The Mean Girls in High School

This is a very weird post, I think.
Have you ever heard of post anathesia psychosis? (I think that's not the name, but it's the closest I can come up with right now.)
I had a case in Innsbrock. I was coming out of the anathesia after my last operation in Austria, on the day before I left the icu. For some reason there were 8-12 nurses there, all women.
Somethings I know were weird ideas cooked up in my own head. There is no way that it is the truth that the hospital kept a room identical to the icu where they practiced scenarios that might occur during crashes of the Austrian National Airline. (Does Austria even have a national airline?) Certainly it is not true that one of my roommates was actually some sort of robot that they used for drills and that if you didn't take care of the robot right it would blow up to the size of a walrus. I can't even remember what kind of robot my other roommate was.
(Although at some point earlier in my stay, I was convinced that she was actually some sort of ape with a singing career who had escaped from her producer. Let me be very clear, I was on opiates for pain. My thought processes were not functioning well.)

Well, I thought the nurses were out to get me. Some of it must have been paranoid thinking. But I don't know that all of it was. At some point they cut up part of my 2-piece colostomy bag system to prove some point. and they kept arguing with me--what was the point of that? I was not thinking right, logic wasn't going to change things. Why so many of them?

I wish I could understand this experience better. One or two of them were nurses I didn't like much, including the nurse who when I was in Maskentherapie and had got her attention when I was freaking out from it by knocking the finger in the little closepin monitor thingie on my bedside table, then moved the table out of my reach when she left. I felt surrounded and tried to hit a couple. It's hard to take a swing at people when you don't have legs. Much more likely to fall out of bed. I discovered that grabbing hold with one hand and hitting with the other was a better stratagy.

I wish I could understand this experience better...

The Shear Goodness of it All

I am amazed by the goodness I've found in this experience.
Stefan driving my mother from the airport to the hotel. He came from Munich to do this. Thank you, Stefan. It's not everyone who will do something for someone so vaguely connected to one. My mother spoke of you with gratitude for this. It must have been a very hard day in her life, flying to a strange country to see a freshly maimed child. I just told her Stefan had posted a reply and she smiled and spoke of something she wanted to send him.
Karine--whose goodness was never in doubt, since her trip to New Orleans post Katrina--organizing the art auction and being the tribe nexus for donations. I am sitting at the computer that her money, and the money she raised, helped to pay for. And everyone who contributed art or who bid on a piece, thank you,thank you, thank you. Le Chat, you better treat her right, her fans will have something to say to you if you don't. But the issue isn't in doubt, I know your furry heart and your love for her.
All those people who sent cards. I've got pounds of them. Somehow I haveto make them into a scrapbook. Something to hold as a solid reminder that all of you cared enough to say something, to send something.
I was sent books, video tapes, dvds. The vcr tapes I left in Austria--I didn't want to run into compatability problems. but there are no imcompatability problems with the hearts and hands that selected them and put them into the mail.
The nurses, the pts, the ots. I was the total pet on the floor in John Muir Medical. The English speaking members of the doctors' entourages in TILAK who gave me brief synopses of the long German conversations.

And I don't even know that I deserve this. I've tried to be honest. On the boards I'd be kind to the people who seemed to need it and I've been mean and rude to the people who seemed to be giving us that sort of energy simply to inflate their egos or whatever their twisted--oh poof! I don't want to talk abou that in a post about goodness. But it does make the goodness look better.

So much kindness in the world, in people.

So many hugs I wish to give, to people I don't even know, as well as those I've met, but are not close.

I wish I could throw you a party. Idon't know what to say. I may never know what to say.

I can say this, you, all of you, were bright lights in a very dark night for me and for my family and friends.

You're Stars, People!!!