About three months ago, I developed severe pain in my chest and back. I lived with it for about 10 days, trying different non-prescription remedies and consultations until it got so severe that I was writhing and moaning in the emergency ward waiting room.
After a couple of hours, they took me in to see a doctor. They gave me painkillers (only after I had been waiting for hours, though) and I had an ultrasound. Well, wouldn’t ya know, my gall bladder was in rough shape. They also found out from an earlier ultrasound that I had gallstones, the results of which I was never told.
So, up to my own room for three days! Oh, I’m sorry, did I say “my own room?” I meant simply that I was admitted as an inpatient, as opposed to sent home. I very much did not have my own room. Sure, I only had to share the room with one other patient. However, I was privy to plenty of loud mechanical whirring sounds that make slurping noises, 2 a.m. visits by teams of people in HazMat suits, and people saying words such as “wound vac” audibly as they discussed my roommate’s condition with him.
Listen, I’m a writer and a reader. I have a very active imagination. Couldn’t they pair people up based on that? “Do you consider yourself imaginative? Do you ever stealthily creep out of bed in the middle of the night and do a kind of furtive ninja crawl out of the room to the bathroom and sit on the toilet lid till you wake up for reasons apparent only to whatever awesome little movie is playing in your head? Yes? Okay. We’ll put you with Mr. Jones. He’s deathly ill, but well, deathly quiet. Ha ha, sorry, little hospital joke there.” Nope, they had to pair the monster-movie-loving geek with the medical-nightmare radio play of the week. So, what did I do? I blocked out the sounds with earphones as I watched monster movies on the portable DVD that my family brought me.
Oh, I jest. It was fine. I read my fantasy novel and watched my movies and dozed and drooled on my morphine. (Well, I drooled while I was on morphine; I didn’t actually get drool on the morphine. That would have been interesting.) I visited and had heart-to-heart talks with loved ones. I developed an intense distaste for OXO broth and orange popsicles.
And then I was free to eat toast and scrambled eggs. And then, when I kept that down, I was free! Of course, I had to schedule a visit with the surgeon to schedule a visit with his knife — that is, to have the prankster organ removed.
The surgery went very well. I mean, that’s what I heard. I was anesthetised. From entering the building to leaving it was about six hours. They said it was impressive, even for a laparoscopic procedure like that. My family decided that it was because I’m so active. I was already chatting animatedly a couple hours after getting home. Take that, bicycle naysayers!
So, my subconscious mind has decided that I now fall into the category “sick.” I know this because suddenly I want to play video games, like I only do when I’m sick. And not the fun, social, several-people-laughing-together-in-the-same-room kind. No, I’m jonesin’ for the sit-by-yourself-in-the-dark killing tonberries, collecting celestial weapons and gaining weight kind.
Dave Lloyd is a writer and musician who grew up in St. Albert.
