Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.
Josh Billings
After an hour or so we arrived at Vernon Hospital. I was still calm and composed, at least until my girlfriend arrived. She started crying, then all the emotions in me let loose.
I was just in a major car accident, I was alive.
The police came in to take statements. I told the constable that the driver that hit me was drunk. He cautioned me to say no more. If he was drunk insurance doesn’t exist.
I understood. I also understood he would not be charged with any offenses.
Like I said in my previous post, it would be three days before the surgeon worked on my right knee. He also told me he wanted to fuse my ankle. I declined that surgery, not sure why.
He worked on my knee for 12 straight hours. Later he told me that that was the worst damage he had ever seen. I asked what did my future look like? He asked if I wanted the truth. I said of course yes.
“You will never walk again.” He said with a very solemn face.
“Fuck that I will walk” I was angry and determined. I knew I would. Maybe thats what I needed to hear. I am thankful that surgeon worked as hard as he did during that 12 hours.
Now the first three days I really didn’t feel much pain. After the surgery, the pain was extreme. I cringe when I see a scene in a movie where someone gets knee capped.
They started me on morphine, when I found out I told them to stop and asked for a less addictive alternative. I was given demerol instead. I have a history with drugs, I had quit those and alcohol 5 years before.
After surgery I had a half cast that only covered the back of my legs. In the front I had tubes draining fluid from a very swollen knee. I had a cut on my leg 18 to twenty inches long. I was guessing over two hundred stitches.
The demerol seemed to do the job as long as it arrived every four hours. There was one time it didn’t. I was going on five hours and the pain was almost unbearable.
I hit the call button for the nurse, I asked her about the pain meds. She started yelling at me, unjustly.
“Do you fucking think you are the only one here” were the words coming out of her mouth.
For a second I was dumb founded. She left my room. I was angry, and in pain. I grabbed the Skywrd cassette out of the tape machine. I grabbed my IV pole and used it as a crutch. My half cast fell to the floor. I made it to the hallway.
“I wouldn’t take that treatment in an 8 dollar a night motel, never mind a hospital. By the way bitch I recorded the whole conversation”
It was about then I realized that I had 12 hours of surgery three days before and no pain meds. I fell to the floor. The physco nurse got to me first, she wasn’t trying to help me. She was trying to pry open my hand to get the tape.
I was stronger, other nurses had arrived. She backed off. The head nurse asked me what happened, I told her the story. They got me back to my bed, pain meds were brought. The half cast and tubes were put back in place.
The next day the head nurse came to see me to apologize for the bad treatment. She told me that the nurse was going through something terrible at home. She asked me if I was going to file a complaint and use the tape as evidence.
You mean this tape, I handed her the Skynrd cassette. Told her it was just music no recording. We made an agreement, as long as I never had to see her again during my stay, anywhere in the Hospital. I wouldn’t file.
The head nurse said that was fair. After that I was treated very well in that Hospital until I left.
There is still more to tell. Tomorrow
