11/6/2019
Waking up in Post-op with the pain climbing the intensity scale like mercury in a thermometer in Death Valley in July, you scream. As the orderly comes over to give you a casual review, he notices that the pain medication plunger is laying at your side. He says nonchalantly, “oh didn’t they tell you that this button is for introducing pain medication into your I.V.” He hands you the small control device and you intensely pound that switch 100 times as the tears and muffled vocal chords measure your pain level. He walks away smirking and says, “you can hit it as many times as you want, but once is enough because it’s metered.” Living through a knife fight, your handsomely paid assailant just ripped you open at the knee and separated your leg into 2 pieces. He then brought out an 8-pound mallet and beat pieces of metal and plastic onto your ground down bones. A couple of measurements, a look at the clock to see how much time remains before they drag in the next victim and your surgeon responds, “the legs are within an inch of each other; good enough.” All this because you wanted to get in shape in your 60’s. As they wheel you outside, your nurse says, “1 more knee and 2 hips and you’ll be good as new.” Miraculously, you avoided an infection. It seems every now and then, they rub rat shit on a wound just to give the Internal Medicine doctors a chance to pay down their student loans. Six months later and withdrawing from addictive opiates, you start to feel like you did when you thought it was a good idea to run around the county. Bad idea. The Grim Reaper walks up to you at a snail’s pace. He is old too, so there is no sense in running. You now go to the YMCA to swim. This healthful exercise puts much less stress on the body but cringes your brain. You are now submerged neck deep in a pool full of old farts and that’s just what they are doing in there. The bubble bath you are submersed in has a strong smell of cabbage and it stinks really bad.
Torked Truth 