Inner-mission

Rocky Mountain Why.

You might remember I used to write a lot more for this site and I feel bad that I haven't been as active as I used to be. So I figure I owe this one to the Boneman. It's a 4,000 word tale of my fucked-up experience in the Laramie, Wyoming hospital for eight days. I don't know what Adam was talking about with falling two storeys he pulled that out of his ass. He must be on the junk again. As for that Mel Gibson shit, man what a fucking idiot. I followed that story all week in the hospital, what a douche. But read on, this really happened to me in Laramie Wyoming. Not as bad as the poor gay kid several years back, but bad enough.

I was in for a three-week journey to the "elk-infested wilds of Colorado" to build a cabin and escape the heat. As soon as I started telling people about the trip I figured I would get flooded with Brokeback Mountain jokes. "Wait a minute, you're going into the mountains of Colorado for three weeks to build a cabin with four other hairy, macho men? Right bro, whatever." As good of material as that would've been, nobody caught on - licking one's thumb is so yesterday.

It's not like I really wanted to work in Hatesville USA and in the process get some serious bro-time in with my coworkers, but I had to. My mounting fines and lawyer fees resultant of my unfortunate paraphernalia and possession charges were biting me in the ass, and my boss offered up some serious greenbacks if I participated. So I was to go with my boss Dan and my coworkers: Ephraim and Monroe (the runaway polyg boys) and the virgin Brandon to frame the summer away.

The morning after we got to Walden we decided to drive out to the job site and check it out. We were hoping the concrete dudes were done with their share of the work. Amazingly they still had two days left to get their shit done. This was fucking incredible; something that would take a day to do back home takes these jackasses two weeks. I figured they were in the small town time warp where every thing takes 70% longer to achieve than the fast city life we were accustomed to. The job site itself was amazing. It was located on an Elk and Buffalo refuge, a place where you can pay 10 grand to shoot a trophy elk or buffalo in a controlled area of about 500 acres. Hunting made easy for rich pussys and those dudes that make hunting videos. It was kind of sad too because they weren't even afraid of humans, the whole herd would just walk around and hang out with you. I'm no hunter, but I would imagine at least part of the fun is lost when you have to throw rocks at your quarry to get them far enough away that you don't end up shooting your buddy.

So anyway, we now had about three days to sit around and do nothing but hit up the bars until we nearly ran out of cash and spend some time at the bowling alley. Paradise Lanes wasn't as delightful as advertised, but it worked I guess. The one thing I hated was keeping score by hand. I don't want to sound like a bitch but fuck keeping score by hand. It's a lost art, about as fun as algebra, that no one really cares to keep alive. As we tried keeping track of our score as well as our beer intake, Ephraim was putting his best moves on one of the young ladies working the snack bar. I don't know how this guy does it but he manages to say the most inbred retarded shit to girls and somehow his lines, mixed with his juvie-style marijuana leaf tat on his shoulder gets chicks. After an hour of pleading the girl finally gave in and Ephraim got her number.

The next night the girl arrived with half the town and a lot of beer. As I was meeting all the local red-necks I realized that Ephraim was running his mouth because the chick he invited over was more interested in Monroe. His pick-up line for the night was, "My name's Monroe, like Marilyn Monroe — with the hot tits." How could a woman resist. Ephraim kept saying stuff like, "Fuck Walden and everyone in it." I guess this slander didn't work out in his favor because as soon as he started getting physical to back up his claim he pulled out some brass knuckles. Ephraim's plan of beating the whole town up was immediately foiled when the boys saw the shimmering gold knuckles. It was on. Time for a good ole fashioned Colorado beat-down, and Ephraim was still talking shit as the punches were piled on.

It was awesome; you had to admire his courage. Meanwhile I was just sitting back soaking it up with the locals and had a good time. I figured being friends with the small town locals was a much better idea. One of the locals named Jason or James or something was even a pothead and wore a Ministry shirt. I think he had a dragon necklace too. When I couldn't stand it anymore I looked over and asked, "So do you guys burn around here?" He laughed because he was thinking the same thing. But since he was the only pothead in town it was just us two who snuck into the laundry room to hot box it up. There's another Brokeback Mountain joke for you. As I treated him to a great splif, we began to chat about small town meth problems. Whether he did meth or not didn't matter because I still went on a huge rant about how it fucks everyone life's up and anyone who does it is a piece of shit. He seemed cool though and we were communicating on the same drunk-stoned level. It was chill.

