Thirty-Fourth Encounter ~
Apparently, I slept all the way through the whole x-ray procedure because I don’t remember any of it at all. I woke up back in the ER of Providence University Hospital, the same hospital my brother had been in only a few weeks before.
When I woke up, Dad and mom were both there looking really worried, but relieved? The first thing dad said was, “What are you doing lying around when there are sidewalks that are needing to be shoveled?”
Okay, it was funny after I realized where I was, but at first, I thought he was serious.
“Am I okay?” I asked, but neither got to answer because right then, my doctor came through the curtain.
“Hey, he’s awake,” the doctor said and then she asked, “How are you feeling?”
I guess I was still confused because all I said was, “Huh?”
“Can you tell me your name?” she asked.
“Max,” I answered.
“Max, do you know what day it is?” she asked next.
I thought about it for a second and tried to shake my head ‘no’, but couldn’t. I tried to reach up to see what was inhibiting my head movement and felt something plastic.
“That’s to keep your head still.” She said.
“HOLY SHIT!” I screamed, “IS MY NECK BROKEN?!”
The doctor took hold of both of my hands because I’d tried to reach up and pull at the plastic collar.
“Whoa, whoa, calm down. Except for year skull, you don’t have any broken bones,” She said. “I promise, you’re okay! It’s just a precaution. You had a small seizure and took a tumble outside of “I fell?” I asked, not really expecting an answer. I didn’t get one either.
I calmed down after that and allowed her to check me out all over. I didn’t even care that she was a woman and boy, I was relieved when everywhere she touched on me didn’t hurt, except for my head, which was hurting pretty bad.
Finally, she shined her pin light in my eyes, and said, “Nice peepers.”
“Thanks,” I said dismissively. “Can we take this dang thing off now?”
“No, I think that it would be better for you to keep that on for a few days and then we’ll see about getting you something a bit more comfortable.” She stuck that pin light back into her pocket before saying, “You’ll probably have some residual pain. I mean, you jarred your neck about as badly as you could without actually breaking anything.”
Without telling me she was going to do so, she ran the top of her ink pen across the bottom of my left foot. My whole body shook from being tickled and for the first time, I felt a bite of pain in my neck like a vampire had taken a chomp out of me.
“Son of a bitch!” I said, not even knowing that I’d said anything.
“Sorry about that, but I needed to be sure your reactions were good,” She said.
“Were they?” Mom asked, and I didn’t miss that she didn’t sound too good herself.
“Yeah, well don’t do that again!” I snapped at the doctor, angrily.
She laughed in a high chipmunk tone, and then the skank tickled my other foot.
“God-dammit! Stop that you cock sucker!” I swore, and this time I knew I’d cussed. Boy was I mad. That second time hurt more than the first and even caused me to see stars for a minute or two.
“I’m sorry Max,” she said, but there was something in her voice that didn’t sound right. I didn’t pick up on it right away, but she asked my mom and dad to step outside of the curtain for a minute so that she could talk with them. That was when I realized that maybe I wasn’t okay after all.
I was immensely relieved when all three came back in a couple minutes later and the doctor told me that they were going to get me a room upstairs.
“We’d like to keep an eye on you for a few days.” She said, and then flashed me a smile, but I didn’t return it because I was still upset about the whole tickling thing. “If you are as lively as you seem to be right now, I might just let you go home earlier.”
As the doctor was leaving, this really cute black nurse walked in. I’m talking HUBBA-HUBBA here! The doctor told her something, and she went over, put something into the IV that until then, I’d not known was stuck into my arm, and before the nurse left, I was out cold again.
I later learned that, besides pulling some of the muscles in my neck, I had some brain swelling, and it was causing some odd side effects. For example, I was finding it difficult to see far away, but that cleared up after the first day in my new hospital room. More concernedly was my problem with cussing. It was really weird because, even though I knew I was doing it, I couldn’t actually stop myself. And my moods didn’t seem to exactly match what I was feeling at the time. My doctor assured us that I’d be fine after the swelling went down, but it was still unnerving.
Now, one might think that my head injury might have caused me to begin having wetting problems, which meant that the nurses would have had to diaper me, but that was not the case. That sort of stuff only happens in Internet diaper stories. For the first two days, I had a catheter inside of me that I was peeing through. Thank god I was asleep when they put it in. I can only imagine how much that would’ve hurt. An hour after that, they took it out, and I peed like normal. Okay, normal isn’t exactly right because normal would have been, me getting out of bed on my own, walking to the bathroom on my own, standing in front of the toilet on my own and peeing on my own. That’s not how it went down.
