(I saw him after he was removed but assume y'all don't want to kick off 2026 with those images in your head. You're welcome!)
Some odd and severe pain from that little guy sent me to the emergency room a couple of times, but I lived to tell the tale. The CT scans reflected the state of my life: nothing was visibly wrong; things were simply disrupted.
After turkey day, I was informed that it was time to remove him and see if the tissue had remodeled itself in his image.
If so, I'd advance immediately to one last surgery and defeat the final boss. If not, I'd stay on the hamster wheel of procedures until God knows when. I am convinced that about a quarter of my body weight is comprised of various anesthetic substances by now.
I had zero confidence that the stent had taken. Yes, I'd prayed and prayed some more but I didn't feel right. I took that feeling as God's way of telling me, "It's not over, child. You have more to learn."
The scheduler worked me in for December 17 to have the stent yanked. If it had done good work, I'd be wheeled to a hospital room and have surgery on the morning of the 18th.
It worked!
The little stent guy and my body had gotten on well. I was parked in a room on the third floor, where I hoped to rest before surgery the next morning. Sleep had been elusive on the night of the 16th, probably because I was anxious. Now, on the eve of my final surgery, I was wide awake.
That condition - the annoying inability to sleep - persisted. Awake I stayed until 10 a.m. when I was supposed to head into surgery. Nobody came. I tried to nap. Sleep didn't come.
Nurses came and checked on me. A few of them asked after my cat, Lopez, or my resident bathtub spider, Franklin. They remembered our conversations from my previous stays but my exhausted mind tried couldn't quite get there. I tried desperately to figure out how they could possibly know about my house spider!
Something was off. Actually, most things were off.
"Do you see the ants around that light fixture there?" I asked my friend Carol, a true hero of this story who was with me through most of my Houston hospital excursions.
My patient, brilliant friend did not see the ants. This was good news, in a way, because who wants to be in a hospital with an ant infestation? The bad news was that I was hallucinating ants. Around every light fixture, ants. Sleep deprivation is a helluva drug.
When they took me for surgery at 3, the ants came to pre-op with me. When my surgeon stopped by to explain the delays (no operating rooms or surgical teams available), I let him know about the damned ants.
"I'll get you something to help you sleep. Rest! I'll see you in thirty minutes or three hours. As soon as a room opens, we'll put you back together again!" He flashed a can of soup he had stashed in the pocket of his white coat. He was sneaking off to drink dinner while we waited.
The drugs came but groggy was as close to sleep as I could get. While he ate canned soup, I lay in pre-op with the ants where I stayed until about 7:15. So much for that 10 a.m. start!
By 10 p.m. I was back in my hospital room, awake and alive. Humpty Dumpty had been put back together again! And despite the two hour anesthesia nap, Humpty Dumpty was still hallucinating ants.
The ants were by my side even after I was discharged a couple of days before Christmas. I never slept but I did add cats to my hallucinatory repertoire. You can't see them in this photo but they're there! So is the ridiculous hernia belt I have to wear for a few more weeks.
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