Rule Number One: Know When You're Fucked Up

It's not always so easy. When they woke me up Thursday a few minutes after the operation, I was fascinated by my surroundings: I wanted to know why the thingamabobs suspended from the ceilings had so many hooks in them. I wanted to know why I was in the bed to the left, rather than the bed to the right (this was because I was in the recovery room, which other than its lighting was a bit like the operating room: but I was in a different "slot" therein). I wanted to know the race of the man next to me, and why his moans sounded more like they came from pleasure than from pain.

But I didn't want to be much trouble. I did ask why I was now to the left of the room, and I enquired about the hooks. I figured out, however, that when I was too active I tended to alarm the nurses and attendents milling about. So once they took my oxygen mask off I kept trying until I could raise my head and shoulders a bit and look around. And as soon as the nurses turned their heads, I lay back down and returned to staring at the hooks in the ceiling, like a good patient.

I was taken back to my room, and there was a delay about informing my husband and my mother that I was out of surgery. So I asked another nurse about his shark tattoo, and requested cranberry juice, and tried to call my mother's and husband's cell phones, which weren't receiving very well in the hospital. Finally, my husband came looking for me, and we had a grand little reunion while I told them how absorbing all the equipment was, and how lucky a person I am.

And there were a lot of blessings in this experience, such as having a private room to recuperate in for a few hours after surgery. And the Latino nurses who provide "muscle," and specialize in moving patients from place to place. They had nice tattoos as well, and one of them was full of compliments, keeping me well supplied with warm blankets and telling me how beautiful I looked after the operation when I knew darned well I didn't. ("And why is that important?" I hear you ask. Because at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital there are a lot of aging actresses who have essentially been seduced and discarded by elements of the entertainment industry. If they are treated kindly and decently by their health-care providers—and flirted with just a little by the hospital staff—it's a humane and marvelous thing.)

I'd always been raised to aspire to stoicism, so when my husband asked me whether I was in pain I attributed my headache to being dehydrated and assured him it would be over soon. It wasn't, of course, as I'm sure he realized, as he stood over me, wiping the blood away from my eye, which was oozing a little. Another hour later a second wave of pain made me realize there was more going on than dehydration: getting the inside of your face carved up eventually makes your neurons hum fairly loudly.

Why now?I thought, and realized what would have been obvious to anyone blessed with a little common sense. "Oh, I must have been high as a fucking kite for the first two hours after I got out."

"Well," my husband conceded, "you were a little loopy when we arrived."

"What was the tipoff?—when I told you that I longed for my keyboard in the recovery room, so I could live-blog the experience of waking up from surgery?"

"Well, you know. Any time you have an operation and wake up really interested in your surroundings, the chances are that you're stoned out of your mind."

Attila the Hub, you'll note, has a healthy relationship with the practical world. I'm really glad that someone around here does.