The Broken Soldier

I was up for more than 5 minutes today.  I actually went outside.  To smoke, of course, but I felt I was making progress.  I don’t know how long I was out exactly, but long enough for my neighbor to sell me on a new front door (when we have the money).

We had just finished the ‘Patina’ segment of the presentation, when I began feeling funny.  Decidedly not “funny, ha ha.”  I got dizzy, short of breath, and nauseated.  Like I was going to die.  This from sitting for longer than 5 minutes.

There are several things, unfortunately, given my current health, or lack thereof, to which I could attribute this experience.  I may still be experiencing difficulty breathing from the procedure - from what obviously wasn’t a gentle intubation or the truck load of anesthetic I was given (due to my physical size and that I’ve been on narcotics for 16 months in lieu of treatment).  I could also have been having a panic attic - something I’m having more frequently of late.  It could have been the extreme pain from sitting up.  It could have been an overdose caused by the heat getting to the transdermal patch.  It could be a combination of those.  It could be none of them.

All I know is that so far things seem worse.  Not that I imagined this procedure, especially this late in the game, would fix everything.  But Christ, I didn’t expect it to make things worse.  And with the symptoms associated with the original injury, the pain isn’t better yet, referring to the neuorpathic pain, and my right foot and calf are still partially paralyzed.  And sitting up caused me to piss myself.  My body’s way of saying Happy Father’s Day.

Well, I’ve learned my lesson.  Pain and humiliation are great teachers.  Yeah, I think I’ll be camping out at Fort Serta for the rest of my life.