Episodes of a Lost Life

So what really happened last July?

On the last Sunday of July, I suffered an acute case of diverticulitis, and had to rush to the ER at Sharp Hospital. The ER wasn't as crowded as I expected; my parents and I only had to wait about two hours. Then I was shown one of the small, white and sterile rooms, where i finally got into a bed (I was feeling very tired and sleepy). After running some blood tests, the staff scheduled me for a CT scan. The scan itself wasn't bad, but having to drink a quart of "contrast" fluid about did me in. Why is it hospitals do their best to make you feel worse when you're already feeling terrible?

After the scan, my gurney was wheeled into the main ER ward, where only a privacy curtain separated me from the rest of the patients. After another period of waiting and tests, a nurse told me "the surgeon will operate on you in an hour."

"What?" I asked the pretty blonde nurse. I hadn't realized I was that sick, really. I've had diverticulosis for many years, and never had an infection or admission to a hospital for it before.

"You're a very sick man," one of the ER doctors told me.

"What kind of surgery?"

"A colostomy."

I wasn't happy, but after a shot or two of dilaudid, I ceased to care very much. Then a urologist appeared from behind the white curtain and performed the obligatory catheterization. Modern medicine: If you don't have a hole where they need one, they drill it for you. Medicine is the only profession where you get charged for your own pain and suffering.

Outside the waiting area for the operating room, I finally met the surgeon, Dr. Jackson. He seemed rather cool and abrupt. I asked him to make the colostomy reversible, but he didn't believe that would be possible.

"If you have contractions, we can't get you into the right position for a reversal," he stated. Meanwhile, a young RT hung out with me, and we made bawdy jokes about the cute young nurses passing by. A few raised eyebrows; others just smiled knowingly.

I awoke the next day missing my sigmoide colon and adorned with an open abdominal wound and a colostomy. I say "awoke," but that is using the term generously. Basically, I spent the next week in a sort of waking dream. Faces appeared and hovered over me in a kind of fog. My fancy new bed in the ICU could play nature sounds: birds twittering and water gushing over falls. The time was really rather blissful.

Overall, I spent five weeks in the hospital, and came home in September. Since then, I have been slowly recovering. I am still taking oxycodone for pain, but one benefit is I am on "doctor's orders" to eat anything and everything I want, especially food with protein.

American Voices: It’s Cool to Be Cool Again

Sixty-six million Americans have raised their voices and made themselves heard for a brighter, more optimistic future. Dick Cheney's "Taxi to the Dark Side" has lost a wheel and run into a deep ditch.

Chill out, conservatives (and I use the term lightly--spending $10 billion a month on a foreign war is something a true conservative like Pat Buchanan can't even stomach); you've had 28 years to drag the nation to ruin. Now it's the people's turn to set the ship aright.