Tales Of Younger Me Suffering Absurd Amounts Of Pain: A Miniseries - Part 5

Age: Eight years old (?)

The injury: I basically vomited the human equivalent of a bird pellet.

The story: When I was little, I almost went deaf. Apparently, there's some weird sort of brain fluid that will accumulate behind your ear drums after a while. Normally, it drains out via tiny openings in your ear drum. Unfortunately, I didn't have the aforementioned openings, and as such, I was subject to chronic ear infections (which usually resulted in me bawling my eyes out from the pain, being the manly little bastard that I was) and a steady decline in hearing. In order to avoid this, my parents scheduled me for a surgery in which they would take tiny little plastic tubes and ram them into my ear drums, in order to facilitate some much-needed cranial drainage. Because what my head really needed was more fluids coming out of it.

Come on ladies, you know you want me. 

So my mom and I arrived at the building where my surgery would take place. Being as young and inattentive as I was, I forget the details of what happened, but the end result is that I ended up in an alarmingly revealing hospital gown while an anesthesiologist prepared a dose of knock-me-the-fuck-out. 

(C) ER Productions/CORBIS

Not pictured: appropriate attire for an eight year old.

A little side note: I don't do any drugs, nor do I endorse the usage of them, but should you ever have the chance to introduce a suitable amount of anesthesia into your system, you introduce the shit out of it. Life itself is but a pale substitute when compared to the unbridled euphoria I experienced right before passing out in that operating room. Man, that was awesome.

I woke up in a groggy haze several hours later in my hospital bed. The surgery had evidently been a success, and when I regained consciousness, my mom was in the room conversing with a nurse. Upon noticing that I had finally come to, the nurse grabbed a small pink plastic tray and handed it to me. Confused, my mom asked "What's that for?"

I, too, was confused. Apart from the mental haziness and physical exhaustion that generally comes post-op, I felt pretty ok. It was nothing worse than waking up from a particularly deep sleep, and I didn't really see the need for a tray. The nurse calmly stated "Patients can sometimes have a bit of a violent reaction after surgeries like this."

My mom responded "Violent reaction? What does that mean?"

Right on cue, I vomited a hair ball into the tray. Except, instead of it being a hair ball, it was a congealed mass of blood and scab fragments. And instead of vomiting, it was more like 30 seconds of retching and dry-heaving, followed by an unexpected and painful explosion of lumpy red...something. 

(C) MM Productions/Corbis

I'm beginning to notice a pattern of violent blood expulsion in my life.

Reader, I don't know if you've ever vomited a fur ball composed entirely of what basically amounts to hardened blood pudding, but it is so horribly uncomfortable. I'm not entirely sure how to end this post, so here's a picture of a painting of the death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

(C) Francis G. Mayer/Corbis