Random Thoughts While on Drugs , by Annette Langer

They say bringing reading material to the hospital helps to fill the days, but I didn’t want to read after my recent spinal surgery. I wanted to write about nurses who administered medications at regular intervals, even waking me during the night to take my sleeping pill. My struggle to untangle my hospital gown from the bazillion tubes connected to me ended suddenly when I stared down at my hand now holding the end of the drainage tube I’d pulled out. My vivid dream about the movie Groundhog Day starred, not Bill Murray, but me. But the details of these adventures escaped my memory like dissipating smoke.

In my lingering stupor, I misdialed several times from the bedside telephone, trying unsuccessfully to remember the phone number for my ride home. I’d forgotten it was stored in my cell phone tucked right inside my purse.

Now home, I wear a cervical collar for six weeks and an electronic bone stimulator for six months to ensure successful disc fusion. It’s impossible to bathe while wearing all that gear. I’d briefly slip off the collar and the pads attached to the bone stimulator while placing a Safeway produce bag over my head on the mornings I didn’t shampoo my hair. Using a shower cap never occurred to me. The drug fog continued.

Trying to keep track of all the meds became another challenge. I’d cut the pills in half because I had a sword swallower’s sore throat at first. But there were so many pill and vitamin halves that they just became a Technicolor blur of half-circles.

This piece seemed so much more organized and interesting when it was still in my head. The lesson here is to not write anything important until your mind clears of the drugs. This isn’t that important.