I buzzed the nurse who appeared about five minutes later. When I told her I needed to pee, she handed me a funky looking cardboard container.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with this damn thing?” I asked and instantly felt bad for yelling and cussing. The nurses all knew I was having trouble with the cussing, so they were being extremely nice about it but still, I felt bad. I guess feeling bad was a good sign.
She explained to me how the pee bottle was to be used and asked if I needed help. Of course, I told her no. There was no way I was going to ask her to hold my penis while I peed into a cardboard bottle. It was humiliating enough to be awake when they took the catheter out. After ten minutes of unsuccessfully trying to pee while sitting up in bed I gave up and buzzed the nurse again.
“All done?” she asked.
“I can’t do it.” I confessed.
I was so relieved when she offered, “If I help you to the bathroom, do you think you can go in there?”
“Yeah, I think so.” I said.
She was really cool about it and didn’t even say anything when my gown rode up, exposing my package for her to see. Oh man, I thought I would die, but she quietly pulled my gown back down, draped my arms over her neck and helped me to my feet.
At first, my legs felt wobbly, but then I was good and could stand on my own. Walking, on the other hand, proved to be more than a little difficult, but the nurse was kind and let me take it nice and slow. I felt like a little kid learning to walk for the first time. I had to mentally instruct myself to put one foot in front of the other, and even then, my legs acted as though my brain was speaking in riddles.
Until then, I hadn’t even known that I wasn’t in a private room. I had a roommate. He looked like he could be maybe thirteen. He was a dark skinned African-American and he was out cold. I don’t know if he was just asleep or drugged, but I didn’t much care. I was too preoccupied with trying to walk.
When we got to the bathroom, I wanted to stand to pee, but she didn’t think that was such a good idea, so instead, she helped me sit down. But man, when she reached between my legs and pushed my penis down for me, I nearly came back off that toilet seat.
It was seriously annoying that I’d gone through all of that just to dribble out about a quarter of a cup worth of pee, but that was all I was able to do.
On the way back to bed I noticed that my roommate, who was still off in la-la land, had shifted in his bed. He was now lying on his side with his diapered butt sticking out from under the covers.
“Whoa!” I said aloud when I saw that.
The nurse thought I had hurt myself and asked, “You okay?”
“Huh? Oh yeah, I’m okay.” I said, trying to play if off.
Once I was back in bed and the nurse had me covered back up, I laid there for a while thinking about my diapered roommate until sleep overtook me. Man, who would have thought that going pee would be so exhausting.
I never did get to meet my roommate. The following morning, the nurse helped me to the bathroom for my first bowel movement since arriving at the hospital. As I stood up and took my first step, I noticed that the adjacent bed was empty.
“Where’d he go?” I asked.
“He had surgery last night and is in ICU now.” She said.
I spent my time in the hospital, either sleeping or watching TV. All in all, it was pretty boring. And then on the morning of the third day of my hospital stay, the doctor removed the plastic neck collar and replaced it with a bulky softer neck collar that fastened with Velcro.
“How does that feel?” my doctor asked me.
“Lots better!” I told her.
Later that same day, in the afternoon, I had a bit of an accident. You see, when wearing a neck brace, it inhibits you from being able to move your head, thus, you can only see up and down and side to side for as far as your eyes can move. I’d gone to the bathroom to pee, and for the first time, I felt good enough to pee standing up, however, I couldn’t see to aim and I missed the bowl completely. Boy I felt bad. I mean, really bad, and I guess for the first time in my life, I had a small idea what it must be like for people with wetting problems. I felt so bad that I almost didn’t tell anyone that I’d done it, but that wouldn’t have been right. So when the nurse came in to check on me, I told her what happened.
“Oh don’t worry about that.” She said, “You’d be surprised how often that happens. I’ll have someone come in and clean it up.”
Two good things happened on the fourth day of my hospital visit. The first was when one of the nurses that had been with me since I’d arrived in my room said to me that, she could tell I was getting better because I wasn’t cussing much anymore. Boy, that made me feel a lot better. The second good thing to happen was shortly before dinner time when my doctor came to check on me and then said that she was tired of seeing me. So, I got to go home after eating dinner.
The first thing I did after getting home was to take a nap, and the second thing I did was take a loooooong hot bath. I wasn’t allowed to take a shower because I’m not allowed to take off my neck brace but oh man, that bath felt great. Actually, all I did was sit, in the hot water and soak, but it wasn’t like I was dirty. I’d had several sponge baths in the hospital.