I feel a little bad, or guilty, or something, spilling all of this… but I had to get it off my chest. I should have written it weeks ago, but I liked ignoring this topic. So tread lightly, or turn around if you’re squeamish; this isn’t rainbows and lollipops. There, you’ve been warned, now hopefully I can stop feeling bad for spilling my guts.
I had a lovely day today – Jay was very sweet and spent his Saturday with me, as a kind of momentous Final Grand Day Out Before Surgery. You see, in all the excitement over the unexpected presents and the 15 second movie, I think I failed to mention that I’m finally having surgery next week. Wednesday, in fact. I didn’t necessarily forget; I was simply trying to ignore it. Despite having fought so terribly hard to reach this important event, I couldn’t help but feel mixed emotions in my heart. I thought today would help with that – a kind of last hurrah before months of constant surgery. It worked for a while, until just now.
All day I couldn’t figure out why I felt so tired and why the aching, stabbing, disintegrating pain in my legs was continuing to grow. Despite this, I had a wonderful day filled with my favorite foods, my favorite movie, new adventures, laughter, singing along unabashedly to Danke Shoen (which I won’t do around just anyone, mind you), iPod accessorizing, friendship, convertible rides, wind-blown hair, and Bollywood musicals. But that pain was always there, growth ever threatening, reminding me that all was not drunken happiness and giggles – that nagging feeling wouldn’t go away.
I was in a great mood when I got home. It lasted for several hours. I was still happy even when I realized the pain was caused by my own forgetfulness, having forgotten that today was the day to change my pain patch. It waned throughout the day, ultimately allowing the pain to finally overtake me. Now, as I lay in bed awake at 5:00am, drugged to the limit on extensive narcotics, exhausted but unable to sleep for the unreasonable wish that my feet would finally fall off and get this agony over with; all of that, and that good mood has faded.
These empty early hours are always the hardest. The world is fast asleep, save only for unfamiliar foreign countries devoid of friends. I sit alone to ponder things, things that are better left unexplored when one is trying to forget troubles and focus on the positive. But when sleep is hard to come by, laying alone in the dark is unabashedly intimidating, making one feel egregiously small as your own mind overwhelms you with unwelcome memories best left forgotten.
This deserted evening my thoughts readily returned to analyzing these contradictory feelings of mine regarding the one thing I have hoped for more than anything else for over 5 years now. Surgery. I should be happy. When I sensed that this analysis was not going well, I desperately tried to recall memories from earlier in the day, earlier in the week – remarkable examples of vast highs not yet far gone. Crying out of sheer happiness in the bathroom, thrilling at the completion of a beloved project, laughing hilariously at the melodrama of Bollywood while loving it all the same; it was only a few days ago when, as I sat on that bathroom floor weeping, that I swore to myself that I had no right to complain about the woes of my life, because I am so remarkably loved by my family and friends.
Yet here I am, alone in the darkness, wallowing in the familiar strains of Lena Horne, trying to fight back memories brought up by a simple attempt to reassure myself about Wednesday. The pain, the betrayal, the helplessness, the terror of being of clouded mind whilst minding every action around you in order to save your own life.
To say that my last operation was a disaster is a remarkable understatement. Things went so spectacularly wrong that I can’t even discuss it in detail; simply put, it was illegal. I’m dying to prosecute, but unable to handle the incumbent fear of a trial. I’ve been there, done that, humiliated myself bawling before a federal judge as I explained the enormous pain of being stabbed maliciously. I can’t even dredge up the memories of what happened one month ago in Pittsburgh when I am all alone, how would I ever do it in court?
No matter how hard it is, I need to, and I know it. But to recount the feeling of waking up from surgery without the ease and companionship of pain medication, to recall those mixed sensations… it brings them back. You feel the warmth of a freshly cut wound, quickly filling with deep red arterial blood, coursing rhythmically, ever constant as it ultimately spills out over the damn of torn flesh; all of this deep sensation, yet no release of an open wound, just that unending river of hot blood, beneath your skin, running through rivers of cut flesh. You feel these rivers with sheer intensity, the stinging of the cut so deep you swear your muscles have been shreaded down to the bone. As this pain growns, more gouged rivers appear, your muscles tearing apart string by string, falling apart into spider-silk threads within your skin. A serated saw has been taken to your legs; you were Freddy Krueger’s personal cutting board for hours; your flesh has been so tattered and torn that you are afraid to look at the inevitable bloody mess beneath the sheets. The sensation is so real, so deep, so all-encompassing, you are certain that if you have any legs at all, they will no longer be recognizable as human.
You muster your strength, you divert your eyes from their permanent resting place on the ceiling, only to discover that those tatters are nowhere to seen. Though intense they may be, your skin is intact. The damage is inside, untouchable, unreachable, unable to soothe. It never ends. Your body is shaking uncontrollably as the intensity builds, your nervous system simply unable to take it, your brain wanting to just give in because too many nerve-endings are screaming chaotically, overloading its system, beckoning it to sweetly release the agony by turning to blackness. You look around you for something to end it, something to make it all stop, only to discover you are unable to move at all. Despite shaking so violently that you are causing the gernie to move about the floor, you can’t bring your arm to respond to any signals.
Try to speak; impetrate your brain to control your mouth; woo your voice to release a scream. You can see help in the form of nurses, crowded around a table not too far away. Surely they must hear the racket of your violent seizure, but their backs are forever turned. Lay there for hours, unable even to cry, trying in broken breathes to beg for help, to beseech their sympathies. But the only answer – if ever – will be a scoff, an insult, a teasingly trite injection of less than a single CC of the medication your body so badly craves.
My new surgeon is operating on both of my upper arms and my right thigh on Wednesday. Everyone says it will be better, everyone just knows that won’t happen again. But my confidence was torn to tatters, and I don’t know how to pick up the remains and weave them together again. And it’s not just for this surgery, it’s for the one five weeks after that, and the next six weeks immediately thereafter. Again and again until October, when I might be lucky enough to be back to normal, maybe, possibly, if, perhaps, God willing. How does one carry such a memory around with them, and others all the more haunting, and not just give in? How do you pick up the pieces? You know something has to be done, you know the alternative if you do not, but there is forever this unrelenting nagging sensation that it will never end. That all of my body will be torn to shreads and it won’t make one damn bit of difference.
Do I go in numb? Can the anesthesiologist numb the fear with that fetid mask? Can he block the anticipation of agony? How can you be so afraid and yet put your life in someone else’s hands? And how can I answer that by Wednesday? I have confidence that I am loved, but I have no confidence in these lonely hours, when pain seems far too real without distraction, when prospects seem as dark as the sky outside my window. I am exhausted, tired of walking with this blind ignorance of the truth brought on by the sunlight, only to see if fade as night comes again, bringing with it sleeplessness and hollow thought. I want to be happy, I want to gallivant about; I want to laugh and mean it thoroughly, with no doubt or fear tailing ever closer behind. In all happiness there is a raucous reminder of quickly oncoming pain. I’m not depressed or sad, necessarily, just afraid. And I want that eliminated, I don’t want it to continue to devour the happiness I do have. I don’t want to lose my giggling, no matter how much at times I may cringe at its voracity. I don’t want fear and memory to take that away, but I don’t know how to stop it sometimes.