As the nurses wheeled me into surgery I was delirious. They’d just shot me full of one of God’s greatest creations, Demerol, as they knew it would knock me out. I don’t know what they use for anesthesia, but I’m sure that day they didn’t need more than the normal pain medication they’d been using up to that point. Perhaps they felt the need to use an additional drug just to be certain.
As I lay motionless on the hospital bed, the gravity of the situation hit me. These people that had never met me and did not know me from Adam were about to cut into my face. My friends, the nurses, told me these surgeons would make everything all better. They were trained professionals that knew what they were doing. I’d previously requested a mirror so I could take a gander at the level of destruction. My face was not a pretty sight, but I still did not see why they had to use knives to fix it. When God made me He didn’t use any knives. Now these strangers had the nerve to try and play God, but they were going to do so with destructive weapons! Why couldn’t they use dust like He did? Imposters!!
To make matters worse, there would be a period of post-surgical recovery that would be quite unpleasant. One of the nurses warned me about it.
“You’re going to feel a little strange after surgery,” she’d said. “In order to fix your nose, they have to put something like a splint into your throat. This will feel very weird when they’re finished, but I wanted you to know about it before hand so you won’t freak out. Also, they’re going to have to wire your jaw shut.”
“How am I supposed to eat?” I’d asked.
“We’ll feed you through tubes. We’ve been feeding you through tubes since you got here,” she said. Somehow there was not a trace of impatience or sarcasm in her voice. It was probably a question she’d answered at least once previously, but she was able to retain her long-suffering. Quite a talented nurse she was.
My vision was impaired, but I was still able to capture a glimpse of the surgeon that would be slicing me up. My hearing was not impaired, so I was also capable, through the delirium, of overhearing the doctors and nurses talk about the terrible procedure they were about to perform. A small Indian man spoke in a heavy accent to another man. The other man was a plain looking middle aged Anglo-American with brown hair. I wouldn’t have been able to pick him out of a lineup of 1.
“Do you want to do the anesthesia here?” White Doc asked.
“We’ll do it in the room,” Indian Doc replied.
One of the nurses approached with a photograph of me. She showed it to Indian Doc, which let me know that he would be the primary surgeon handling my facial operation. While looking at the picture he remarked at the sight of my visage.
“Good,” he said.
He was talking about my nose. It was broken, and Indian Doc was worried about the small hump in its center. Apparently he was unsure of how to get rid of this unsightly protrusion, but since it had been there before the wreck he did not have to do away with it.
I watched my Dad watch me lie there until we passed through the forbidden doors. These are the doors through which only patients and medical personnel are allowed. I had long since taken control of my fear and put it in a place where it could only be used if it would benefit me in a given situation. This was not one such situation, but still I was afraid. My fear on the operating table made me feel like a baby. I was completely helpless. My very survival was entirely in the hands of two people with whom I was not familiar.
But I had to trust them. I had no choice. White Doc placed one of those masks over my face and began to give me instructions.
“Just relax, Paul. Relax and breathe deep,” White Doc said.
I could not see Indian Doc, but I imagined him in the corner of the room sharpening his knives. This did nothing to assist in my effort to follow White Doc’s instructions. My breathing became shallow and my heart raced as my fear surmounted. For a moment White Doc took the mask off my face.
“You have to relax, Paul,” he said. “Trust us. We are very good at what we do. We’ll have you good as new before you know it.”
The simple words from the man I did not know were not enough. For a few moments my heart continued to race and my breathing remained shallow. It was at this point of panic that I caught sight of one of my nurses. The intensive care unit at this particular hospital had 8 hour rotating shifts. For the five days of the workweek I had only three nurses. One would be there from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m.; the next arrived at 4 and stayed until midnight; the last was on duty from midnight until 8 in the morning when the cycle started again. Of course there was more than one nurse in the intensive care unit at a given time, and I don’t know how the nurses were assigned rooms, but I like to think that after spending a shift with me all three of my nurses requested to remain on duty in the section that my room was in until my discharge from the hospital.
We had a blast together, my nurses and me. Whenever I pressed the button for assistance, my hand was barely back to my side before the nurse on duty was there. I didn’t have to form full sentences from my broken jaw for them to know exactly the desires of my heart, whether it was drugs, another pillow, or more heat. Whenever one of them completed a required duty to assist in my recovery, I issued a compliment: “Brilliant,” I would ejaculate. I told my jokes, as I was resigned to do, and they laughed in apparently genuine joviality. In terms of hospital staff, my three revolving nurses were the only friendly faces I ever saw while in intensive care.
Just the sight of my nurse during my moment of panic eased my fears dramatically. Although I was in a very irrational state of mind, my reasoning abilities continued to function to an extent. She was not interested in anything of a negative nature taking place, so her presence was a silent guarantee that she would watch this “doctor” to make certain he did not harm me.
As I relaxed, I closed my eyes and began to breathe more deeply.
“Good. That’s good,” White Doc said, attempting to encourage me.
