“It’s Going to Take a Lot More Than You Think to Sedate Me”

There are two types of people in this world:

The type who leave the bandaid on for hours after the needle… and those who rip it off right away. I don’t know the significance of either… I just know Im the latter.

I had a sedated procedure I’ve been pushing off for months. Often it makes me very bloody and sore, though some people can change their G tubes at home. I cannot go it alone. I have a G and a J that seem to cling to me like a toddler not wanting to go to their first day of school.

“It’s going to take a lot more than you think to sedate me,” I warn the nurse: “I used up all my Pete Davidson jokes at my last sedation, but let’s just say I’m the new John Mulaney.”

“You’re not the new Mulaney,” my husband shouted (literally) as I’m wheeled away: “He’s sober now.”

In the OR, I told a nurse with scrubs with cats on them about Louis Wain, an artist I was studying the night before. He is a lot of the reason why we have cats in our homes. He changed their reputation from repugnant pugilistic vermin.

“I have 5,” an Interventional Radiologist said. “You’re my people!” I yelled while decisively NOT falling asleep. “I’d be on the floor,” the nurse said of how hard it is to sedate me.

I took off the gauze and ripped the IV Band-aids in the parking garage (I am repugnant pugilistic vermin). I cut the 3 hospital bracelets. Then, and only then, could I sleep.

Often I get granulation tissue needing to be burned, so I always point out that we say babies don’t hurt as their umbilical spot is drying up… and we are wrong. We just never took the time to ask the babies.

I think about Cheryl Strayed’s horse in ‘Wild’ and what it would have said, if asked, about its painful death. Cheryl went it alone for 94 days. She too was once a newborn, like all of us, assumed to feel no pain while being detached from her mother. Maybe that’s why we are all so miserable? We still feel the silver nitrate sting of detachment from safety.

I detach myself from the gauze, fast. I don’t want to be saddled to this thing, this body, this system. My life lines keep me alive… I cannot go it alone… a toddler clinging on its first day of school…

But I also want to rip it all away.

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