Fear and Loathing in Budapest
A gigantic neural surgeon in a stained gray t-shirt and a ponytail meandered into the room. He was at least three hundred pounds of solid beergut. Behind him, a nurse was grinning at me.
He smiled at me. “Well. You are the one.”
“One what?”
Nurse: “The one who is getting the POKEY.”
“Uhm. The injection. Yes, that would be me.”
“Okay then. I want you to sit on this stool… Get us two stools, nurse.”
“Ya ok.” (nurse glides off, smiled supernaturally bright, returns in a moment with two decrepit wooden stools. I sit on one.)
“Now, I want you to strip naked on the top half of your body.”
“Uhm… okay.” I obey. He outweighs me by like 200 pounds and anyway I am supposed to get the contrast material for my CT scan, so I am supposed to get a shot… Why is this nurse grinning at me?
“You will feel a momentary pang of discomfort.”
A SWORD is plunged into my lower spinal chord.
“See? No problems or pain at all! Now, cough!”
“WHAT?”
“Cough or laugh.”
I manage a hysterical cough. I am sensing the needle quivering in my spine.
“You see that? When he coughed, it increased the spinal fluid pressure and the thing is filling up much faster now…”
This is when I realized I was not getting contrast material AT ALL – I was GETTING A LUMBAR PUNCTURE WHILE SITTING EXPOSED ON A DECREPIT STOOL, administered by George the Animal Steel.
After about 21 seconds of unadulterated agony they withdrew the gigantic spear from my back. They took samples of MARROW.
The nurse shoves the thing full of ick towards the gigantic inquisitor “So now what?”
“Regular lab, please.”
“Ugh… so now… now what?”
“Now you must be completely motionless for the next 24 hours. We will send an orderly to cart you down to the CT area in an our or so, where they will take pictures. No movement at all. Drink LOTS of fluids.”
Nurse laughs uproariously. “More ducky for you!” (ducky is the quaint nickname for the bottle you piss in).
“Uhm… okay.”
“If you move AT ALL you will have a three day long migraine headache.”
“I will not move.”
An amazingly gay orderly manhandled me down to the CT area where he deposited my comatose corpse (some poetic exaggeration) in front of the bathroom door. I did not realize this problem until I felt a jostling against my cot. I looked up to gaze at the withered, evil visage of a 211 year old woman (at least – maybe older) trying to CLAW HER WAY into the bathroom through my cart-cot-wheeled thingie. She gasped with every motion, staring at me with a desperate plea in her eyes, moving hand over hand, jostling my contrivance. I detected more elderly in the vicinity, eyeing the bathroom entrance with avid interest. I was apparently classified as a SURMOUNTABLE OBSTACLE OF A TEMPORARY NATURE.
Finally they stuck me inside the CT where the radiologist squinted at me. Her initial attitude of morose indifference had become one of gentle reassurance. Apparently, nobody visits the CT as much as I do without being filed away into the Walking Corpse file.
So then they took me upstairs where I was placed back in my room. There are six beds in the room sized for four. The beds themselves are discarded surplus cots from Rammstein airforce base. This means they are for ambulatory patients and are 4 feet off the ground. When you fall – and let me tell you, some patients FALL HARD in neurology – it is a BAD THING. The whole hospital is Twelve Monkeys meets some kind of plumber’s vision of the apocalypse. Immense, high ceilings, gigantic glass doors, pipes EVERYWHERE… Shelled, bombed bungalows from 1944 littering the ground outside. It is UTTERLY SURREAL.
So I keep drinking mineral water. Even if I wanted to drink something else, it is not available. Mineral water comes from the pipes – since the hospital was built in a natural spring. There is no chlorine in the entire system. I drink a lot of it. I had to dispatch my mother to purchase a duckie, since the hospital supplied duckie – the only ONE the hospital had LEFT – lacked a cap. I need not tell you how thrilled I was at the prospect of breathing in the heavy scent of my radioactivity stained urine all night long. In any event, I obtain the ducky and I am like SET!
Then I realize I have read everything even remotely appropriate for this venue. I have read all the Terry Pratchett. I have read all the silly stupid stuff. I have read the Sci Fi. I have read the magazines. I have no laptop (see my entry regarding it earlier, too lazy to link it) so I cannot write.
What, pray tell, do I have left to READ, in this medical textbook hell?
Drumroll please.
FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
He smiled at me. “Well. You are the one.”
“One what?”
