Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Behind a closed door. The blood and scale of it all done behind my back. Each pin prick, cut and dull scissor snip a total mystery, all for my vivid imagination to fill.
"Ow, ow, ow," I screamed countless times as my doctor was numbing the area to be operated on. It was so much more than a minor prick of a needle. The blasted benign clump that had been resting on a nerve on my spine had been with me all my life. It only brought pain, especially when friends would embrace me. It was gosh darn awful to get a hug, and I love hugs. But I'll hug through the pain, any day.
The pain. I describe it as if stabbing a starfish in the gut. All the pain shoots out the legs (across my back, everywhere). I stop breathing for a few seconds, hold, gather myself, and then proceed on like nothing happened.
I yelped to the doctor, "barn yard animals," because in the past she would squawk a myriad of barn yard animals to distract from the needle/pain. But this time it didn't work, the pain had enwrapped me like a fiend, hellbent on revenge, outraged that it was losing its home. And as I felt the dull, but most probably sharp blades tear away the clump from my body, I listened quietly to the scissors, it sounded like scissors, cutting away the past.
How much was I bleeding... I don't know? Not too much?
And as she stitching me up, I hadn't a single thought to contemplate. I only looked around the room as far as my eyes could search, looking for anything familiar to ease the bits of anxiety within me.
I asked her if she had a patient after me.
"Yes," she replied, still stitching away.
I laughed, imaging what someone or anyone could be thinking as they hard me cry "Ow, ow, ow," outside the door. A door that faces a long hallway where many people travel across. And, man, I was loud. I couldn't stifle it in little weeps. I actually intercut the OWs with laughter, struck at how much it actually hurt.
Laugh or cry... Laugh I always say. Laugh.
After it was over, out of the operating room, and back out onto the street with chocolate milk in hand, chocolate milk to cure the wooziness of it all, I sat for some minutes. The wind was chilly, but not cold, and the back entrance of the hospital alive as ever with the rush of people, many sharing a battle with illness. Life must go on, despite of it all. Despite the twisted road and the unseen challenges we, as people, collectively face. Battles and challenges never seem to discriminate, just like stray bullets. Stray bullets don't have a name attached to them.
So now back to healing. Healing and writing.
Gosh, these stitches are itchy.
