Surviving the realities of combat in a foreign land meant that I had to drastically change my mental outlook. Instead of taking life for granted like I did, back when everything was nice and easy, I had to discipline myself to do what ever I had to do to stay alive. I had to be one step ahead of where I was all the time, because there were no safe places in Vietnam. After several months of having to live a completely different life style , returning to life back in Michigan was like entering into a far away dream, where everything was familiar, but strangely different. It was a place where there was no such thing as danger, and everyone spoke the same language. The things I'd seen and done had been so radically different than anything my friends and family had ever known that the sense of togetherness we once enjoyed was no longer there. I'd lived in a world totally different than the sheltered people of the USA around me knew. We could get together on the surface, but not in our thinking. It appeared that there were so many things separating me from their understanding that there was no way to bridge the gap between us.
It seemed that the majority of friendships I had that weren't superficial were with other Vietnam vets. They were the only ones, other than myself, who preferred not to be bogged down with formalities and socially acceptable codes of conduct. I didn't feel at all uncomfortable having long hair. It made it easier for me to sort out those who looked at the inside, rather than the outside of a person. It gave me a taste of what it's like to be discriminated against because of what you look like. It definitely helps you learn who your friends are...
I could walk without a cane and my leg had formed enough new bone to support my weight, but I still had more surgeries to go through with my ears. When the infections in them eventually cleared up, a year or two after being discharged from the Valley Forge Army hospital, I was finally able to have three eardrums grafted in. The operations were done by the VA hosp. in Ann Arbor, MI, and were called Timpanoplasty's. For each operation, I had to go in on a Monday and get out on Friday, four days later. Three surgeries were necessary because, I blew one of them out while blowing my nose too hard one time. Anyway, each one of these surgeries were traumatic. I had bad experiences in two of them, but they were all very painful for days and weeks after each one of them.
In the process of coming to, after one of the surgeries, I found that I couldn't breath. It didn't take long and I started to panic, wildly using my hands and arms to tell them that I needed air. I couldn't breath until they gave me oxygen which felt like heaven to my lungs. Several days after that, I heard on the news that there had been a Filipino nurse who had been killing people at the same VA hospital. I don't know if she was the reason I wasn't able to breath, but something definitely wasn't right coming out of that surgery. The operation took five hours and that probably had something to do with it...
The other bad experience I had during one of the same operations, was when I unexpectedly came to in the middle of it. It was about a five hour operation and my anaesthesia apparently had worn off. When I awakened, I realized after trying to move my head, that it was tightly strapped down to the operating table I was on. I could see the legs and feet of white closed people completely surrounding the operating table from a view underneath the table. I could also hear them talking. There were a lot of medical students there and the person in charge was telling all of them to take turns looking through the microscope, and to carefully observe whatever there was for them to look at. At this point, I was completely loosing it. If my head hadn't been strapped down, like it was in a vise, I would've some how given them some of my own medicine, but once again, like in Vietnam, I couldn't reach anyone to swing at...
Meanwhile, they were sawing and drilling in the area around the back of my ear. I could hear a suction hose sucking blood, similar to the sound of a dentist suction hose in your mouth. In this case, however, it wasn't saliva. The high speed drill or saw that they were using would occasionally get jammed and stop. Whoever was doing the drilling would readjust and continue on. It was freaking me out. I yelled from underneath the table, telling them to put me out!! No one was responding and it appeared as though they were intentionally ignoring me. A minute or so later, the anaesthesiast spoke to me through a wall of cloth surrounding the bottom of the table saying that she was sorry and that she had given me all of the anaesthesia she could give me. I yelled again and said for her to, "Put me out!!" I repeated it three or four times and finally, a few seconds later, which seemed like eternity, I went back out. That's the last I knew until I woke up in post op. Unlike coming out of the previous surgery, this time I could breath...
0 comments:
Post a Comment