Anesthesia is a void, a pit. The edges aren’t jagged they’re velvety...I’m in the velvety void of anesthesia...
Nirvana. The anesthesiologist told me that I’d neither feel nor be aware of anything. Either he was mistaken or I found a nightmare, nestled deep in this pit.
Then there was light; too much light, blinding my eyes: a newly risen sun.
I awoke, or felt as if I awoke, to a symphony of scalpels playing a wicked fugue over my immobile body. The surgeons were as precise as musicians as they played their instruments over my organs. At one point, I saw a masked medico pull down his sterile face mask and give me a smile. My dying heart was excised. The smiling medico held the organ to his face and proceeded to blow air through the superior vena cava, producing a bizarre tune: a blood song notes that were swimming and drowning. This in turn caused blood to spray from the other openings in the organ. The surgeon played the organ and danced around my OR slab. His fellow coworkers joined him in a festive ensemble, clanging their steel instruments together...
***
How many surgeries (giving)? How many transplants (receiving)? Fetal brain cells removed. Heart. Liver. Bone marrow. Xenotransplantation (gifts from my friends in the animal kingdom)
Things ‘They’ tell you
Cyclosporin A vs. my lymphocytes...immunosuppression... abra cadabra...hocus porkus...
***
I think I awoke then. I was in the ICU. There were cords linking me to various machines.
“Good afternoon Mr. Graaaaadfurddddd...I’m the intensivist,” his words slowed down/sped up. “Dr. Stephanus will be in to talk tooooo yoooou, about your operation...” He leaves. Dr. Stephanus stands over me; his hair is matted down firmly to his head in a neo coiffure. His eyes are glazed, and his look imports satisfaction.
“Comfy Gradfurd? Wheuw! I can’t believe we pulled it off...well at least for now. The real trial will be getting you to stay alive for the next few days.” There was a resounding belch from behind him; it sounded as if something came up with it. “Well excuse you Peter!” Stephanus yelled. “Gradfurd, can I call ya Jeff? This is Dr. McDaniels, he’s a virologist, and next to him is Dr. Bimble. Let me apologize for his disturbing behavior.” I could smell the alcohol on Stephanus’ breath. It was overpowering. Somehow my sense of smell was heightened.
“Jeff...we’re all a little drunk here...” Dr. McDaniels wiped his mouth of something. “We’re having a little precelebration...of your survival.”
“Jeff, we’ve put baboon bone marrow into your spine for your HIV. You’ve got a pig’s heart and liver, not to mention fetal calf adrenal glands...hey Bob, what’d we use for his neuronal cells?”
“Canine,” McDaniels offered.
“Oh yeah. Hey Jeff your man’s best friend now, huh?” All I wanted then was to fall back down into my void. Come on. Let me fall, I wished.
“Well elitists, let’s let our guinea pig take a nappy... wait! We didn’t put any guinea pig cells in him did we?” They began laughing in that disquieting way that all drunks do. “I’m just pulling your leg! What’s wrong Jeff?” Stephanus asked.
“My chest...God, it aches and stings...” I rubbed the lengthy surgical scar that spanned from my breast bone to below my chest. Only hours before (or was it days) my breastbone had been spread apart. Dr. Stephanus pushed a button on the wall and something went into my blood stream; this time there was no void, no nothing...
(Lost. Missing. Absent from anything. Gone)
Until...
“I need suction, STAT!” Dr. Stephanus was agitated. I was no longer in the ICU but in another operating room. A surgical assistant was standing next to Stephanus. In his hands, he held a plastic tube that was probing around my innards where the surgeons were working. A nurse stood by the other end of the suction machine where glass reservoirs were filling up with bloody fluids. The sucking sound that it gave off was disturbing to say the least, not unlike the rootings of a sow in its slop.
“He’s awake!” Dr. Bimble said. His face had a layer of perspiration, which was wiped away by someone behind him.
I looked down at Stephanus just in time to see him reach inside me and pull something out of my open abdomen.
“Jeff, we’ve had a problem, hypercute rejection of your pig liver. It’s already dying. It had to come out.” Dr. Stephanus pulled the liver out and held it in his hands. It didn’t look like any liver I’d ever seen. As my vision became clearer, I could see that my liver had grown into a deformed fetal pig! Its pork flesh was blackened and rotting.
“Reeeiiinnnnttttt, reeiiinntt!” the fetal pig screamed as the bloody caul slid off its twisted head. One of its eyes appeared to be in the center of its face. Two little piggy hooves waved frantically in the air. Its hind legs were nonexistent.
“Would you look at that!” Dr. Bimble said.
“Don’t worry Jeff...this time we’ll use a chimpanzee liver. They’re so much cuter when they’re babies anyway.”
“Reeiinnt!” my deformed fetal piglet screamed and Dr. Bimble grabbed it from Dr. Stephanus. Dr. Bimble pulled down his mask, revealing a prognathous jaw lined with canines, from which he began to drool. He commenced in taking a big bite out of the pig’s juicy back. Then he growled to fight off a scrub tech who was attempting to elicit some of the piglet flesh hanging from his bestial maw...
***
The next time I opened my eyes (I’d given up on determining whether this was dream or reality), Dr. Stephanus was at my side in the ICU. His head looked so much bigger than normal; it looked bloated.
“Hey Jeff. Don’t worry, we’re not gonna lose you, my little xenograft recipient, my little chimera.” His fleshy, balloon like head smiled a latex smile a foot long. “Your chimpanzee liver seems to be working out great! It’s been about 14 days or so, but we still don’t feel that we should move you out of the ICU, just in case.” Dr. Stephanus patted my head like I was a good little doggy. I noticed his hands were colored rouge; it wasn’t a stain but instead appeared to be new flesh.
“Now all we’ve got to worry about is toxicity brought on by immunosuppressive drugs which could cause cancer, such as lymphomas. Not to mention retroviruses, immunoparalysis, deadly infections, pancreatitis, heart failure, osteoporosis, blah blah blah...but no big deal.”
Blurred images...I shook my head. Clarity wasn’t forthcoming. Someone shook me, holding me by my arms.
“Jeff? Still with us buddy? Dr. Bimble and Dr. McDaniels wanted to see you.” Dr. Stephanus let go of my arms. Dr. McDaniels and Dr. Bimble came in and stood next to him.
“How’s our golden boy doing?” Bimble asked. He looked completely normal now. My only utterance was a grunt, but it was in a pleasant way. “Good, good!” “Well here we are Jeff. Three successful pioneers in xenotransplantation, standing on the threshold of a new day in medicine. And you! The most complex chimera ever created. You’re gonna be all right Jeff, you’re gonna live!” At that moment, from somewhere as if from a television program, there was a raucous acclamation; the sound was omnipresent. The three deities bowed over my bed. I felt that since I was the recipient of their talents, since I was their artwork, they deserved my applause as well. So I lifted my right hoof and my left paw and clapped, clapped like I had never clapped before.
