On my eighth day in the hospital, I was taken off the anticonvulsants. I had no seizures and the doctors were relatively assured that I would not. There is still the possibility, and it is something I will have to keep an eye on for the next few years, but most of the worst things tend to happen right away.
When Nurse Xihua came in to take the staples out of my head, I was relieved. Just the idea of having my head stapled bothered me. Maybe it was a better choice than sutures, but it still sounds weird to me. They also put glue in my head as a sealant, but that dissolved on its own. The staple procedure was simple, and no more painful than combing out tangled hair; something I will not have to deal with for a while. When all the staples were out, she put tape over the incision and put on a lighter dressing than everything I had before. Needing your head bandaged is never a good thing, but when the material gets progressively smaller, that is always good news.
After another MRI, Lily and Kevin were allowed to see me. They flew in that morning and waited around until all of the graphic procedures were finished. When we saw each other, we all smiled, in noticeably different ways. I was as happy to see them as I possibly could be. Lily was happy to see me, of course, but I did not look my best. My newest dressing was small enough to reveal how bald I was. This was not elegant bald like Patrick Stewart or Samuel Jackson. This was Darth Vader bald. There was also some swelling and I had been medicated for the past week, so she has seen my better days.
More surprising to me was Kevin's reaction. He has been Lily's boyfriend since the beginning of time and we have all been roommates since our last apartment. If she is my sister, he is like a brother to me. Living with a couple would never work if we were not all friends.
When I looked at Kevin, he was crying. They were happy tears, but I think that was the third time in all the years we have known each other that I have ever seen him cry. He is not one of those hyper ego, macho Stanley Kowalski types. I have never seen him talk down to Lily or try to control her. She would never put up with it. He is secure enough in his masculinity to act like a decent human being. But he is definitely not a crier.
It probably did not help that when I saw them, I started speaking Chinese. It was not that I thought they or I were Chinese. I knew full well that they are Canadian and I am from south of the border. I simply did not recognize that I was speaking Chinese until Lily pointed it out. Kevin's Chinese is excellent. He could have easily held a conversation. But Lily is learning Chinese by osmosis, which does not work at all.
That should have been the strangest part of being in the hospital, but knowing that I was awake and alert for the first few days without remembering any of it freaks me out to this day. I had entire conversations with doctors and nurses. I took cognitive tests. I drank ice chips and demanded water. I vomited buckets. I complained when they removed the Foley catheter. But I don't remember any of it.
If the border is Canada, south of the border is Minnesota.
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