Porno Star?

John had asked my permission to write an entry in my journal to explain my absence. I thought it was a very sweet gesture on his part, and those aren’t as forthcoming as you would expect, so I sweetly kissed him on the cheek and told him “certainly”. I struggled over to the computer this morning expecting to read a loving; pathos filled description of my plight. Imagine my surprise, indignation, and infuriation when I found myself ungraciously described as ‘a splayed out porno star’.

Before I take umbrage with John’s words I have to say from the bottom of my heart, if that is what porno stars have to do with their legs and hips I have nothing but sympathy for those poor people. I had one leg stretched out behind me with my foot and toes braced halfway up a wall and the other leg bent at the knee and tucked under my hips while being stretched so far in the opposite direction that it forced my head and shoulders down a step and as close as is humanly possible underneath my butt as if I was searching for my missing leg. Come to think of it, it does sound a bit like a porno position doesn’t it?

This one experience has given me so many stories to share that I could sit here for the next month and write about the ER helper(?) that yelled “We got a woman with a blister on her leg here” and promptly forgot I existed, or about my son almost getting arrested because he was indignant that I wasn’t getting proper and immediate help, or about the ER doctor, when he did come to my beside, tearing his hair out and repeating over and over “In thirty-five years as an ER doctor I’ve never seen anything like this.” Or me asking my son to find a towel and then sticking it in mouth so I wouldn’t scream and my son yanking it out and screaming at me to scream, or the policewoman that was called to escort my son out of the ER having nothing but sympathy and concern for me and my son and telling him to ignore the ’bitch’ that called her to arrest him, or my grandson that stood like a man and helped spell my son of the horrible responsibilities that had fallen on his napping shoulders, or the wonderful, intelligent, caring, and soft spoken ER RN who whispered and suggested and assisted the doctor in finding a way to deal with something that just kept growing until I, at one point, after I had been shot full of morphine, asked if it was an unidentified living presence that had invaded my body and was slowing going to crawl up and consume me until I was so large and extended that I was going to burst, or the nurse bringing me morphine and me arguing that I hated morphine and didn’t want it and my son saying “take the damn morphine and flow with it” after I had gouged bleeding holes in his arm and hand from the intensity of the pain, or me 4 hours later getting across to the room that the pain was very similar to giving birth, it grew to a huge mountain, slid down, sat for a few minutes, and grew and grew again until I felt that I was on the verge of losing my sanity, or the RN’s that instantly understood the comparison of birth pain and the one that I heard whisper to the doctor “she’s having spasms why don’t you try giving her some xxxxx” and the minute it hit my system having the blessed relief of pain reduction, or being so out of it on the morphine I asked my son to please erase all of the names that my granddaughter had written on the walls, I HATE MORPHINE!!!!! My son took me to the ER at 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon; he didn’t get home until after 11:00 p.m.

I have to take my sons word for the things that they did to me during those horrible pain filled hours. The next thing I remember is being awakened in a hospital bed and told that I had lost too much blood and my blood pressure was too low for me to be allowed to go home. I know that they kept offering to fill me with morphine so I secretly yanked the needle out of my arm and got yelled at because “now we can’t give you any more morphine” and me smiling and answering “and that’s why I pulled it out”. The stories I could write about my roommate could fill a month’s worth of entries by itself and how as I was quietly trying to sneak away she caught me and threw her arms around me and started crying, “I’ve got to have your phone number. You are the most inspiring person I have met in years!” How the heck I could have inspired her filled with pain pills and nurses urging me to help myself to the morphine cabinet is beyond me, but I must have some hidden charisma that drugs release.

And how when I finally got to see my own beloved physician she shook her head in disgust and anger and said, “what are you doing out of the hospital? And instantly called, of all things, the ‘wound specialist’ and described my condition. Faster then you can say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious I amassed two more specialists. I’m telling you the past six months have added so many new doctors to my telephone index that I hardly have room for my friend’s numbers.

I obviously cant drive, John voluntarily gave up his drivers license and I have a book load of doctors appointments that have to be kept so Scott, whose arm has healed enough to drive my car, has been driving me back and forth to my many appointments. Most of the doctors and their staff think he is my husband and when I tell them that we're not married they just shake their heads and say, “but you two act married”. I just reply, “That’s because we’re sick of seeing each other.”

In the meantime it looks as if I am going to have to have the ’wound’ cut fully open, the blood released, the skin removed, and a fricken sick leg for a good many months. “Jumping Jehosifats” as my father used to say this has been one of the worst spells that I have ever gone through. I wonder if Scott and I will even be talking to one another when it’s all over.

Thank you so much for the love and concern that you have shown. We have such a caring community.

Pennie