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Sunday, September 14, 2014

One Hundred Days

ProetryPlace blog 63

    On the second anniversary of my major medical misadventure, the sterile halls, the soft-spoken, sympathetic nurses of the life-saving LaConte Medical Center, and the unfailing support of my wife and children remain vivid in my memory.


100 Days

Day 1
Midnight:  Nausea. Pain. 300 miles from home.
3 AM:  Pain. Cruel, crippling, doubled over, searing, relentless Pain. Punch 911. Ambulance.
4 AM:  ER. Bright lights. Scan positive.  Surgeon prepping. Say goodbye.

Day 2
NG, IV, ICU. Morphine, Zofran, Sleep. Blessed sleep.

the surgeon declares
you are a lucky man
cheerful  S. O. B.

Day 4
New Room.  A step.  A walk. OKAY!

Day 7
A problem, he says, the one who cut the appendix from my bowel.
He frowns. White count, he says, staple line leak.

white count up again
the surgeon frowns perplexedly
I am numb with fear

I will open you
flyboy surgeon, macho man
or else you will die

Day 14
Return to consciousness

I weep for my wife
for myself that was
I curse my ostomy

Day 21
You should name your new friend, they say, the hole in your side that empties your bowels into a bag.
I call it Oz.

my gaunt face
reflected
does not smile


Day 28
Goodbye, she says, helping me from the wheelchair. Good luck.

I say goodbye
to the man I will
never see again

Day 100
I write at last, remembering, not wanting to remember.

in my barren room
the aspirator hisses
lulling me to sleep

beside my cold bed
the night nurse tends her duties
do you want morphine?

unable to resist
narcotic psychedelics
gargoyles grin and mock

dawning consciousness
the knowledge that I live, and
I must die again


Richard Allen Anderson     September 2014     http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com

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