I was sufficiently out of it by that point not to know or care how many stabs that took.

So I sit/lay there on my table, occasionally retching to pass the time, and Anonymous Medical Person #2 eventually shows up somewhat contemporaneously with Mom. Anonymous Medical Person #2 hands me a tiny cup of "Maalox and lidocaine", which he says will "help" although he does not say what it will help with, then tells me that the blood tests indicate that I have gallstone pancreatitis. Apparently this is something to do with ducts and gravel and all sorts of other aquiferous metaphors, and the end translation is: yer sick as a dog, kid, and you need surgery. But we can't do the surgery right now--you're too sick--so we have to get you better first and THEN do the surgery, and etc. Mom exudes typical high-octane Mommish caring and concern, Hospitalized Child Variation. I do not notice this, necessarily, because I have drunk the contents of the tiny cup and am making the international facial expression for "Holy shit, that tastes like ass."

It is an expression I will repeat with almost everything that passes my lips over the next seven days. Which--to be fair--is nearly nothing, because I am immediately put on "NPO" status. NPO means "nothing by mouth". And that means water, and that means ice chips, and that means, like, EVERYTHING. My last contact between my mouth and the world outside is that little cup of Maalox and lidocaine. Which....who thinks these things UP?? Lidocaine, y'all. You want a taste of lidocaine? Go into your medicine cabinet and spray your tongue with Bactine. Seriously. There's your lidocaine. NOT delicious.

However, Anonymous Medical Person # 3 now appears with a syringe in hand. "What's that?" I ask, as she approaches my newly-installed I.V. with it.

"Morphine," she replies, and presses the plunger.

And the heavens opened up, and the light shone down, and choirs of angels sang, and...Okay, maybe not. But damn--still nice. And the pain went from "blinding and incoherent" to "excruciating" in nothing flat.

We'll hear much more about morphine later. Believe it.

It was about this time that Mom started to register her objection to the idea of her only child having surgery at the Hood Hospital. Now, her only child is well over 30, and well-versed in the art of making her own decisions, and is also in blinding and incoherent levels of pain (hey, morphine wears off). And the last fact totally wipes out not only the first two, but any personal consciousness of the third. So I THINK I can make my own decisions...but, well, no. And my decision, such as it is, is "Let's get this shit OVERwith, posthaste. I don't want any red tape, I don't want any drama, I don't want any of this bullshit about changing hospitals, I want this shit dealt with and I wanna go home." Mom listens, but is unconvinced. Mom wants me to go to Big Private State-of-the-Art Hospital Ten Minutes Down The Road, which (had I been thinking coherently at 5 AM when I left the house in the first place) I would have gone to instead of OLHCWWYT. I'm not against the hospital she wants me to go to--I'm against the act of moving.

And so the time passed, and various medical types pop into and out of my cube, and eventually, by some process I cannot currently recollect, I was put into a room. I had a roommate--I know I did--but damn if I could tell you anything about her. Oh--wait--she had pneumonia. That's right. So she hacked and I gacked, all through the long dark night.

The long dark HOT night. Because the air conditioning was not working in OLHCWWYT. And it was like 85 degrees. And they kept telling me "Engineering is looking at that" whenever I asked why, exactly, I was being forced to simmer to death in a bed of my own juices, and not even a spice rub or a rib of celery to help.

Okay: so, pain management. Implies that pain will be managed. Implies that the goal is NOT to be in pain, rather than the contrary. Such is my interpretation.

The Morphine Fascist, however (possibly the Piss Fascist's sister) has a different interpretation. Her interpretation is: You can push that call button as often as you want, lady, but you get morphine every three hours. Period. End of discussion.

But, I say, it only lasts 45 minutes.

Every three hours, she says.

But it HURTS, I tell her. I can't sleep; I can't even lay down.

Every three hours, she says. And then, with a magnanimity that makes me want to kick her shins: I GAVE you a thirty-minute advance, she says.

Needless to say, by morning (seventy-five hours later). I am much closer to my mother's opinion of this hospital, and agree to be transferred if she can work it out. Also by morning: the I.V. that they started the night before in the back of my hand, after my previous I.V closed up on them, has now "infiltrated". This means that my hand has blown up to twice its size due to fluids leaking out of the vein. They manage to start another I.V.

I don't remember Thursday. Seriously. Friday morning I only remember because my mom came in and she was practically in tears, telling me the hospital wouldn't transfer me til they had the name of a doctor at the second hospital willing to accept me as a patient, and nobody was calling her back and so on and so on, and she had one other name--which she called from my room and was promptly told "Yeah, we'll take her." So Friday afternoon I made the first ambulance trip of my life. My first words upon being pushed through the doors of Big Private Hospital: "Ohhhhhh. Air conditioning. That's niiiiiice."

They put me in a room, started a brand-new I.V, and hooked me up to my Very Own On-Demand Morphine Provider. Push the button--2 mg of morphine. You have to wait ten minutes between pushes, but that's not as long as you'd think. (And yes, I made my junkie history very clear. But apparently when you're pain-crazed, no one so much cares what happened 5 years ago. This is a pleasant discovery.)

Friday night was MUCH easier than Thursday or Wednesday nights. And also: Fever dreams are interesting. Fever dreams with morphine? Even MORE interesting. Fever dreams with morphine and the Brit? ::big evil grin::: I actually called him, when I regained my senses a couple of days later, and slipped in a gratuitous "thank you" which I'm sure he didn't register, but it felt necessary.

Up Next: Ping-Pong Balls Do Not Belong There!