When I was back in bed after the MRI that I thought was a CT scan, I reached up to fix my hair. It felt tight, as if it got twisted around. Instead of hair, I felt a towel. As soon as I touched the towel, I got my first headache. It was like someone put dynamite in my brain and then waited. It took a while, but when it went off, it went off with a bang. I immediately expressed my desire to be rid of the explosion in English, Chinese, French, broken Italian and really bad Spanish. I would have tried smoke signals if I thought that might work. The doctor asked me, in English, if I had a headache.
“It feels like a steamroller ran over my brain,” I answered.
It did not occur to me until later that I both heard and understood what the doctor said. If the only way to understand people required the headaches, I would have willingly gone back to the trombones.
There were more conversations and people moving around my bed, but I could not focus on anything. My head was on fire. Nothing else anywhere in the universe mattered. When they finally gave me enough drugs to numb my head, I floated away. People were still talking and moving, but I still did not care. Floating was so much better, flying straight across the great divide. I could almost picture the rocking horse people eating marshmallow pies. That reminded me of the Ghostbusters climax, for some reason.
“See you on the other side, Ray.”
An indeterminate amount of time later, Nurse Xihua gave me breathing lessons. It might have happened much earlier, right after I was extubated. That would make more sense. It might have never happened at all. The point of the breathing exercises was that it improved circulation with more oxygen and blood supply to my lungs, opened air passages, and lowered the risk of pneumonia or other infections. She might have told me that right away, or I learned about it later.
Nurse Xihua had me inhale deeply through my nose and exhale slowly through my mouth. After doing that five times, there was another deep breath, but then I held it for a second before exhaling in three short bursts. On the third burst, cough out any mucus, phlegm or whatever gooey debris might be swimming around in there. She told me to repeat this several times a day. I only remember doing it once.
The side effect of a medical procedure meant to stave off infection was that I was essentially meditating. When you focus on breathing in and breathing out, you stay in the moment. It is harder to think about all the petty things in life when you are concentrating on something as essential, and usually autonomic, as breathing. For me, it was a nice little Buddhist moment surrounded by modern technology in an antiseptic environment.
I could hear Samuel Jackson. “Om mani padme hum, motherfucker.”
The Great Wall of China part 1
You speak Chinese, Spanish, French, and Italian? That's impressive.
ReplyDeleteI speak very slow French, know a few phrases in Italian and almost no Spanish.
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