Boy, I was sick.  I mean ill, laid up, under-the-weather, puking, flat-on-my-back sick.  Now, I am sure not too many people want to hear or read about another’s illness, and I don’t expect anyone to read much passed the first sentence.  However, I do this for me.  I can sort out feelings I had, or still have, concerning my recent infirmity, perhaps even learn from them and catalogue them for future reference, so I can give the illusion in some distant novel, short story, essay, whatever that I know what I’m talking about.  But, if anyone is curious and wants to follow along, be my guest.

 

My pylorus was occluded.  When my doctor told me, I immediately learned two things: I have a pylorus like all other mammals, and occluded means stopped up, clogged, blocked.  You see, the pylorus is the opening from the stomach into the duodenum, that first part of the small intestine immediately leaving the stomach and leading to the jejunum, which goes to the ileum, or . . . well, I could go on right down the gut to the rectum, but that isn’t necessary for this discussion.  Enough to say my food would not pass through my stomach, and I would vomit a lot, like several times a day, especially early in the morning, and I lost massive weight, which is another story I’ll get to as this blog grows.  (No, my illnesses are not all I’ll write about, but right now it’s uppermost in my thoughts since I’m still recovering.) I resisted the surgery to correct the problem for about a year.  For me the word surgery is a four-letter obscenity.

Seven years ago I was operated upon for stomach cancer and half my stomach was removed along with some inches of esophagus.  To make matters worse I contracted a hospital staph infection, mersa, probably, but mine went septic, which means I had blood poisoning.  For forty days I was kept in a medically induced coma and came near enough to death to peek in the gate.  (No, I did not see a bright light, long passages and deceased relatives and friends beckoning me to the great beyond, but I did hallucinate extremely realistically.  I mean when you fantasize you’re waiting for the Concord in London and are strapped to a gurney and it’s freezing cold outside and are later told by your wife how you shivered violently, the “pink elephant” you are seeing is palpable.  I think death is moving from one reality to another where possibly cold mountain streams are filled with 7UP and you’re so hot a thirsty you practically drown yourself in the soda; I experienced that, too.)  

Anyway after 50 days in hospital for cancer, almost dying from a staph and not being able to walk when I got sprung, you can maybe see why surgery is such a foul proposition for me.  A pyloriplasty was what it was.  It means getting in there, scooping out the bad stuff–the occlusion–and sewing the sucker back together.  Like widening a bore or a hole, reaming out a hose or tube.  Gives me shivers just thinking about it. Of course, the surgeon had to work in a tight place, surrounded by guts, or small intestine, and, therefore, because he could no help it, nicked my guts, which if not attended to can lead to peritonitis and a permanent change of residency to the land of hallucinations where I’d been before.  So, in order not to let me die, they fed me nothing orally for over two months.  I ate nothing for over two months.  Talk about losing weight: from 139 when I checked into hospital to 113 when I checked out.  Now, I do not recommend losing weight that way.  Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, or some other weight-loss plan, yes, but not the way I did it.  I left the hospital so weak I could not have whipped a crippled piss ant with a baseball bat.  Hell, I couldn’t lift the bat.

 

For today that’s all I’m going to write.  I will in days to come regale you with the nightmare in the hospital including the joy and personal self esteem building that comes from incontinence of the bowels and how it destroys any concept of privacy and modesty.