Savagry

            I was in the park across the street from my house playing soccer with a neighborhood friend when I began to feel something wrong. I thought I might have been coming down with a common cold, or maybe even the flu, it didn’t really matter to me what it was all I knew is that it couldn’t have come at a worse time. That summer, was the World Cup, and my whole family, except my mom, was into the whole soccer deal. Even though club soccer season was over I still played almost everyday. Which is what I was doing that night. I had no worries because school had just gotten out, and I was going to attend King Middle School in the fall. Still this feeling that I was getting sick was on my mind. It must have been all the soda I drank today, if I just go to sleep everything will be fine in the morning. At least that’s what should have happened, but it didn’t unfold that way. I went home slept and awoke sicker than the day before.

            “Mom!”

            “I’m Coming. What is it John? You feeling any better?”

            “I feel like I need to throw up.”

            “Oh you poor thing. Just hold on one second I’ll get you a pot and then call Dr. Grahmburg.”

            “Alright mom, make haste.” I yell after her.

My mom returns with the pot and hurries out of my room. I grab the pot and… it’s a hearty throw up, not a dry heave, all the junk food I had had, my dinner, and my late night snack all laid out in a cooking pot.

            That day, the day of throwing up, changed my perception of Harry Potter forever. I am on my couch watching my throw up pot grow, while listening to the movie which is occasionally interrupted by a violent up chuck. My stomach is empty, and I cannot eat. Why eat when I’m going to lose it anyway? My hearty throw up has progressed to dry heaves, like I’m trying to get rid of my stomach all together and I think that just might be possible. I still don’t know what’s wrong with me. My mom continues to phone doctors and nurses who seem to think I have stomach flu. The pain four inches to the right of my belly button is concentrated like a balloon ready to burst. I focus on my ice cube as I suck on it. Although I wish I wouldn’t because I can feel the melted water go into my barren insides, which reminds me just how empty I am. I wish I could stop watching Harry Potter but I can’t, it hurts too much to move. I wish I could stop throwing up, but I can’t until my insides are outside. I wish I could be normal again, but I can’t.

            That night I awake from an uneasy sleep. I can’t tell whether it was my full bladder that stirred me, or what felt like a butter knife prodding to escape my intestines. The longer I lie awake not daring to move, the stronger the urge to use the restroom became. I finally sucum to the desire to piss and I hobble out of my room, across the hall and into my bathroom. I stand doubled over, clutching my side, and disoriented from the hour of night and the pain. After I finish urinating I stand, motionless, until my dad appears in the doorway.

            “John, are you alright?”

            I don’t bother to respond.

            “Has it gotten worse?”

            “What do you think?” I mumbled trying to save my strength to crawl into bed.

            “I think we need to take you into to the hospital, because something is very wrong here.”

            “No, Dad, I don’t wanna go, I’ll be fine, it’s all good.” I retorted slowly as if the car ride would be too much for me.

            “Well you don’t have a choice buddy, look at that, you can’t even stand, and walking seems very difficult.”

            By this time my entire right side was aching. It seemed as though the balloon had burst and secreted pain to all surrounding areas.

            Things at the children’s hospital didn’t start off too well. My mother, my father, and I arrive at the emergency ambulance entrance. My mom startles the nurses within ear shot by banging on the doors that wont open because it’s not a regular entrance.

            All the lights hurt my eyes as I shuffle through the long narrow corridors, I’m losing my sense of reality, and I have to stand very still. I’m in a small room looking at some sort of machine, I have to stand still or else I have to stand still even longer. I stand, rigidly hunched over, trying to hide my ailment from this machine that is looking through me. My mind is clouded and my vision is blurry. I’m led to where I’m supposed to go, and then I’m unconscious.

            Within an hour of my arrival I’m on the operating table.

            Bright lights, balloons, T.V., and the World Cup is what I wake up to. When I first regain concense, I notice the throbbing pain in my side, has been replaced by a sharp stabbing pain, but my sense of pain has been dulled. I can’t move. I sleep. I can’t get up, I use a container to piss, I sleep, I’m on all sorts of pain killers, I don’t feel hungry, all I want to do is sleep. I’m bedridden for the next week.

            After a few days in intensive care, I am moved to a room with three beds. One bed for a small latino dude, one for nobody, and one for me. Everything in the room is a pale green color. By this time I have somewhat regained my senses. I quickly realize through my effort to explain to my roommate how to play N64 that he doesn’t speak English, I guess my drunken looking arm movements will have to do.

            At this point I’m doing much better, only I have a blister on my ass, from lying in bed for so long. It’s so hard to reocustum myself to walking, which is something I never thought I would have to do. My mom was next to me as I make my rounds of the hall, looking into other rooms, and shuffling down the hall, learning how to walk again. Walking takes up all my energy, which is scarce because I haven’t been eating. For the past few days I’ve been surviving on Sprite, and a couple barely touched meals. I don’t know why I didn’t eat, I guess my body was going through enough already, but this appetite problem turned out to cause a lot of trouble for me.

            “John, the doctor has noticed that you haven’t been eating.” My mom said inquiringly.

            “It’s not a big deal. It’s not like its going to kill me.” I said.

            “Well apparently it is important because I just talked to the doctor and he has ordered a introvenius drip (which is the act of taping a vein, with a needle, to feed nutrients for patients that don’t have an appitite or can’t eat) for you.” My mom responded appoligetically.

            I hastily blurt out “No mom, I’ll start eating it’s all good, they don’t have to do all that.”

            “I don’t think you have a choice, it’s going to happen.”

            Fuck. I don’t know what to expect, maybe a tube coming through my mouth, secreting liquidated burgers and other fine foods. I soon find out, the time comes for the procedure to be done. I am lead down the hall by two nurses to a small room with a single bed. My mom sits in a chair next the bed, ready to give moral support. I take my place on the bed and then a nurse explains as she rubs a pain killing cream on my mid arm, “Now I’ve heard that one can either feel everything or be completely pain free, it differs person to person.” I figure that this might have something to do with a needle. I couldn’t have been more right. As soon as this women starts to talk about what she is going to do to my arm, I smile at my mom and block out what the nurse is saying. I can’t look at the abnormally long needle that’s going to penetrate my tender flesh.

            I feel the needle three distinct times, each a split second apart. Each time it went deeper. However right before this, I had found that rubbing the bed sheet relieved some of the anxiety, this simple action helped me get through this trauma. Now I actually don’t have to do anything at all to maintain myself, except to try and exercise as much as possible. During some of those walks to reawaken my legs, I wound recall one of my grandfathers sayings “Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.”  Which couldn’t be more relevant, the whole time I was having these things happen to me, I took them one at a time, just putting one foot in front of the other. I refused to be denied my right to live. It was never a question, life is all I’ve ever known how could there be anything different?

            After the week was over, I went home with rest in mind. I had doctors orders to not play any sports or be too active, because I was still recovering. But I couldn’t just do nothing, I had a life to live, and a fat scar to show my friends. I also quickly reaclimated myself with Thousand Oaks park, playing hurt, but I didn’t care.