Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough

Many years ago I had surgery, and you may know, if you've ever had it, that you're not supposed to eat for 12 hours before they cut into you. Something about throwing up in your gas mask, which I believe was the crux of the Paul Newman movie, The Verdict.

Anyway, when I woke up in the recovery room, it was a sudden, wide awake awakening, not at all like waking up in the morning when you're a little groggy and you hit the snooze button on your clock radio so you can, you know, snooze a little more. No, I was wider awake than I could ever remember being, and I was hungry!

"Can I have something to eat, please?" I asked the nurse who had, apparently, been checking on me every five minutes since the surgeon had stitched me up. By way of an answer, she brought me a glass of orange juice, and said that if that stayed down, she would bring me something more substantial.

I was puzzled, but she explained that many people experience nausea upon awakening from surgery. My insistence that I was not one of them fell on deaf ears.

So I drank the orange juice down, then tried to sit up, and that's when the pain hit me. No matter what kind of surgery you have, someone's just cut through your skin with a sharp knife, and if you've ever cut yourself with a sharp knife, or a piece of glass, in more of an unintentional matter, you know just how much that hurts. If you haven't, it's like a really bad paper cut, to the power of ten.

Or twenty.

"I was wondering when you'd notice that," said the nurse. She was prepared for the eventuality, a large syringe in her hand. At that moment my fear of needles didn't even register, the pain was so intense.

"Roll over," she said. And then she proceeded to stick me in a most undignified manner, in a most undignified portion of my body.

Almost immediately, a wave of euphoria spread through my body, its epicentre, the undignified point on my rear end. "Wow," I said, "What was that?"

"Demerol," replied the nurse. It's a painkiller, comes from the same thing they make heroin out of. Enjoy it, that's the only one you're getting."

I enjoyed it, all right. And I realized in that moment why people become addicted to heroin.

Today I heard on the news that Michael Jackson got a shot of Demerol every day, from his private doctor. It explains a lot.

* * *
I was never a big Michael Jackson fan, but I have fond memories of dancing to Don't Stop Til You Get Enough when I was in high school.

Hello

Hello, Internet. It's been a while, I know. How have you been?

Me, I've been, well, fair to middlin', as someone I used to listen to used to say. Been around. Been gettin' by. Been trying to grow my hair. Nothing new there, really; I've been saying that for 20 years, but my hair defies all laws of physics and biology. Despite the regular recurrence of roots that demand touching up, my hair never seems to be able to break the shoulder barrier.

But I'm trying. I keep trying.

I just haven't had the heart to write, or even to read. And I've been watching much too much mindless television. I was channel flipping one day and came across The Real Housewives of Orange County, and became riveted, the way you become when you see, say, a parade of midgets and giants being led by a morbidly obese woman on a structurally reinforced bicycle on a street in your neighbourhood. I simply could not turn it off, and, worse luck, it was one of those weekend marathons that went on for hours, so I was able to really get to know Vicki (bitch), Jeana (tone down the cleavage, woman, you're not 25 anymore), and Gretchen (bubblehead). The use of the term housewives in the show title is clearly metaphorical, since half of them aren't married, and the half who are have certainly never cleaned a toilet or driven their kids to school or clipped coupons and done the grocery shopping.

Where was I? Oh, right. What I'm doing.

I'm busy writing, which is why I haven't had the time to write. I'm working on that dissertation, and will finish it this summer or die trying. Because that same person I just mentioned, to whom I used to listen, also said, you'll finish it, or I'll need to know the reason why.

So I just returned from the library where I dug out another batch of dusty old books for my research and, armed with them and a lime-raspberry smoothie, I'm getting down to work.

Good lord, I'm so out of it I published this without a title!