Don't Eat Barbiturates and Drive, Kids.

So, I know I haven't posted all week, and honestly, I had a few really great ideas at one point, but they completely slipped my mind like boobs in a pool of Jello.

I do, however, have many insane stories in my back pocket, so I figured I'd pop in & share one of those in the meantime, till some of those maybe come flying back to me.

Have you ridden in a car up on a wall?

You should try it. It's exhilarating!

This was an incident that very few pics out there could help in describing, so I doubted myself on if I could draw the scenario out, and this morning it just kind of flowed like wine into Julia Child's cup.

It was a sunny day in Fall, circa 1997. My good friends, whom I guess for legal purposes we'll refer to as Saul & Matty, and myself were having a jolly old time hanging around my homestead.

At one point Saul had decided to take us over to his house in his Impala (which back in that day, was really the pimp of American cars). 

Oh 1997, you're so sexy.
Like, kind of detective with a handlebar mustache sexy.

Before we walked out the door we really had no idea how much Phenobarbital Saul had taken. Just that his current girlfriend had recently turned alternating shades of green & as purple as Violet Beauregarde from one of her binges on a balloon full of "candy" he gave her (which nothing says "Darling, I love you. In fact, so much that I'd like to give you this pretty balloon & see you change colors like a goddamn Iguana." as much) & we probably should have known.

All was good until we got to the rail road tracks (you know, where you're supposed to go 20 mph.), and he floors it & starts going 80, and all of a sudden.......

.

.

We're. Driving. On. A. Effing. WALL

.

.

And as I hear the ruckus in the back & quickly look behind me...

.

.

No effing way were his jeans that skinny.
Also, his left leg was way going the other way. Tell Charlie Sheen you can't always win.
Also, I don't know wtf is up with the car here. Just go with it.

Nope, the side of the car wasn't scraping the wall. We were somehow remarkably driving sideways, on a wall, with the car bouncing on the rough stone, pouncing Matty completely around the back seat like a rubber ball, left to right.

It gets better.

We finally escape the wall & Saul turns us onto a side street & decides to turn his head to the back of the car to get a good look at the wall.

I wasn't even messed up, and when I tell you this mofo's face looked as melted as a Van Gogh painting...

Holy Shit!

Lookin' good, man. Lookin'. Damn. F'n. GOOD!!

.

.

.

So here's where I'm wondering who's watching the goddamn road in front of us & figured maybe it was my job to step in here.

.

.

And that's how you could tell the weird shit, bug power or whatever the hell he was on, had taken full effect.

.

.

Is it needless to say I grabbed the steering wheel & swerved us all from certain death or brain damage?

Now, I know what you're thinking & probably going to say.

But that's the thing about good ol' Saul. He's fucking IMMORTAL.

There are HUNDREDS of incidents where the dip shit, by the laws of nature, should have died.

Among those we've literally seen him fall off a cliff, blow his arm up with explosive gas, smash through glass doors, survive 5+ car accidents, wake up naked on his landlord's couch after hours of trudging waist deep through a swamp in the dead of night, getting his ass kicked while naked hiding in the bushes on his front lawn on angel dust, and I don't have all goddamn day here.

In fact, there should be a series or even a book about the wonderful adventures of Saul, the immortal moron.

There were a few others among the crew almost as messed up as Saul, but he takes the golden taco.

(If you ask me what that means, I cannot tell you. I have no idea!)

So, let that be a lesson to you. If you're going to Liza Minnelli it up

 Don't get behind the wheel.

And don't tell me what's possible if you get the right footing.

Also, there could be someone like this where you live.

Have a safe & comfortable weekend!

The Story, The Horror, Monkeys, and Patient Controlled Pain Medication

So, a week has gone by and I wanted to get this out of the way as I feel it's getting to that point of "If that bitch makes one more lung joke or reference....'"

I still ask myself if it really happened & probably will for a while.

8:30 p.m., after my day had gone extremely well. I kicked it with George & Jon, got a good news phone call from a dear friend, had an excellent dinner, was excited for the return home of my mother the very next day, after she had been in Florida for three weeks....

And out of nowhere I'm in the car with Jon driving me to the hospital.

Sure, I've gotten chest pains before, even endured the pain of Pleurisy swelling up my lungs a few times in my life after bouts of Chronic Bronchitis.

Something was very different. Something was urgent & telling me I couldn't lie down on my side till it went away, not this time. Something had pretty much paralyzed the entire upper right side of my body, front to back.

The triage nurse wastes no time & I hurriedly follow her to X-Ray.

The technician is a raging bitch until she realizes she sees something on there that she shouldn't.