Next thing I know I can't take it anymore; it was three in the morning and time to pass out. I fell asleep half way on my bed with all my clothes on. Two hours later I woke up to the sound of Brandon and a young lady making strange noises. It was a nasty make out sesh that sounded more like Lamaze breathing exercises, and I was caught in the middle of it. I guess it was more like a third base make-out sesh but whatever. I was proud of the virgin Brandon; first party and he's getting down. Good job Brandon! But for real, I had to piss and I didn't want to cock-block and scare the couple. So I just curled up, blocked out the noises and waited for morning. It felt like twenty minutes later when I heard Ephraim up on still-drunken rage screaming, "I fucking hate cowboys!" Hey dude it's your own fault you got your ass kicked. As Roe would say, "Your mouth writes a check your ass can't cash." It was seriously six in the morning and he's finishing off the last of the liquor while the rest of us are hiding under our blankets, plugging our ears resisting the urge to smash his face in.

We still had about two days to kill before work started and during those days I was stuck driving around for hours, each of us with a gun pointed out the window and beers going down faster than the bullet count. We were trying to kill gophers but something in nature had killed off most of the population that summer. "Last year you could drive down any fucking dirt road and just blast the shit out of them for hours. It was awesome, we were in the zone!" My boss explained "the zone" as he called it wasn't present this summer for some reason. Ephraim and my boss had worked the previous summer in Walden building shit so they knew how bad ass the gopher hunting was in the area. They were so bummed they couldn't kill shit. Finally my boss, from a hundred yards blasted a badger in the neck. It must've weighed thirty pounds. As my boss held up the badger so I could take a picture for his contact ID on my phone I looked around at the cheese-ass grins and thought, "Man is this the life? Driving around on private roads blasting shit, drinking beers?" While I was up there in the sticks it sure was. There was nothing else to do. I brought my skateboard but since the ground in Walden resembled that of 18th century England I was out of luck. Thank god work started soon so we could finish, get paid and get the fuck out of there. The only things keeping me alive were the three joints my buddy rolled up for me before I left. Puff, puff, pass back around to myself. Damn, that was some good weed.

It was about seven in the morning with a crisp sixty degrees when it all went down. It was the second day of work and Ephraim and I were sheeting the floor, something we'd both done a million times. I was just doing my shit when I walked onto a four foot by four foot piece of sheeting that wasn't nailed down. It was just teetering on the floor joist and when I went to step it gave way with all my weight crashed straight to the joist below, smashing my side. The joist was two inches wide so the pressure on the area was focused. As I laid there I experienced the most excruciating and uncomfortable pain ever in my life. I couldn't breathe it hurt so badly. I fell in sideways so only my left side fell in the hole as my right leg was spread on the floor in sideways-ball-smack of sorts. Ephraim just stood there and said, "You gotta watch what yer doin' man." Hey fuck you buddy, accidents happen and I was so fucked up. After I got to my feet I tried to walk it off but it wasn't happening for me. I thought I'd bruised a rib or something and that the pain would calm down. The only thing that was somewhat comfortable was when I leaned up against my boss's truck with my face smudged on the window. Even then I still felt like Mr. Pink with a bullet in his gut in the back of that car in Reservoir Dogs. Someone just shoot me already. It was at this time when I started getting the chills, turned pail, and was sweating bullets. Something was wrong. I told my boss to get the virgin Brandon to drive me back into town so I could rest. Bad idea. Back at the house I tried lying down and could not find any comfortable position, plus I put Icy-Hot on my side and it didn't even phase it. Whenever I stood up it felt like my dick was being pulled and torn from the inside. I made it outside to piss and almost threw up. My piss was straight blood, not even urine at all. The thick red ooze splashing on the ground scared the shit out of me. We called up my boss and b-lined it the nearest hospital in Laramie, Wyoming an hour away. It wasn't a very impressive fall at all. I only fell down about four and a half feet but it did the damage.

