In The Navy (FT “C” School), Part 6; the Awakening

It was like someone was turning up the volume on a radio that had been turned all the way down. Voices and light began to fade in. It was as if I was in an orange fog as it started to clear, the voices getting louder as it became brighter.

The first face I recognized as a face and not just a shape was a nurse. She was close to me and calling my name. No sooner did I realize there was a person there, than I started throwing up, from the anesthesia. It was orange looking and tasted viler than your average vomit, bitter. The nurse was ready for it with some sort of bucket, so I suppose it’s normal to puke from the anesthesia. It was nasty, but it woke me up.

I was so dizzy that I was seriously disoriented. I felt hot too. Whoever was there started talking to me and I probably babbled back, but I have no recollection of anything that was said. I was just thinking, had survived the surgery? I didn’t feel any pain anywhere on my body, I was just hot. I was getting hotter too.

Apparently, they had shot me up with Morphine for the pain (I found out later). That explains the lack of pain and the fact that I felt so hot. It took a few minutes after I was awake for the nurse to notice that all of my skin was turning bright red. I was having an allergic reaction to the Morphine. It was fairly dim in the ICU, or maybe I was still in a fog.

There was a flurry of activity around me, loud hurried talking that I didn’t understand, or I should say, couldn’t. I found out later that they had to shoot me up with something to counteract the allergic reaction. Christ, they just saved me and now they try to kill me!

It was not the Hospital’s fault, how could they know? It was my first time getting Morphine, ever. To this day, I can’t get any doctor to give me ANY form of pain medicine that ends with “ine”, and that’s about all of them. It sucks because I have a bad back and when it flares up I am still left just taking aspirin.

I was eventually moved from ICU back to my room. Shortly after arriving there, a nurse came in to remove the catheter. She had me on my back with my knees up, like I was in stirrups. She was fiddling with something down there (I couldn’t look) and then told me she was going to take it out now. I felt a slight tug deep inside my gut, I figured the nurse had started taking it out. Then a second harder tug and then a third, even harder. It appeared to be stuck and she has been trying to just jerk it out. She tried again and I thought my bladder was going to get pulled out the hard way.

She went and got another nurse who came into the room and the new lady extracted the fluid out of the balloon inside my bladder that holds the catheter in place (I was sitting up now). The first nurse had failed to do it properly. I love that good ole’ Navy special care.

I was still on the IV for everything, water and food. After a day they let me try some Jell-O and juice, which was fine. Another day went by and I was eating soft solid food. I was recovering pretty quickly.

At some point the Doc came in and told me about the surgery. He said the abscess was the size of a softball and if another week had gone by, I probably would have died. Hmm, a week away from death? It’s no worse than driving is now on any highway around Washington DC. At the time, the news freaked me out a bit.

He said I should be discharged in a few days. That sounded great to me. My friends stopped by a day or two after that and actually snuck in some beer. There was no way I should be having a beer, but I did and it was great. It was a celebration that I had not died after all.

Everything had been so much out of my hands during all of this, that I still hate the idea of having my life in the hands of other people ever. I am a very self sufficient person and do everything I can to stay that way, but you never know when that will be ripped away from you.