I overhear the conversation - "What are they talking about? I have what? Where?

A sudden flip of the switch to sympathy & she walks me back to an ER room with a sharp, blunt look of "This is gonna be a long night for you, kid."

Fast forwarding through being informed my lung had spontaneously collapsed (For no reason apparent to them) & the explanation of a possible chest tube procedure, the surgeon comes in & decides to give me an IV, a few mg's of Dilauted & keep me overnight for observation.

"What? I have to stay here?"

My inner child at that moment.

Half an hour to an hour & the X-Ray machine enters the room & this time I'm flying high on pharmaceuticals while they're taking the X-Rays from the bed.

"It's getting bigger. The doctor is coming back, we're gonna do the chest tube."

` "The fuckin' wha again?"

I still didn't quite get what was about to go down here.
Wtf had even happened between my relaxing night & ending up where & how I was.

I saw myself at home the next day dancing around like Mary fucking Poppins, blowing air bubbles out of some lil straw sticking out of my clavicle through a pinhole.

I pretty much didn't realize wtf was going on until the doctor barged in, rolled me over, shot up the side of my breast/underneath my armpit with two bottles of Novocaine, cut me, and plunged a tube 2 in. in diameter of what seemed like PVC piping into my chest cavity, rubbing against my lung with. every. breath.

With a giant box attached to it monitoring my every breath, compressing the air & fluids that need to be drained from my pleural (lung) cavity.

Very similar, my level of shock & the way I felt violated.

The PAIN (After the procedure). Holy shit, the pain this would be for however long this tube would be in was now a new reality I couldn't handle. Because of my Endometriosis, I have a high tolerance to pain meds & "Shit, they're gonna have to kill me.", I thought.

After yet more Dilauted & my new shocking reality along with the discombobulation of what just happened combined with the strong meds, I am taken up to Med/Surg. And in not knowing how I would ever get through the unbearable discomfort, I often wondered why they didn't bar the windows on this unit?

A few different times during my stay, I had to battle the logic in simply getting up & throwing myself out of it.

"Pain. Baaaadd. Bye-Bye", would occasionally run through my head.

These sweet, sweet nurses, lots of them my age & where I once wanted to be, but now on the other side; the patient.

They heard my pleas, they called my doctors, they tried Morphine, more Dilauted, Torodol, Ultram, and it escalated & escalated as I waited for the doctor to come in & say "Okay, let's get this thing out & get you home."

After an entire day waiting in hell, the doctor finally arrived.
First he had heard me cursing to dear Jon  (My ex who slept in a recliner beside me in Med/Surg & refused to leave my side the entire time I was in there, God love him) about how long I had been there with this unbearable tube stuck through me already & that the doctor had forgotten me (This was really the intolerable pain speaking), so when he came in he first made it clear he didn't wanna get beat up by a psycho chick with a tube in her chest.

"Now, I don't wanna see you in Shaws sometime down the road & have you throwing bananas at me.
Okay, well just not COCONUTS!"

"Hey, there's the asshole! The doctor guy. Go round up some pineapples."

"I like him."

When he ever uttered the words "Probably tomorrow or the next day", the look of horror on my face was too much for even him to bare. He started stroking my forehead & hair & joking with me to console me, just the like the ER nurse downstairs who tightly held my hand & comforted me through the whole tube procedure. I didn't even cry for my mother as I normally would. I had angels by my side the whole time. I owe those angels so much thanks, I can't even describe it.

(Except for my nurse, Lindsay, whom regardless of being a sweetheart, almost ripped out my tube, stole me an assload of scrubs from the washroom, ripped the giant vat of hand sanitizer off the wall to give to me, stated she had a cardiac problem with an average pulse rate of 120, and is probably too much of a danger for the nursing field. Not to mention that this whole time the girl across the hall is pushing the call button EVERY. FIVE. MINUTES for three days & treating the nurses like shit, and Jon is sitting there on his laptop attempting to hack the bitch on the hospital network, while I'm in so much pain, I can't even scream.)

I was angry that whole day but I gave into the fact that this was only to save my life & I had no choice.

They had a choice, though - To help me manage the pain or watch me tumble out their unit window.
This is when they decided I was a special lil case & brought in an Anesthesiologist to discuss PCA.

Some of you are probably wondering what that is. Well, I'll tell ya because this is where it starts getting good.
Patient. Controlled. Analgesia....
Let me repeat - Patient. Controlled. Analgesia
Their way of shutting up patients yelling for more Morphine every hour. Or really, just their last resort for patients in such excruciating pain that hardly anything will make a dent in it.

