Prompt: Have I Had Surgery?

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Have you ever had surgery? What for?

Today's prompt asks a very specific question, that should have a real clear-cut answer. I'm not even sure why I'm answering it, aside from the fact that I just need something to write about! So here we are.

No, I haven't ever had for real surgery, where they cut and stitch. But! This does remind me of the time I had pneumothorax, and the reasoning the doctors gave me for having it absolutely blew me away.

It was a long time ago, back in my twenties, when I'd just barely started working in retail. I was grinding the third shift and going about my day as usual: Throw freight, tear boxes, put things on shelves, take a lunch, do it again. I remember at some point in the middle of the night, I suddenly had a real hard time breathing.

In covid-culture, you'd probably call it shortness of breath.

I distinctly remember telling my manager, "Hey, I think I have to go to the hospital, I'm having a hard time breathing."

And I still remember him saying something along the lines of, "Well, if that's what you think you need to do."

Because, obviously, he wasn't inclined to let me go anywhere without some kind of pushback. I was supposed to be working the product to the shelves, after all.

I did, in fact, believe that's what I needed. I didn't call an ambulance, I didn't call either of my parents to ask them to take me. I hopped in my jalopy of a car, and drove myself to the emergency room and explained to them what was wrong. And, for whatever reason, the next moments would be something that scarred me for life.

They sat me down in a waiting room that had curtains around it, where they'd do the procedure. It wasn't a real room, it was just a row of sheets hanging from metal poles in some kind of big, huge room.

And then this freakin' doctor walks in, and he says, "Well, strip down to your skivvies!"

I didn't know what the hell that meant. But I waited for him to walk away, and I took off all of my clothes down to my underwear (it turns out, after a Google search fifteen years later, that's what skivvies means). Then, a woman about my age at the time brought in one of those medical gowns patients wear, and she asked if I wanted help putting it on.

I think I said yes because a lot of movement made breathing pretty painful. And, I guess that's why it seemed like I needed help doing this. So she assisted me in wrapping it around my body, and she got entirely too close for comfort.

But, that was only the beginning of things I would think about forever, and ever, in the middle of the night when my brain needs something to go "What the fuck?" at: This girl, pulling a sheet around me, staring down at my skinny underwear-ed body.

What the fuck, indeed.

She left, and then I was all alone again, and I think about twenty minutes passed while I sat there in this gown.

But they came in with these machines and a tube, laid me down on the bed and I think there were like five of them. They stuck a hole in my chest, and ran that tube down into my lung. There was a lot of pressure, and I remember expressing that it was pretty painful.

I remember the female doctor looking down at me and remarking that it's not that bad, as if she was me, and I wasn't me.

Later, after the little procedure, that I guess we can think of as some sort of "surgery," they asked if I wanted some kind of pain meds. You know, the strong stuff. I kind of chuckled, because I had no experience with this stuff, and I was thinking about TV shows where patients tried to trick doctors into giving them strong drugs so that they could get high.

They took my chuckle the wrong way and gave me some ibuprofen.

It didn't help.

I spent about a day there, and when the doctor who shoved the tube into my chest came in to speak to me ... she told me this happened to me ... because I was tall and skinny. And, being a smoker at the time, a male doctor told me that if I didn't quit smoking, he'd have to chop off half of my lung.

I don't smoke cigarettes anymore, I vape.

When all's said and done, my Dad came and took me home, and then I had two weeks off of work in order to recover.

Now, it's been about fifteen years or so, but Hershey Medical Center, or Hershey Hospital, in Pennsylvania, I just wanna know one thing: What the hell?