Hip Replacement

Written as a vocabulary exercise for school in a similar fashion to the Catcher in the Rhye.

It's fictionalized nonfiction, I guess.  This didn't actually happen.  I wrote this before my hip replacement predicting how things would go.  It was surprisingly accurate!

 

Picture credit to SMC Images .

 

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            My name is Kiwi.  I’m a junior in high school, and to some standards I have it pretty rough.  I like to keep myself in denial and disagree there all the time.  But really, it just about all kills me.

            I’m not ostracized or anything.  I mean, I’m handicapped.  I have a stupid dead hip that works only enough to frustrate me.  I used to be able to dance with it but the pain got worse.  I don’t know if I can now.  But anyway, about not being ostracized.  I have lots of friends.  They’re neat and fun.  My church friends are usually more spiritual—not religiously, since most of us are atheists—but they’re all into personal growth and know what it’s about.  A lot of my school friends are about…well, I’m not sure.  I click with them but it isn’t on as deep a level most of the time.

            I don’t always write like this.  It’s what I call “teenage language” and most of the time I try to keep it out of my writing, unless I’m writing as a teenager.  Which is what I am and all, so I guess it makes sense.  But I’m sort of going incognito for this to sound like someone else.  I’m not usually into that, but I do a lot of hypocritical things sometimes to get a grade.  I’m not going to beat myself up over it or anything.

            But I digress.

I’m going to try to imagine my hip replacement.  I feel so in the dark now, I’m just groping for some sort of concept I can hold onto.  Otherwise I just feel like I’m drowning in a wasteland of unknowns.

 

 

I sigh.  Six days out of school, six days of supposed freedom.  No compulsory six-hour day filled with teachers and noisy students and work to contend with.  The thought of it is  enough to keep any thoughts of pedagogical training out of my mind.  Teacher?  Totally not for me.

            “Kiwi, get in the car or we’re going to be late,” Mum calls from wherever she is in the house.  It’s normal for her to do that.  I’m ready to be in the car already and she’s upstairs in the goddamn bathroom blow-drying her hair.  As if I’m really the one making us late.  I don’t have any qualms about it or anything, though—it means I get to sit here and think.

            It’s ironical and all, but the one thing I should be thinking about I’m not thinking about.  That thing that will be here in a few hours.  I won’t be awake when it happens, though.  Maybe that’s why I can be all nonchalant over it.  I’ll be knocked out on a lavishly sterilized table with pointy objects all about, ready to cut into me.

            I’m not usually a positive thinker when things come to me.  Sometimes I put effort into making people think I am, and sometimes I even make myself believe I really am.  But in the end I have thoughts like those above.

            Mum’s thundering down the stairs so I’m going to go get into that big traveling box we call a car.  Mum used to be a soccer mom, back when I was able to play soccer.  Before I mutilated myself in the center circle.  I sound pretty blasé when I talk about it sometimes, but it hurts.  It really does.  I mean, my hip does too, but knowing that this happened more than three years ago and will affect the rest of my life hurts.  It really does.

            The family tries to strike up random conversation in the car.  I look out the window at the green-laced trees.  If I were well, I’d be out taking a nature walk at home.  That’s usually the kind of stuff I like to do.  Otherwise I’m on the computer listening to other people talking about the Drama of the Day and writing my soul away.  I don’t like drama very much.  I’m a pacifist like that.  I don’t like when people’s feelings get all mucked with, and that’s the only thing I’ve ever seen drama do.  At the same time, though, I can get pretty dramatic.  I really can.  Usually in just plain theatrics like jumping when people touch me.  One time I was writing in my assignment notebook the junk I had to do for homework and my English teacher came in.  I didn’t notice because my friend Beth had been angry with me the period before and I didn’t want to talk to her yet so I was trying to ignore everything.  That was being dramatic too.  Anyway, my teacher came in and yelled for the class to shut up or something.  For once, it really did scare me out of my mind.  I wasn’t faking it when I flew back and almost knocked Casey over.  I wasn’t being an exhibitionist or anything.  I really wasn’t.  But this time my teacher looked at me and said that it had seemed a bit over dramatized.  I don’t blame her or anything, ‘cause usually I do make myself jump a little higher.  But this time I didn’t.  I really didn’t.

            I survive through the car ride with my boisterous brother.  Mum rambles on when she’s nervous.  Da steams quietly.  Xandor gets wickedly loud and pretends he’s playing the drum.  They’re all nervous.  They stay awake while I’m knocked out, they deal with the doctor coming out to tell them how I am, how it went.  I never know how that stuff goes because I’m always drugged up out of my mind.  Normally I’m pretty conscientious and all, but when they get the drugs into me I’m a far-out, oblivious little girl.

