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Show 48 His face seems to be floating but now I realize it is the light or rather the lack of light that makes his face appear to be floating. He is looking through a glass door at me. He is wearing green scmbs and now I can dimly make out the rest of his body in the shadows. He is a nurse and does not appear to notice that I am looking back at him. "Good manning, Sunshahn!" The nurse belonging to this cheerful voice is coming into my room with a big smile to match her words. "It's about tahhm youh woke up!" Her vowels tell me she is from the deep South. I do not remember being asleep. She is telling me that I have slept for three days and that I am in the ICU. The surgery - the pump now in my abdomen. The skin, the muscles, the painful aching. I remember the surgical suite, the bright lights over my head, the cold, hard table. Three days? The steroid therapy had not worked beyond the taper. The spasticity and stiffness had returned day by day, increasing as the taper decreased. It was much worse than before commencing the steroid therapy. It was because of this new technology - an implantedintrathecal pump, putting miniscule amounts of a drug called Baclofen directly into the spinal cord area - that I am here now. |