When next I opened my eyes, I was staring at myself on a basketball court. I knew it was a dream, but I welcomed it. I did not remember the feeling of the nothingness after the accident, as this is impossible, but I knew it had happened. I somehow remembered the dreamless sleep when I was barely aware of my existence, and recognized it as an improvement over the previous state of mind, or lack thereof. This sleep was yet another step forward because it meant my mind had repaired itself enough to allow continued awareness during a period of unconsciousness. I allowed the dream to continue.
I was at the top of the key with the ball in my hands. My father was guarding me. To my right on the wing was my brother. He stood in the corner so that my uncle, the man guarding him, would not be allowed to double team me. John wanted me to score the winning basket.
I was primarily a jump shooter, but my youth gave me a quickness advantage over my father. I faked right and dribbled left, trying to beat him to the basket. He stayed with me for the first few steps, but just as I reached the basket I saw a window of opportunity where I could make a lay-up. I jumped and brought the ball up with both of my hands as I had been taught. Dad knew he was beaten and made a final effort to take the ball from me. I used nearly all of my strength and was able to retain possession of the ball to make the game winning lay-up.
As the ball went through the hoop, a feeling of supreme accomplishment overtook me. John and I had tried for years to beat my father and uncle in basketball, only to meet with defeat after defeat. We’d come close a few times, but we were never able to get over the hump. When we were very young, their victory was nearly guaranteed because they were much bigger and smarter than we were. They were still bigger, but our collective basketball I.Q. had grown considerably. We no longer fought on the court. We were able to play together, as a team, and utilize the other’s strengths. We listened to the advice Dad had given us after the last time we had lost.
“If you guys can stop fighting you can beat us, you know,” he’d said.
We learned our lesson and were able to win. I had one final lesson to learn that day. For months I’d been trying to dunk a basketball. Although I am less than six feet tall, I had the necessary athleticism to accomplish this feat. For a reason that was unknown to me I had been unable to place the ball through the cylinder once I achieved the necessary height. The solution to my problem became clear after our victory: stop fighting; just let it happen.
I took the ball and went just beyond the three-point arc, just left of the top of the key. I dribbled a few times and jogged toward the basket. Picking up my dribble, I took off just inside of the dotted line with the ball stretched out over my head. I brought it down in a thunderous dunk that shook the entire frame of the goal.
“AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!” I growled.
I’d figured it out! If I let the game come to me I could do whatever I set my mind to. Energized by my feat, John took the ball and went to the wing where he’d been standing when I scored the game-winning basket. He took the ball and attacked the goal as if it had wronged him previously. He threw down a double-pump reverse dunk that made mine look like nothing. At that time he had already been dunking for a few years, so what he performed was neither a significant accomplishment for him, nor an accurate depiction of his athletic full abilities. Because of this, it did not even slightly diminish the feeling I had. I saw then that if we played together, we could not be stopped.
I awoke smiling. Instantly the smile was gone. I was back in that cramped intensive care room in Arkansas, my body racked with pain. I was having a difficult time breathing, so moving was not even on my mind. I felt something in my throat, and I remembered the words of my nurse before the operation. But she was wrong. The doctors hadn’t placed a splint-like instrument in my throat. Splints were small. The object in my throat was much too large to be a splint. I pressed the button and the nurse was there.
“Oh, you’re awake,” she said, smiling.
“Thz dzktz,” I tried but it didn’t sound right. She said they would wire my jaw shut and that speaking would be difficult, but she understated her point. Speaking was nearly impossible. I tried again.
“Thz dzktz dnt pt u splent n m thrt,” I mumbled.
“What?” she asked.
“Thz dzktz dnt pt u splent n m thrt,” I gurgled.
“The doctors didn’t put a splint in your throat?” she confirmed.
“Ysh,” I replied. “Thz Jpsh cam nd pt u sptlu n m thrt,” I said.
“Sorry, I didn’t get that,” she said.
“Thz Jpsh,” I began again, but it was useless. She would never understand the sabotage that had taken place in the operating room. How could she not have seen what happened? She was standing right there! I made a movement with my hand that resembled writing, and she got the picture. She disappeared for a moment, and then returned with a pen and a piece of paper.
I took the paper and wrote the most important part of my message upon it. Japs.
“Japs? What about the Japs?” she asked.
Spatula, I penned.
“What happened with a spatula?” she inquired.
“N m thrt!” I said.
“The Japs put a spatula in your throat?” she asked, never losing the patience in her voice.
“Ysh,” I squeezed through my clenched teeth.
“No, the doctors put a splint in there. Remember, I told you they would before your surgery.”
I decided she would either not understand the urgency of my message, or she was on their side. Either way, I needed to have a clearer state of mind to battle the foes that awaited me outside of the room. I penned one final message: Knock me out. She looked at it and nodded. She left again momentarily to obtain a needle. She pressed the needle into the receptacle made for it on one of the tubes that ran into my arm. I felt a cool fluid enter my bloodstream that I recognized as Demerol. I closed my eyes in enjoyment as the candied pharmaceutical did its work. Moments later I was unconscious again, and dreaming pleasant dreams.
Coming Soon – Part III of The On Purpose: The Recovery
