80 lines
4.1 KiB
HTML
80 lines
4.1 KiB
HTML
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---
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date: 2019-11-01
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weight: 6
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fit: true
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---
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<pre class="verse">And then I woke up, and I was in the post-op recovery room.
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Disoriented, loopy, giggly, not yet in pain --- a small boon.
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There was the nurse, and there was JD. How long had he been there?
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After some indeterminate time, I was wheeled...somewhere.
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Yet more anonymous halls. Yet more competent nurses.
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Language was not yet wholly available to me, no verses
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yet to be had, despite the heady sensation of the opiate
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coursing through me; only giggles, however inappropriate,
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every time we went over a bump or up a ramp.
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And then I was in my room.
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            Me. A bed. My IV. A lamp.
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Square. Spacious. A bathroom I could not yet walk to.
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Hourly vitals. Friendly staff wandering through to talk to.
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And a button in my hand.
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<blockquote>That button, which you were instructed to press
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every seven minutes. A morphine drip, or dilaudid, at a guess.
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Every seven minutes, a bit of nightmare dripped into your veins.
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Every seven minutes, more entrails, more gears, more chains
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coursing through your mind.</blockquote>
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There was pain, too, and the drip did indeed lessen that.
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Still, the pain grew less, and soon I switched meds to combat
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that ebbing tide. Tylenol. Hydrocodone. The button was removed.
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Pills. Pills. Every four hours: pills. I complain, but improved
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nonetheless. Antibiotics. Stool softeners. Painkillers.
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The nurses wandering in and out became my tillers:
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They steered my days, steered my pain, steered my diet.
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We talked. We laughed. We shared private jokes in the quiet
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of the night over BP cuffs. They helped with bedpan duty,
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thankless though it was. Another patient would cry, flutey,
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and they'd hurry off. I remember none of their names.
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Every now and then, when he made it down to Portland, James
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would visit, perhaps spend the night.
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<blockquote>Your laptop unweildy, you spent most of your time on your phone.
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Even when no one was there, you were never quite alone.
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Hours on Taps. Hours on Telegram. Five long days on your back,
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and you, a side sleeper! Anything and everything to distract
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from that fact.</blockquote>
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It wasn't all monotony. The surgeon came in to check on me.
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They removed my dressing, and then my packing, setting me free,
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stepwise, from confinement. The last day was the biggest of all:
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The packing, catheter, and drains were removed. I tried to crawl
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from bed, found myself on the verge of collapse. I showered
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and saw my body changed. They measured my urine. Nurses glowered
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at how little. They threatened to put the catheter back.
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Embarrassed, I defecated, then tried again. Now on track,
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I was finally discharged. It was then that I finally saw,
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from my wheelchair, the hitherto only hinted at hall
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outside my door. It was somehow still unreal to me.
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Or perhaps I was simply to eager to finally be free
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from the room.
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<blockquote>Undiluted sunlight while you waited on JD to get the car
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hurt your eyes. You could still barely stand, afraid to jar
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your new body in your dizziness. Almost more overwhelming
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than the hours before the surgery was you helming
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your dissociating self.</blockquote>
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All the way to the B&B, crossing that street, getting settled,
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I was nothing. I was not myself. I was soft, bepetaled.
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I was new. I was raw. Cliché, sure, but I was a flower
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newly sprouted. Under anaesthesia, I ceased to tower
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over the earth and instead became one with it. Or my dream
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finally became reality and I had become a tree, the theme
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of growth omnipresent within me. It was too much, too much.
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So I slept. I waited for Robin to join me, just to clutch
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at things familiar. Something to anchor past me to the present.
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I had become a tree, had grown, and sure, it was pleasant,
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but all the same, I still needed something to keep me grounded.
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I needed to not be completely unmoored, to not be unbounded.
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But it was done.
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<blockquote>It was done. It was complete. You'd started taking action,
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and kept on taking steps until you were there, beyond abstraction.
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This was concrete. This was real. This was true. <strong>You</strong> were true.
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You weren't false before, but all the same, now that you were new,
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you were more true now</blockquote></pre>
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