demoniacsmile

Here's some more of my halucinations, perceptions, and experiences in ICU.

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A little bit after the surgery the doctors wanted to insert a respitory tube into my lungs so that if a problem arose where I couldn't breathe, they wouldn't have to waste time inserting one at that moment. Because all the muscles from my chest down were effected by the injury, my lungs weren't very strong and I often accumulated mucus in there. Unlike the feeding tube that went up my nose and into my throat past the vocal cords, it's presence didn't much effect me. The respitory tube, however, had to go through my mouth and down my throat. While it in my mouth I couldn't talk or swallow, and I started having to use hand movements to express what I wanted.

My body was full of wires and other medical miscellany. I had the feeding tube up my nose and into my stomach. I had the respitory tube in my mouth and down my throat into my lungs. I had a few IV instertions in my wrists and arms. I had an indwelling catheter. I wore a neckbrace that confined my head so I couldn't move it at all. I was aslo strapped into the bed which was a special rotating bed that would rock me back and forth like a cradle so that my skin wouldn't break down from constant pressure. Not long after the respitory tube was insterted, my morphine dreams reflected it.

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I woke up in an area that I had dreamed about before. The last dream here had me interacting with a large convention of plushies (people dressed in large animal costumes, sometimes for fetish). This time I appeared there and I was in a suit myself. The suit seemed like it was made from metal and it was overbearing me. Tubes came through the facemask and into my nose and throat. I was suddenly fed up with being so confined. For the most part, I knew that I was in a dream, or some other manner of false reality, and I knew that I didn't want to be overburdened with my confinements any longer, and that I wanted to enjoy these lapses of reality as time away from the hospital.

I reached up and grabbed for a tube in my face. I could feel the feeding tube pulling from my stomach and up my throat, then through my nose. I stood holding the feeding tube in my hands, and in my bed in ICU I held is also. I felt like a weight had been lifted, and I breathed through my nose. Suddenly a black, dreamless sleep overcame me.

During the time after this, I was never aware that I had actually pulled my feeding tube out of my stomach and nose. I wasn't aware that they had strapped my hands down afterwards. In those times when I would make confined hand movements to talk, the straps just seemed like they should have been there, that they had been there all along.

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A day or so later I was lying in my bed during the middle of the night several hours after my parents left. I had been having dreams where my hospital room was much larger and I was playing a video game on a screen that was right in front of me that tookup the whole rest of the room in width and height. The game was actually a game I have, but I was in a fight during the game that didn't actually exsist. I was fighting hundreds of enemies and I could not beat it. I'd play over and over and it was impossible to win (a lot of the dreams I had in ICU revolved around me being helpless and forced into a situation I couldn't stop). I wanted to end the game but I had no way of turning it off. I tried to go to sleep, but the large screen in front of me was still playing the game and I couldn't sleep while the game was on.

Eventually I woke up, the boombox my dad had bought me for my hospital room was still playing one
of the CDs my mom brought on repeat. It would play all night. I remember thinking that I wanted to change the CD. The resperator in my mouth had slipped out of place. When being inserted, the tube had to go into my throat at a precise degree, involving a respitory specialist to place it or readjust it anytime it slipped from place. They had surgical tape around my mouth to keep the tube in it's proper place, but occasionally it would move a bit. When this happened, my breathing passage got restricted, and saliva would be trapped from going down my throat.

I woke up with the tube out of place. Saliva was pooling in my mouth, occasionally overflowing to where it would trickle down my cheek, and sometimes slipping in small amounts into my throat. Being unable to swallow with the tube inside, and my lungs being very weak, I was still unable to cough. The nurse call botton, which was attached to a remote on a wire, had ridden up into my armpit during my sleep. I tried to hit it with my arm by compressing it between my armpit, but the button wouldn't push. With my hands strapped to the bed, I was unable to reach for it, and I had to resort to waving my hands back and forth in the hopes that a nurse would walk nearby and see me. This went on for what seemed like about half an hour. Finally a nurse came in, commenting on how much I was waving my hands. She asked if I needed anything.

With my right hand I pointed out my index finger, and with my left I made a loop of my thumb and forefinger. I jabbed the right finger into the air towards the left-loop, an image some people assume with "sex", but I was trying to represent the tube going into my throat. Since it had been in there, I wasn't even able to make a single noise, so any verbal communication, even the most base sounds, was impossible. The nurse looked at me and asked "...you want morphine?"

I think I may have used that same hand motion to symbolize an IV in my arm.

Thinking that morphine might help me relax and fall asleep, I gave her a thumbs up for affirmation. I planned on asking about the tube afterwards. She just injected more morphine and left. I was left alone again to choke on my saliva until the next time a nurse happened to pass.

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I imagine more will be coming soon.