Dying Alone, Not Recommended. Pt.1

Lemmie tell ya’ll a thing or two about throat surgery…okay, just one. Don’t do it! One hell of a week and a half have passed. I actually went back under the blade on the seventh day for re-work. That was one scary fucking night.

I had lost about 15 pounds in six days. I was unable to eat anything solid and had a hard time with most liquids. I was in a bad way, but was told that this was a bitch of a surgery so I wasn’t about to punk out just yet. Starvation and dehydration finally took its toll. On Tuesday I walked into my ENT and asked to be seen. He poked and prodded for a minute then decided to get me started on some serious doses of liquid Motrin. It was an immense amount of swelling that was causing most of my discomfort. This would help and since there was no bleeding this would be the thing that took me to the promised land. The swelling went down and I started to hurt more! I had uncovered a few wounds from surgery that had been hidden from the light of day because of the swelling. Now I had more pain and well, Motrin thins your blood a bit and allows for some awesome bleeding! It was about 12 hours later, Wednesday morning around 4am I was awakened by the sound of myself gurgling on a pool of blood that had formed like an oozing plunger of death at the back of my throat. Once I coughed up a cup of the vile brew and couldn’t stem the flow I decided it was best I headed to the ER. Went upstairs and it seemed a looooong way up to tell Julie that I was headed in because I couldn’t make it stop bleeding. Not having insurance other than my care at the VA I drove about three times the needed distance to reach help. I showed up with a bloody towel, that I asked them to dispose of on my departure, and a kid’s Dutch Bros cup full of red goo I produced on the way in. After plugging THE leak and flushing my mouth out I was told that there was nothing else to do since the on call surgical dude said I was good. Okay, I go home and get ready for another day of narcotic induced sleep in 3.5-four hour segments. My doc was nice enough to call interrupting the first sleep to check in on me since he’d heard that I was in the ER earlier. He thought I would not need to be seen and all should be okay, “a little bleeding is to be expected”.  Damn, I knew it was only a matter of time before somebody called me a pussy! Oh, it was on. I was going to show him just how tough I was…until twelve hours later when I was producing gummy bear sized clots and mouthfuls of red bubbly phlegm with every third exhalation. This pussy was on his way back to the ER since nobody at my doc’s office would return a call. You win, I punked out again. Let Julie know I wasn’t able to pick the youngin’ up after school and headed back to the VA for the third time in 24 hours. My appearance was much more gruesome on arrival this time. There were no spots near the ER entrance with where I could leave my car so I used a regular spot and zombie walked my way to the double doors. I scared a few people on the way with blood I’d given up on trying to keep off of my chin, the bloody towel half draped over one shoulder, and the expandable puke catcher that was extended and carrying about 8 inches of putrid goop that I added to every few seconds with in indistinguishable demonic vitriol. Well, the ER did me right with giving me a few of those blood buckets the last trip in. A little less to clean in the car now. "Sir, do you need some help?" Ya fucking think?  Who's the pussy now?