I remember another potentially interesting hospital story. It doubles as a drug story which are also popular or ‘hip’ among teens and twentysomethings. I hope it isn’t one of those ‘you had to be there’ tales.

For a week after my surgery I had to stay in ICU (intensive care unit) full of tubes of various shapes and sizes and textures. I also had those little cardiogram stickies all over my chest with wires leading into a heart monitor. This bothered me because I would set off an alarm if I shuffled higher in bed. But the most important part of my ICU experience was the morphine they fed me for my sore, stapled up belly.

One day the fine people at silverorange tried to come along and visit me. I don’t remember this (damn morphine) but I guess I was pretty out of it that day, and they weren’t allowed in. BUT they were nice enough to leave behind a delightfully stuffed ape-monkey thing wearing 3d glasses. It was placed on a shelf in my room and somebody explained to me how it was a present.

By now I was used to hallucinating at night (I’m not sure if it was the morphine or just sickness). I would have trouble sleeping because I had 8 people in my bed with me who stole my pillows and kept singing the chorus from Coolio’s “Fantastic Voyage”. That made perfect sense to me at the time.

Then, one night the gift monkey spoke to me. It scared me deeply. I don’t remember what he said but it was threatening and abusive. I eventually had to ask to have it hidden then taken home. I left ICU a few days later, and haven’t seen anything nonexistant since.