Nothing Like Surgery For Hallucinations
In my last column I told you how I was about to enter the hospital for triple
by-pass surgery. And so I did. On an unpromising, chilly morning at 5.30
a.m., I went in with a hesitant smile on my lips, true to the proud motto of
my Celtic ancestors: " Valor With Ambivalence."
I had been prepped the day before, and two blue, meandering lines on my legs
marked the redundant veins to be used for by-passing two of my clogged
coronary arteries. The third one was to be replaced by my left mammary
artery, another seemingly superfluous vessel. Isn't it amazing how much stuff
in our body we don't really need? And why not? It's a baffling question.
Doesn't the blood have to go up my legs again? And don't my mammary glands
need blood?
As part of the pre-op procedure I was given a booklet that explained what I
could expect coming out of the anesthesia. Such as finding myself hooked up
to half a dozen tubes. As it happened, I didn't notice any of them, being too
busy fighting off amnesia. Shadowy figures hovered about my bed, asking dumb
questions like " What is your name?" I thought about that for a while, but a
real good answer escaped me at the time.
Later I was visited by hallucinations. One of them took the form of the movie
"High Noon", which I kept seeing in silver and black on a dead television
set. Then there were the visions brought on by great stress, like when a
doctor inserted a tube to drain my lungs. I won't go into details, but,
tightly screwing my eyes closed to lessen the pain, I suddenly saw a red,
ribbed cave ceiling with two smoke holes. It took me a while to realize I was
seeing the roof of my mouth, including my nostrils. Think of the implications
of that, though, for a moment. Your brain somehow presents itself with a
picture that it cannot interpret! It's scary! I tried to explain to the
medical staff that here was a fundamental discovery -- maybe we could write a
scientific paper about it, I offered -- but nobody was interested.
After six days, when I was beginning to feel merely bad rather than awful,I
was sent home. It was a wonderful experience. The sun was shining, flowers
blooming, people laughing -- I could have kissed the nurse who saw me off.
And that's about it; I'm back from the house of pain and confusion. My heart
beats strongly and my visions have disappeared. I miss "High Noon" though; it
had something special in black and silver. Even though it wasn't really
there.
At Random - Adrian Korpel