At the hospital I felt like passing out. I couldn't even write my signature on the forms. They asked on a scale of one-to-ten how my pain was and I said eight and a half. They immediately shuffled me into a room and handed me one of those assless hospital outfits. "Change into this and we'll need a urine sample in one of these." I'd never given a urine sample before but I knew this one would be special. I'm pretty sure he didn't want a blood sample, but that's what I pissed out. A few minutes went by and my male nurse came back in and looked at the sample with a raised brow. Then he tells me to take a deep breath as he began to shove in a catheter. For those of you who don't know what a catheter is I'll tell you. A catheter is a tube (like an artificial urethra) that was weaseled up my dick-hole so I didn't have to get up and walk to the bathroom. My urine drizzled out into a bag on the side of my bed. I laid there catatonic not even realizing that I was peeing. It was embarrassing, I felt like I was in a nursing home. After that I was rushed to the ICU and had tubes jammed up my nose, needles and IV's going everywhere, and a Morphine machine for the pain. That was great; every ten minutes I could push a button and get a dose of morphine straight to my IV. That first dose the doctor gave me though was huge and knocked my ass out for the rest of the night. That night I went through five blood transfusions to see how bad my kidney was. I just spewed the blood right back out. I had massive internal bleeding from a tear in my left kidney as well as a torn spleen. Bad news. From that first shot of Morphine to like the third day I don't remember shit except my parents showing up, and me signing some papers to take out the bad parts so I wouldn't bleed to death.

When I finally came back to full consciousness and looked down at the sixteen-inch long, 32 staples shiny incision on my stomach, it was a true "Holy shit" moment. I told my parents "I didn't think it was this gnarly." The accident happened on Saturday, the operation on Sunday and on Monday my boss and Monroe came to visit. The doctors told them that since I was in such bad shape that they were hesitant to let them in. I was happy to see them though and hoped it would raise my spirits. I tried to move around in my bed so I could sit up straighter to talk to them. I guess this triggered a morphine pocket of nausea. My heart rate shot to 170 BPM's and I started vomiting. Like clockwork the nurse ran in frantically blaming my coworkers for doing something wrong. "What did you guys do?! You must leave now!" It sucked, after that I a got shot of something for my nausea that knocked me out. A few hours later the nurse came in to check my vitals ands realized I wasn't passing urine correctly. They figured that my vomiting episode earlier was so violent that it popped the catheter balloon in my bladder, causing the catheter to slide out of my wiener. The doctor quickly grabbed my dick and placed the catheter back in the urethra. Oh the pain. I squealed and jumped around like a little bitch. A urethra from what I understand is a one-way passage. This against the grain action was a new pain I've never experienced, although my friend had an STD test and got a dry cotton swab stabbing. Fuck that. With my new hospital life it was nice to just lay there with my morphine and do nothing except watch The Price is Right in the mornings, Rachel Ray on the Food Network in the afternoons, and World Series of Pop Culture in the evenings. All from the comfort of my hospital edition Craftmatic adjustable bed.

I have to tell you that my operation was pretty hardcore. One of my friends was in medical school and he said that for this operation the surgeons had to take all my guts out and lay them on a table in order to get to the kidney. This was probably why my bowels were in shambles. I didn't make a bowel movement for four days, and after I finally did it was like extreme hostage negotiation requiring total concentration. I couldn't eat or drink for the first four days either. I had to indulge in eating cups and cups of ice-chips to cure the dryness in my mouth and throat. "Don't drink any water!" the nurses would sternly say. After a while though I couldn't stand it and started sneaking sips of the melted down ice-chip water like a crack fiend smuggling drugs into prison. More Morphine, more Morphine! Every four hours a nurse would come in and check on me and ask how I was feeling. "The pain is at seven still nurse." "Okay, we'll make it so you can hit the morphine button every six minutes. That's the maximum dosage without overdosing." Great, I was chilling now. I was so retarded.

I think it was late Tuesday when I got my catheter out and was forced to get up and walk to the bathroom as part of my rehabilitation. Pissing was a joke; I had about three different streams going every direction - like John Bobbitt - until the day I was released. The housekeeper hated me I bet. Wednesday was when I could finally eat some solid food and went from Morphine to Percocet. That was a psychedelic trip that I don't recommend to anyone. I was looped out of my mind coming down from the morphine and being introduced to the Percocet. Every time I'd start relaxing into sleep my heart would start pumping and I'd slip into the most vivid dreams I'd ever experienced. The only one I can remember now was me riding a tricycle down the Hope street hill in St.George in my hospital gown. It was night and was maching it down this hill trying to take a shit at the same time. I would scoot my ass off the side of the seat leaving a poop trail. I think I was running from the bike cops. I even tried wiping before I suddenly crash landed in a family's yard that was having a birthday party. I hid in the crowd trying to blend in and eyed the Play Skool toys as getaway vehicles. I think I was escaping from the hospital or some local task force. That was a weird dream.