Nurse: “The one who is getting the POKEY.”
“Uhm. The injection. Yes, that would be me.”
“Okay then. I want you to sit on this stool… Get us two stools, nurse.”
“Ya ok.” (nurse glides off, smiled supernaturally bright, returns in a moment with two decrepit wooden stools. I sit on one.)
“Now, I want you to strip naked on the top half of your body.”
“Uhm… okay.” I obey. He outweighs me by like 200 pounds and anyway I am supposed to get the contrast material for my CT scan, so I am supposed to get a shot… Why is this nurse grinning at me?
“You will feel a momentary pang of discomfort.”
A SWORD is plunged into my lower spinal chord.
“See? No problems or pain at all! Now, cough!”
“WHAT?”
“Cough or laugh.”
I manage a hysterical cough. I am sensing the needle quivering in my spine.
“You see that? When he coughed, it increased the spinal fluid pressure and the thing is filling up much faster now…”
This is when I realized I was not getting contrast material AT ALL – I was GETTING A LUMBAR PUNCTURE WHILE SITTING EXPOSED ON A DECREPIT STOOL, administered by George the Animal Steel.
After about 21 seconds of unadulterated agony they withdrew the gigantic spear from my back. They took samples of MARROW.
The nurse shoves the thing full of ick towards the gigantic inquisitor “So now what?”
“Regular lab, please.”
“Ugh… so now… now what?”
“Now you must be completely motionless for the next 24 hours. We will send an orderly to cart you down to the CT area in an our or so, where they will take pictures. No movement at all. Drink LOTS of fluids.”
Nurse laughs uproariously. “More ducky for you!” (ducky is the quaint nickname for the bottle you piss in).
“Uhm… okay.”
“If you move AT ALL you will have a three day long migraine headache.”
“I will not move.”
An amazingly gay orderly manhandled me down to the CT area where he deposited my comatose corpse (some poetic exaggeration) in front of the bathroom door. I did not realize this problem until I felt a jostling against my cot. I looked up to gaze at the withered, evil visage of a 211 year old woman (at least – maybe older) trying to CLAW HER WAY into the bathroom through my cart-cot-wheeled thingie. She gasped with every motion, staring at me with a desperate plea in her eyes, moving hand over hand, jostling my contrivance. I detected more elderly in the vicinity, eyeing the bathroom entrance with avid interest. I was apparently classified as a SURMOUNTABLE OBSTACLE OF A TEMPORARY NATURE.
Finally they stuck me inside the CT where the radiologist squinted at me. Her initial attitude of morose indifference had become one of gentle reassurance. Apparently, nobody visits the CT as much as I do without being filed away into the Walking Corpse file.
So then they took me upstairs where I was placed back in my room. There are six beds in the room sized for four. The beds themselves are discarded surplus cots from Rammstein airforce base. This means they are for ambulatory patients and are 4 feet off the ground. When you fall – and let me tell you, some patients FALL HARD in neurology – it is a BAD THING. The whole hospital is Twelve Monkeys meets some kind of plumber’s vision of the apocalypse. Immense, high ceilings, gigantic glass doors, pipes EVERYWHERE… Shelled, bombed bungalows from 1944 littering the ground outside. It is UTTERLY SURREAL.
So I keep drinking mineral water. Even if I wanted to drink something else, it is not available. Mineral water comes from the pipes – since the hospital was built in a natural spring. There is no chlorine in the entire system. I drink a lot of it. I had to dispatch my mother to purchase a duckie, since the hospital supplied duckie – the only ONE the hospital had LEFT – lacked a cap. I need not tell you how thrilled I was at the prospect of breathing in the heavy scent of my radioactivity stained urine all night long. In any event, I obtain the ducky and I am like SET!
Then I realize I have read everything even remotely appropriate for this venue. I have read all the Terry Pratchett. I have read all the silly stupid stuff. I have read the Sci Fi. I have read the magazines. I have no laptop (see my entry regarding it earlier, too lazy to link it) so I cannot write.
What, pray tell, do I have left to READ, in this medical textbook hell?
Drumroll please.
FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
posted by Balázsy András at 2:56 PM
2 Comments:
"We were somewhere around Budapest when the drugs began to take hold..."
Man, that book is perfect for that situation.
"Jesus, that scene straightened me right out! I must have some drugs! What have you done with the mescaline?"
Haha, you know it. Every night the nurses come with a tray... and they ask, they ask this: "what do you want?" and they MEAN it...
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