“I have pockets full of golden,
A little more with everyday...
Inside my coat a silver lining,
Who knows the price I have to pay...”
- Robert Plant, “Pocketful of Golden”
“Help me!
Please, oh God!
Somebody help me!
Get away!
Help me!
Oh God!”
The warmth and weightlessness of the morphine is kicking in.
A drowsy, dreamy buzz envelopes me, not a minute too soon.
Euphoric.
Cloud-like.
Dreams.
More dreams.
There’s a reason why “Dreamer” and “God’s Drug” are morphine’s street names.
The German pharmacist who first isolated it from the opium poppy plant christened it “morphium”, after the Greek god of dreams, Morpheus.
“What is real? How do you define real?”
Perfect.
I’m in The Matrix.
Floating, but tethered.
Tethered by tubes, lots of tubes.
And wires, lots of wires.
And a catheter.
Oh, the catheter.
But no matter, dam the catheter.
Right now, I’m floating and dreaming with Morpheus.
My Matrix is post-op ICU, following a 5 hour, open heart, triple bypass surgery.
Not to romanticize or glamorize morphine, but it does seem like a necessary, beautiful reward for what my body has just endured.
“Help me!
Please, oh God!
Somebody help me!
Get away!
Help me, please help me!
Oh God!”
Out of the warmth and weightlessness of my Dreamer haze, I hear a voice.
A distressed voice.
A very distressed, loud, and growing louder voice.
Maybe it’s mine.
Maybe the morphine euphoria has a dark side, drawing out some ancient, suppressed, nightmarish cries for help.
Maybe there were complications during my 5 hour, open heart, triple bypass fun-fest no one told me about.
Maybe I’ve been tucked away in a windowless, experimental-purposes-only basement wing of the hospital.
Maybe it’s just my imagination running away with me.
Or not.
It’s real.
It’s coming from across the hall.
The distressed voice takes on a heartbreaking cadence all its own.
“Help me!
Please, oh God!
Somebody help me!”
“Ribbit! Ribbit!”
Wait, what?
“Oh God, help!”
“Ribbit! Ribbit! Ribbit!”
“Please somebody help me!”
“Ribbit!”
A very distressed voice and now a very real frog are disturbing my well-earned and much needed purple haze.
This is so not right.
This is so not fair.
This is so whacked, is what it is.
Where the hell am I?
Richard, the evening shift nurse in charge of me, and presumably in charge of my please-don’t-allow-me-to-feel-whatever-was-just-done-to-me-pain-eliminating bag of tricks silently slips in.
The room is dark and I’m supposed to be in la-la land, so Richard is quiet.
“Morpheus“, I whisper, “I mean Richard”.
Did I really say that?
I don’t remember.
“Richard, please tell me there’s someone out there crying out for help...and a frog...a frog Richard? Really?”
If Richard says “I don’t know what you’re talking about, now you need to try and relax”, I’m screwed.
He paused.
Tilted his head a little to listen.
“Oh God, help!”
“Ribbit! Ribbit!”
There it is.
Richard laughed.
A dark-ish laugh, one that comes out of essential workers who’ve seen and heard way too much, especially during the Age of ‘Rona.
“Oh that...the lady across the hall...she’s had surgery and she has dementia, but she’s fine, really, she’s fine...”
But the frog Richard, there’s a frog.
“Oh that...the nurse at the desk...that’s her phone’s text-tone...crazy, right?”
Richard smiled, shook his head, finished checking my vitals, told me to let him know if I needed anything, anything at all, then ghosted out of my room.
I laid back, stared at the ceiling, and prayed a little unconventional prayer in my dark, quiet room.
“God, you really, really need to fill me in a little better on, you know, all of this shit...”
My eyes closed, the distressed voice trailed off, the frog found a lily pad to chill out on, and I drifted into weightlessness before I heard an answer.
My Operative Report details my 5 hour, open chest (a more accurate expression), triple bypass surgical journey, and certain expressions stand out to me in bold relief.
“Consent was obtained...”
Well, obviously.
“Greater saphenous vein was harvested from the left leg...”
Harvested.
From my leg.
3 incisions, 3 new I’ve-never-felt-that-kind-of-pain-on-my-body spots before.
“Midline sternotomy was performed with sternal saw...”
This still hurts just writing the words.
“Pericardium was opened and tacked up...”
Look it up.
And my personal favorite:
“The heart promptly arrested...”
For like, 90 minutes.
I use that line now from one of the Hangover movies whenever I can: “Oh are you having a bad day? But did you die?”
Maybe I didn’t die, but my heart was promptly arrested.
The Operative Report concludes with these words:
“The patient tolerated the procedure well...”
Dreamer anyone?
One nurse explained what I’m experiencing this way:
“The scar that you see on your chest? That’ll heal first and fastest...next will be the chest, sternum bones coming together, that takes a bit longer to heal...last, and longest to heal, what nobody sees, all the nerves and tissue inside...that takes time...be patient with yourself, it takes time...”
It’s September now, and it’s been a long 8 months.
A long, long 8 months for my family and for my wife, who deserves an equally long 8-month escape to an island paradise.
Sometimes I get tired, but it’s a different tired than beat-up body tired.
It’s a weary from the fight tired, a longing for who I was before this Covid-induced tornado touched down inside of me tired.
There are scars inside now, physical and otherwise that nobody sees, and they’re going to take the longest time to heal.
You don’t flirt with death and the ‘Rona and not have it rewire your insides a bit.
But everyday is a step closer to what’s next, and a few steps further away from morphine dreams, distressed voices, and frogs.
“Inside my coat a silver lining,
Who knows the price I have to pay...”
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