My aggressive anemic state required me to take an iron pill twice a day. This combined with my Percocet pills compromised my pooping by turning my stool into gravel. It hurt so bad to poop that I imagined some sort of small poop shovel to dig it out - finally the nurses figured it out. It was at this time that the nurses told me about suppositories. A suppository is something that the nurses put up my butt, not once but twice, in an attempt to get my shit schedule back in alignment. That was the worst; I just rolled over and let her fish through the forest on my ass until I felt the penetration. "Are you shitting me?" "Well that's the point." What a fucking comedian. The next day I got another one. Brokeside Mountain. Fortunately I had no dreams where I awoke muttering, I can't quit you Ephraim."

One highlight was when my parents brought me in some gym shorts to wear. Before this I just let it all hang out. I didn't give a shit. I figured these people were professionals and they could handle it. I should mention that in the accident I severely smashed my dick and balls and by this time my scrotum was swelled up like a grapefruit — all black and blue and shit. Before I got my shorts I would try to get out of bed and my legs would squeeze my balls around my wiener. It basically looked like my scrotum was eating my dick. I thought it was funny even if the nurses and doctors thought I was an idiot. I'm sure they were happy to see those shorts.

After four days of wallowing around in my own filth I was forced to take a shower with the help of Tonie, the nurse's aid on hand. I liked Tonie. I liked him so much I even let him scrub me down. I was so weak it's not like they're going to let me bathe by myself and have me fall down and hit my head or something. Tonie was cool though, a little too cool. He was in his late fifties and reminded me of my grandpa's friends back in the day. The kind of shady friends that were probably doing illegal things. The sort of Guido characters that strut around in hiked-up khaki shorts and open buttoned-chest-hair-a-flaring polo shirts, all highlighted by some gold and silver chains and rings. It was almost like Tonie saw "too much" and was there in Laramie in the witness protection program. The fact that he lived in the mountains outside of Laramie only confirmed this. He scrubbed me down and called me "kid" like a professional. I also enjoyed his stories about how the hippies in California invaded Washington and Oregon in the sixties and seventies. He hated the hippies.

At last it was Friday. The doctors said they needed another chest x-ray but most likely I would be going home on Saturday. My spirits were high and I was stoked to be getting out of there and back home. My doctor came back and started taking a shit load of blood samples to confirm his fears. I had pneumonia in my left lung. I recall getting vaccinated for pneumonia during my visit but they said it didn't cover this type. Pneumonia is common with the operation I had, even after lung exercises and walks around the hospital the shit still infected my lung. I was to be in the hospital for at least a day longer so they could pump me full of antibiotics through my IV. On top of all the suppositories, catheters, and other bullshit I also had a central line. A central line is a tube-like contraption that was cut into the skin on my left collarbone right above my heart. The line went straight to my heart and had three other outer lines for my IV, antibiotics and bloodwork. They did this instead of tearing up my arms in search of veins. Anyway, the anti-pneumonia medicine was pumped into my body every six hours that took about a half hour each time. One of these had to be done in the middle of the night and that shit was lame. At about three in the morning my night nurse came into my room and hooked the antibiotics up and told me to hit the pager button when the timer buzzer went off. So when the buzzer went off I quickly hit the pager button. No one answered. I hit it like twenty times and started yelling and still nothing. "Fuck this shit!" I was so pissed off. The buzzer was loud as shit and I was freaking out. Finally I got out of bed and tried walking to the door but the IV line caught me about ten feet short of the door. I started yelling again. What the fuck were these jokers doing, having late night hospital sex with the doctors? Finally I took what little nursing knowledge I had gained and pinched the lines and unhooked myself. I stormed out into the hall, looked over at the desk and said, "Hey…what the fuck, can someone help me?" After a few minutes my nurse came in and apologized, "I'm so sorry I had to clean up poop." "Whoa someone crapped their pants!" "Don't ask." She replied.

Sunday couldn't have come sooner. I was so sick of sitting on my ass trying to gag down hospital food I could've had a nervous breakdown. The docs said I could leave but gave me special instructions so I wouldn't get super sick. The nurses came in and plucked the staples and slid out my central line. I was also hooked up with some special meds and antibiotics until my doctor check-up back home in St.George; everything of course being paid for by the State of Utah's Workman's Comp program.

Now I just sit in my house catching up on movies and put model cars together. It's funny to me that when people hear about my accident it usually goes like this, "Dude I heard you got hurt, that sucks . . . so you got some pretty good painkillers then huh?" Yeah I got some good Lortabs but those are all mine. I was thinking that since I didn't make any money to pay off my lawyer that maybe I could sell those puppies. Anyway that's what happened. As for those rumors of falling thirty feet onto a spiked gate, well that's just bullshit. I came close enough to death as it is.