Omniam Galliam and Other Vestigials

Previously on Generally Bad Hospital:

Our heroine, infected gall-bladder and pancreas still attached, was sprung from the confines of 'Hood Hospital by her devoted and dedicated mother, who used to be a nurse and has better sense about some things than her daughter might often admit. She rode in the first ambulance of her not-quite-35-years and was delivered to Big Private Hospital, which, unlike 'Hood Hospital, had both morphine AND air-conditioning in abundance.

Oh, wait. There's another fun part to this story. Guys, you might wanna go read something else for a few--this gets into the girly-bits.

So back at 'Hood Hospital, on Wednesday afternoon when they admit me, they put me in a room
and strip me, and stick me into one of those funny-looking back-ass gowns. And I get into the bed, and I sit there for a while, nekkid in my back-ass gown, and later on I get up to pee and there's a faint mark on the sheet. And then in the bathroom I discover: My period has started. In the midst of all this vulgar bullshit chaos of puking and sweating and heaving and retching, my period has chosen THIS particular moment to start.

Okay, big effin deal, every twenty-eight days, inconvenient but whatever, you say???

No.

Unless I am religiously taking pills prescribed for the purpose, I DO NOT have periods. I have gone as long as eighteen months without a single period. It's a diagnosed condition that I've had since I was fifteen, and it's also pretty much nixed the chances of ever getting spontaneously pregnant, without medical intervention. And I have exploited both these facts from time to time--the no-periods one especially has proven convenient. But now? Every body system is clearly in revolt. This is WAR.

So they give me some of those "maternity pads" (translation: diapers) and another discomfort is added to my growing list. And once I get to Big Private Hospital, they also give me some "underwear".

Remember back in the 80's, those mesh t-shirts that hairy fat guys always seemed to be wearing with seven or eight gold chains--the ones that showed their fat AND their nipples to the greatest disadvantage? The ones made out of the same open-weave fabric as really cheap dishrags?

Okay. Now. Cut those into panties. THAT's the "underwear". I'm assuming there were issues of ventilation or something involved in this design. But fugly?? Oh hell yes. And uncomfortable? That too. So here I am, sick as a pig, in an open-backed gown wearing dishrags and diapers over my ass and the threat of surgery hanging over me.

Honey, we're havin' FUN now.

At Big Private Hospital, troupes of Assorted Medical Personnel wander into and/or out of my room twice an hour, pat me on my morphine dispenser, and give either me or mom--depending on who's looking most coherent--an update. Or a shot, or a thermometer in the ear. Whichever. On Friday the Big Doc, the guy who was kind enough to take me in and rescue me from my eventual fate as Next Tuesday's Stew at OLHCWWYT, came in and told us that they were going after my gallbladder the next day. Well, HE wasn't; one of his assistants was. Didn't matter a whit to me. I was done with it; I wanted the little fucker gone, ASAP, and whoever did the deed would be aces with me.

So Saturday, sometime, they came with the stretcher and scooched me over and wheeled me down to surgery, and I woke up and there were several small holes where small holes hadn't been before, and the pain was 90% less-excruciating than it had been when the whole ordeal started.

As well it should have been. The surgeon told Mom: "Oh, it was nasty in there. It was all full of gravel and one big stone, sitting right on the main duct, about this big..." And she put her fingers into a circle the size of a ping-pong ball. No wonder I felt like shit.

There was, however, some bad news.

"While we were in there," said the surgeon, an interesting woman who I think I'd get along with quite well in real life, "we shot some dye into the ducts leading to the pancreas? And those are blocked too. So there's one more procedure we'll need to do. It's simple. We'll sedate you, put a fiber-optic tube down your throat, clear out those ducts, and you'll be done. You won't be under anesthesia, but you won't remember anything. No problem. We do it all the time."

So Saturday and Sunday passed in a pleasantly morphine-addled haze, and they let me have Jello on Saturday night--and water. Sweet, sweet, ice-choked water. Then on Sunday, back to NPO, in anticipation of The Procedure. But I felt so much better, and it was only a small procedure left to do, and all would be well.

Monday dawned, the morning of my 35th birthday. And about midday, they came for me for the fiber-optic deal. On the way down I talked to the orderlies, flirted a little, was generally charming and cute and upbeat. When they put me on the table I asked a bunch of questions about the equipment and in short, acted like my normal, non-sick self.

The next thing I remember, I was on the gurney, gagging as what felt like the last thirteen feet of fiber-optic hose was yanked out of my throat, and I was drenched from the top of my head to below my waist in my own saliva. I'd bitten almost all the way through my lips on the right side.

Apparently? I don't sedate. I either fight, or if you pour enough sedative down me, I stop breathing. But I do not sedate. They had fought with me for three hours, and it was give-up time. They were gonna have to do the Simple Little Procedure under general anesthesia.

They told me this somewhere along the line, though I have no first-hand recollection of it. I was OUT, yo. There was nothing left. I was a wet rag and the dogs had been chewing on me. I was done the hell up. I didn't even care about the Michael Jackson verdict, which I opened one-third of an eye for as it was handed down.

Next: The End Of The Story