It Is Brain Surgery - Part 5

I was happy when Jaimie asked me to sleep over in her room. Although "sleep" turned out to be a complete misnomer. The kind folks at the hospital rolled in what would double for my bed -- a gurney with a three inch thick Naugahyde-covered mattress, which provided me with a whole two and a half hours of interrupted sleep. Okay, it wasn't just the gurney that was waking me up every ten minutes. It was the girl in the other bed. "I need juice." "I have to pee." "Where's my phone?" "Hand me my computer." "I need more morphine." She could press the feeder button on her morphine pump every 12 minutes but that obviously wasn't enough.

I don't think she slept at all. But she was feeling okay. Actually, better than she should. She was over-friendly to visitors who were merely acquaintances . She was gushing outright love to those who were her friends. And she professed her eternal devotion to her brother, who brought us some lunch before he departed for L.A. Yup. Her behavior was changing. She was flying high as a kite. Every 12 minutes. Another push.

I couldn't stay the second night. I needed to go to Jaimie's apartment and prepare it for her impending homecoming. In other words, maid duty called. I had to strip her bedroom of anything her two cats might have come in contact with so there would be no chance of infection...the greatest risk after brain surgery. The cleaning was not fun, although I did appreciate the full night's sleep. But...when I woke up the following morning there was a voicemail message from Jaimie.

The call had been made at 3:30am. It started out with, "Hi Mom, it's me...don't worry...I just called to let you know I'm fine...I'm still in Paris..." Um, okay. From there her communication skills morph[in]ed into complete gibberish. Numbers mixed with words for no apparent reason or meaning. The whole thing went on for three minutes. In the moment, it was frightening. I was more than a little concerned. I immediately called the hospital. They had taken Jaimie for a CT scan so I had no idea what was going on. I raced over the hospital with my boxing gloves on...my mission?...to get Jaimie off the evil morphine, even if it meant a fist fight with her.

She was back in her room by the time I arrived. She still hadn't slept. And had no idea that she had made the phone call and left the message. But as it turned out, we were on exactly the same page. She had already talked to the nurses and doctors. Not only didn't she want them to stop the morphine, she wanted them to take her off everything. Of course, that couldn't happen but we did get her off the morphine right away - damn, she had a wacky reaction to that shit - and within a few hours she did this:

Finally.

Once she was off the the nasty M drug and she'd had some sleep, I played the phone message for her. We were both rolling on the floor laughing. We had talked about posting it but somehow it disappeared off my phone last month. What made it even funnier was, she later found out that while she was on her "trip" in the hospital she had gone online and actually bought a ticket to Paris. If you learn nothing else from my daily babblings here, learn this: DRUGS ARE BAD. Oh, yeah, and don't give a patient on morphine access to the internet.

One more photo...this became one of our favorites from the hospital stay (Jaimie even put it on my phone as my wallpaper, where it still resides)...

It is a picture of deception. She looks like a war refugee. Upset. Suffering. Struggling. However, in this case it was nothing so dour. I just happened to catch her rubbing her eyes.

This little saga (okay, this long drawn out saga) shall continue on Tuesday (actually, Wednesday because Monday and Tuesday are reserved for tribute posts) with some seriously gory pictures. Be prepared. Not for the faint of heart. Consider yourself warned.