I recently went to the doctor and was diagnosed with having a swollen brain. She said I needed immediate surgery to reduce the pressure. I said, “Okay”, I was all for a little pressure release valve or a brain drain. They shaved my head and strapped me in, down and around. The only things left movable were my eyes and just to irk me they stuck a mirror in front of those. With a little laser pointer the doctor showed me the ridge on which (x) marked the planned drill site. My skull was a multicolored globe stuck full of probes and wires. I looked like an angry Medusa. I was also surrounded by a dozen or so little TV screens on which I could see and hear myself think. Did you know that swear words have a different frequency than thinking of ice cream? They do. They sound similar to a car with bad valves. They got me a dirty look from the anesthesiologist.
What I hate the most about anesthesia is that when they put me under I don’t think coherently or dream. It is not exactly a blind nothingness because I could sense a dull pressure and discern a sound like rasping sandpaper. It felt as if I were swollen all over and I had contracted a new disease called brainspread. I wasn’t being drained, but buttered. Then I had to puke but nothing worked. I had no puke muscles. It was weird, but I didn’t feel bodied or disembodied. Where the hell did I go? Purgatory?
That’s about the time you start to come out of it. I felt thankful and not thankful at all. My brain was completely and utterly numbfounded. Even though I couldn’t puke I had a need to regurgitate my every thought because I couldn’t talk. My tongue was glued down. My eyelids wouldn’t move out of the way of my orbs or maybe they cut the wrong nerve and I was blind. I didn’t want to be blind. I felt like I wanted to panic, but I couldn’t do that either. I couldn’t find my panic button. They had unhooked my brain and I didn’t have a conduit to my body. Maybe they had stollen my brain. I was pretty intelligent, but then again I was also a smart ass. I wouldn’t put it past them to usurp my brain for ulterior motives. Or maybe I was just dead.
When the first wave of pain hit me I was certain I wasn’t dead. After the fifth or sixth one, I wanted to be. My whole head felt like a massive toothache. I was suffering from a bad brain abscess. I had agreed to the damn operation at the outset because I needed my brain reduced not enlarged. Maybe that was the reason I couldn’t see, my eyeballs had popped out of their sockets. On top of all that, there was some cocksucker screaming at the top of his lungs. I wanted to shove a suck in his mouth. That was when something clicked inside my battered head. I closed my mouth. The screams stopped. My eyelids finally popped open.
There was a small table beside the bed with my laptop on it. Beside it sat a pitcher of water with ice cube remnants and a green plastic cup. It dawned on me just how utterly thirsty I was. My throat was parched and sore from all the screaming. I sat up. I was expecting nausea and pain but I felt nothing but the usual tingle behind my right ear. I was going to be okay after all. I had simply had a nasty nightmare.
I poured a glass of water and soothed my parched tongue. I lifted the USB cable that was attached to my laptop and plugged it into the USB port behind my right ear. The tingling stopped. I hit download and went back to sleep.

Richard Rensberry, Author at QuickTurtle Books®