its not like a healthy person trapped in a body that doesn't work. thats how old age impacts, not sickness, sugery and recovery.

when you suddenly get hurtled into post operative care, you're drugged. not the flimsy joint by the bonfire kind of drugs, the real heavy duty ones with the self righteousness of pain relief and medical care behind them. you're dreaming constantly, the mind over active as every other sense numbs and turns inwards.

and you mostly have nightmares. waking ones. the ones where you stare at the orange duvet cover, hoping praying staring that you won't get sucked down, but you feel yourself suddenly turning somersaults and silently screaming in terror because you're still awake, you know it can't happen, but it is.

you have sleeping nightmares too. but those stretch out the time. every second ticks by in an hour. till you pray for sleep. till you'll do just about anything for oblivion. but that doesn't work either. because the second the blackness closes in, you're choking, you're being raped, you're being held down and if only you could gesture to the mother or sister sitting by your bedside they'd just wake you up and you'd be ok, but you can't, you're screaming and they can't here you, they want you to sleep and get some rest and not wake up in only five seconds.

you remember strange things in your waking dreams. you say out loud the entire monologue by jon luc picard at the beginning of star trek. you remember that one story read to you when you were three and scream out in your sleep that bloodcats are following you. you mentally solve three times crossward puzzles with your mother only reading out the clues.

every sense is heightened. when a finger accidently brushes you when checking bandages, its like someone took a pickaxe and severed your spinal cord. when someone brushes past your bed, its like you're an empty vessel, and every organ inside you rattles around deafening you.

when you laugh, its the worst. you feel like you're being stabbed with daggers, and the pain is so much that you think that this is it, you're going to die, but you've already inhaled and all that air has to come out and your brain signals don't know they have to stop and you exhale and laugh and cry with pain at the same time.

laughter the best medicine my ass.

then you're made to stand up, and you gasp because the wind gets knocked out of you the second your bare feet hit the cold floor. the room spins and you feel yourself go white, feel your life shrink to the two hands holding your arms.

then you sit up for the first time for ten seconds, then throw up and faint.

then you twitch for the next twelve hours, because your throw up included the muscle relaxant you needed to keep your muscles in check. the sedative makes you sleep, the twitching wakes you up every ten seconds. for twelve hours. you fall asleep every eleventh second because your body is exhausted, and you dream of flying through the air, then falling, then jerking awake. the jerk is your muscles reacting to the lack of relaxant. its so toxic the doctors are afraid to give you another dose.

then you slowly start talking. start singing with your dad for an entire afternoon and the nurses grinning and joining in when ever they come to check your blood pressure and medicatin levels every hour.

then you start getting embarrassed. embarrassed about the hospital gowns that you left wide open and didn't give a secnd thought to. embarrassed about the sponge baths, which you were too sick to notice before.

then you start getting hungry. but the staff makes your favourite food, and even though you're ravenous you can only be fed two bites before you get sick again.

then you start getting angry. angry at lying there stuck in a bloody bed with incompetant idiots surrounding you. angry at your irritating family who have no idea what the hell its like. angry at the doctor and his cheerful prognoses when you don't feel well and you don't feel better and you don't think it was a good idea to go through with the operation.

then you get so angry, that you stop waiting for the incompetant staff to help you out of bed and support you as you hobble your two steps daily. you push yourself up, grunting, spitting, drooling and sweating as your mother tells you to stop or you'll hurt your self, as you grip the hand rails till your knuckles go white so you don't pass out, till you take that first damn step in the walker all on your own and your mother cries because she thinks you're going to fall down before the nurses can come and help you.

and all that is just the hospital stay.

it gets worse when you get home.