            When we get there the doctors start talking to us.  I feel a real goddamn case of inferiority.  They talk to us like we’re bourgeois scum, laughing at Mum’s blonde but caring questions and at my brother’s foolish actions.  Da and I don’t say much.  I’m afraid if I open my mouth I’ll say all these unscrupulous things just because I’m scared out of my mind.  During my first surgery, which was an emergency surgery, they realized right before I went in that I hadn’t had a goddamn pregnancy test.  I’m a virgin.  If I had a stupid fetus inside me, bow down and call me the next Mary, because it wasn’t happening.  My hip was an inch and a half in the wrong place and it hurt despite the stupid morphine being plugged up my arm.  They tried to get me to use a bedpan.  Lifted me up at the hips and expected me to be able to pee.  It about killed me.  My heart rate went up so fast everything’s a blur.  They had also already given me that calming medicine they give people to keep them easy-going and subservient.  So I screamed out half in spite of that stupid medicine and because I was in pain and scared out of my mind.  I really was.

            The third surgery I had we told the doctors not to use medical tape on me because I’m allergic.  I really am.  When I woke up I started scratching my face and legs.  Everywhere I could reach.  I scratched until I made myself bleed because I couldn’t feel the pain but I could feel the itch.  That’s why I hate drugs and will never become a druggie.  So I scratched and scratched.  The first time I looked in the mirror I wanted to punch it out, because I was a putrid mess.  There was ooze all around my lips and it was just goddamn disgusting.  I hate when doctors don’t listen to us.  That’s the kind of stuff that happens and all, and it hurts.

            This is a new surgery, though.  They roll me in and I smile at them, ask them how they’re doing.  Play the part of content student-patient.  They drug me and I do some weird stuff that I never remember after.  I really don’t.  The last major surgery I had, I was told that after being given drugs I asked the head of the anesthesiology team to give me a hug.  At that time, I hated hugs and wouldn’t allow people to touch me.  Then I went all around the room telling everyone how cool everything was and all.  Asked what all of it did.  I would find out later, but I would be knocked out beyond belief.  The one true memory I have of the surgery room is when they asked me if I wanted to put the epidural in while I was awake or knocked out.  They said it would be easier if I were awake.  I have a high pain tolerance and all, so I said awake.  As much as I put up a fuss in my mind about these doctors and nurses, I don’t want to be an inconvenience.  As I said before, I’m pretty conscientious about that stuff.  So I remember sitting on the operating table with their hands all over my back, then a tight pinch at the small of my back and it was over.

            So now I’m in for it again.  They tell me to count to ten to fall asleep.  Instead I picture one of my teacher’s faces and picture all the love and hope people are sending me, because I know people are pulling for me.

            I was never much of a math person anyway.

 

 

I wake up hours later.  It’s the first day of surgery, and I won’t remember it later.  I remember once on the first day I talked on the phone the whole day.  When I woke up the second day I didn’t remember any of it, but checked my cell phone for a number and realized how long I had talked.  I didn’t remember any of it.  I really didn’t.

            I’m in one of the ugly frocks they give us.  At least it isn’t the stupid paper kind.  That’s just painful.

            The doctor comes in to check on me and I smile.  Don’t talk much.  During this time I’m known for thinking he’s a louse because he’s done this to me.  That’s the drugs thinking for me, there.  Or maybe it isn’t.  Maybe I just get really mean-spirited after surgery.  As I keep recovering, though, I grow thankful for what he’s done.  Surgery isn’t easy on him, either.  He just doesn’t have to wake up in this kind of recovery.

            “Mum,” I choke out through a sore throat.  They have to shove that tube down me, so when I wake up it’s sore and gross.  I have to keep drinking water to feel good.  I hate drinking water.

            “What, sweetie?  Are you okay?  Do you need anything?” she blabbers on.  I love her, I really do, but I wish she would shut up for a minute.  It’s hard enough to talk at all and it’s impossible to speak over her.  She cares.  I can tell that, I really can.  But she talks too goddamn much when she’s nervous and I just want a toothbrush.

            I make a gesture with a fisted hand of brushing my teeth.  I hate the post-surgery halitosis.  It’s gross.  She hurries to help me out and then assist me in brushing my not-so-pearly whites.  She goes off to let me sleep or do whatever and I ignore the nurses coming in and out because they aren’t talking to me and I’m not going to go strike up conversation when I don’t want to talk anyway.

            I look down at my feet, or where my feet should be under the covers.  I wonder what’s going on down at my hip.  Are my blood cells, tissue, and muscles accepting this new foreign object?  How long will it stay foreign?

            I wish I had a goddamn window.  I want to see some trees.  I wonder how long before I can walk with the trees again with no pain.  The sun trickling lightly through the leaves but not touching me, really.  I don’t like the sun.  But the trees and the forest I like.

            I reach over and put my rings on.  They help.  I feel more myself.

            Mrs. Cavanagh.  I think the name and then smile as the images and thoughts and feelings float back.  She’s my physics teacher, chemistry teacher last year.  It’s a complex friendship since she’s my teacher.  Was, technically, since it’s seven days out of school.  I’m glad I could think of her face before my operation.  I love her.  I really do.  I send her some and smile as I think of the reciprocal effect—she has been sending me love and strength and courage the whole time.

            I can do this.  It’ll be a pain and new and wicked weird, but I can do this.  I really can.

 

Author's Note

Not looking for critique.