Back Home... Again

Okay, so it's been three months since I wrote anything. You're probably wondering what I've been up to. I finally did get home from the Shepherd Center to home sweet home in Arlington, Virginia, only to end up in Virginia Hospital Center (VHC) on the eve of my birthday (February 20). I got back home from the hospital, again, last Wednesday.

It seems that where they did the flap surgery, it got infected and pus filled. I went septic and didn't even know where I was when I was admitted to the hospital. I was really out of it. I really didn't come out of it completely until three or four days had passed, and even then I was a little addled. But now I'm okay again and we will see how long it lasts. I'm really starting to get tired of hospitals.

I had some pleasant dreams this morning involving the opposite sex. Nothing R-rated, more like PG: but it was nice. Every so often I'll remember what I did and what happened in a dream -- I used to remember a lot more -- and more often than not they are pleasant.

I never said anything in my blog about the horrible nightmares and hallucinations I had in VHC’s ICU little over a year ago. First of all, I was convinced that there was a hospital conspiracy to kill me, and everything I saw and experienced bore that out, even to the point of news on television and History Channel shows.

I kept finding myself in positions where no matter how I answered questions, it got me in trouble. For instance, I was being arrested for something, and I kept implicating myself and even ended up in one of those "Hannibal the Cannibal" masks from "Silence of the Lambs." They kept asking me what kind of uniform I wanted to wear and with each answer I get closer and closer to the worst possible scenario. I just couldn't answer right for the life of me, and I actually ended up taking my life at one point.

Somehow, I was caged in to questioning that led to my committing suicide. And all the news channels carried it. There were interviews with rock stars, political figures, and other VIPs in which they mourned by passing. And I wasn't even dead yet.

The very worst parts of my hallucinations were when I inadvertently caused family and loved ones pain-and-suffering. I had been put through terrible tortures, some unspeakable, and the ones that rank were much worse than being buried alive with a corpse nonetheless

There was one particular computer program that was written specifically to kill people. It ran for 24 hours, and it chronicled the life of a young woman who through diligence and hard work was awarded by her employer a plane ticket to the West Coast (or some such place). It plays out with her getting on one of the airlines that is overrun by terrorists and piloted into the World Trade Center on 9/11. The really bad part is that the person experiences everything the people would have experienced on that flight, only worse. At the moment of impact, time slows down to the point where one feels the flames shooting through the cabin with plexiglass windows popping out from the extreme heat, and one's flesh burns to a crisp.

It seems as if they ran that particular program a number of times and somehow I escaped the really gory part. But to my horror, somehow the computer that ran the program could read my mind, and it put everyone I loved into one of those plane seats so that they would go through the same thing I was condemned to.

There were some other really terrible scenarios. One in which I had to witness my cat being crushed alive slowly and torturously. At first I thought it was through special effects, but then they somehow convinced me that it was real. Then I was given the choice of eating meat from the cat or biting my own tongue off. Somehow I escaped that particular form of torture, but family members and good friends were subjected to that horror.

I wouldn't have ordinarily brought all this up, but it's to illustrate a point: that I started reliving the feeling that conspiracy feeling that the nurses were out to get me, the same exact feeling I had had a year ago. I was scared. I didn't want a repeat of that horrible week or two. But luckily, I came out of it before it got too bad.

I had originally planned to review some movies, but it looks like I'll have to wait till next time. Just for your information, here is a list that I've been compiling:

· Pride and Glory
· Zack and Mira Make a Porno
· Volver
· Appaloosa
· Tropic Thunder
· Vicky Cristina Barcelona
· The Name of the Rose
· Wild Strawberries
· My Cousin Vinny
· Don Juan DeMarco
· Simon and Garfunkel: Old Friends

Some are new, others are old, but I figure it wouldn't hurt to say a word about the older ones. Some were good, others totally sucked.