So the Anesthesiologist gave me options...
- Morphine (Peppermint)
- Dilauted (Wintergreen)
- Fentanyl (Or Watermelon)

The Dilauted made me too sick & dizzy, the Morphine didn't make a dent, but the big fucking F & I were familiar. It was prescribed to me in duragesic form at the pain clinic.

Now, I'm no idiot & I'm cautious with myself. I'm a medical buff for fucksakes, so I was scared shitless & figured they were out of their ever-lovin' minds when they told me I could press the button to deliver the medicine through my veins every 6 minutes & that the machine itself would lock me out after so many pushes of the button over a period of time to keep any risk of overdose down.

Shit, I was about to take a ride down the motherflippin' euphoria rainbow, and possibly so hard that they have to take your vitals every half hour at the start of the insanity. "The Rainbow Ride" as I'm calling it.

"SOMEBODY KILL ME OR I'LL DO IT MY G'DAMN SELF! WTF is going on here?!"

.
.
.
Then the liquid pain candy machine makes its way into the room.
.
.
.
.

You okay, man? You mellow?
Yeah, you're alright! Pain's easin' up.

.
.
.

And then the moment hits where you realize it's actually possible to overdo it with things you're convinced you have under control.
.
.
.
.

Listen, that dinosaur was supposed to be a unicorn & sometimes you draw things a lil weird & then realize they'd look better with guns, wearing diapers & don't fucking judge me, K.

But it worked. I got sleep that night after I had finally learned not to be afraid to keep pressing that button if I needed it like the nurse told me.

The tube came out the next morning, with the biggest sigh of relief, but they kinda had to pry the pump from my hands, and I'm hitting it as much as I can *Beep Beep* "Patient Lockout" as they were getting ready to take it away.

 I floated across the unit that afternoon, in my gown, with my monkey, and went around to the nurses station like it was fn' Cheers & everybody should know my name.
"They're starting me on Percocet now, and where the fuck is Norm, guys?"

And here I am, home, a week later, and sore as HELL!!
And guessing it'll be another week or so before I feel pretty normal again, but I'm getting there. Lots of trouble sleeping with the discomfort.

And there were many comical moments during that stay, but I couldn't exactly write a novel about it here, so I just included all the key moments.

Now, where's that pain medicine button again?
Aww.......... Shit.................

________________________________________________________

On a few side notes: I would like to bring up the Blog Of War.
(No, I'm not a participant, but rather an observer of the contest.)

Mr. B over at BlackLOG has been advertising it & was searching for more interested participants.
I'm not sure if I'm already passed the deadline for mentioning it at this point, but if you're interested, please go visit BlackLOG for the details. This blogger is so talented with his style of comical writing, I'd love to see a few people go head to head.. ;~}

And lastly, I have a new Facebook account especially for my blogging buddies, so if you intermingle the two & have such an account, Friend me on that shit. It's fun over there, and inappropriate 90% of the time, I promise.

Hope you all had a great weekend, and things should be back to normal here before you know it.

God Damned Cheese Giraffes

Because it's perfect.

Because Toys R' Us is now Chuck E' Cheese, and an old acquaintance named Geoffrey is having a b-day party at 30, AT Chuck E' Cheese, and the giraffe's gonna sing to him because he's now eaten the mouse & taken over & the whole shit house has gone up in flames.

More premonitions of the future?

Or just what happens when you're completely discombobulated for weeks straight.

Up is down, down is up, and thoughts are as good as explosive diarrhea - consumed by the delirious mayhem of it all.

THE issue here is the inability to write frequently due to this state of mind, combined with bouts of complete exhaustion, and then bouts of utter restlessness that actually paralyze my thoughts, I'm so overstimulated.

Distraction that is
Turn on, tune in, drop out is the message here.

A lot people in this world probably don't have as much to say as I do.

Got to etch my path in this new world I should have jumped into AGES ago, when I first wanted to be a well known blogger, & keeping it moving.

I know the jolt is right here, at hand.
That, or I'm about to shit my pants.
Which I NEVER, EVER do, unless it's a leap year & there's an excuse for it or something.

Either way, something new & exciting is taking place. A WHOLE new beginning, rebuilding ourselves from the ground up, as we've been talking about on the outside, as Saturn talked about, that roid-raging shitbag of a ball of shit, floating around the atmosphere, causing shit winds on earth. That's a lot of shit to handle, pardon me.

Blogs, dirty skivvies, cheese giraffes, it's all part of a major movement.

A movement that says "Whatever the fuck just happened in here, I need a better schedule, & a proper soul cleansing."