DAYS OF INSANITY
By David Allen
Something’s wrong.
Why am I lying in this hospital bed
when I was transferred to a different hospital
just two days ago?
You see, I have a rare disease
commonly called
Vitamin d resistant rickets
and I was flown from this hospital
to a university hospital in Indianapolis
for a new study on this rare disease,
which shortened and bent me
bowlegged and soft boned.
It affects maybe 1 out of 20,000 people.
The doctors were excited about the study;
other patients were being flown
in from around the country.
So, why was I back in Anderson?
Sure, the operation didn’t go as expected.
There was a lot more cutting
to free the nerves being squished
by the growth of the soft spinal bones.
but now I was back in the bed where I had to lay still for two days
and then starved without food and water for three days
when my stomach swelled as
the meds fought each other instead of
healing me.
“Why am I back here?”
I asked the nurse who came in to take
my vital sighs.
My voice was weak, raspy.
“Back?” she asked. “Honey you never left.”
“No, I was transferred.”
“What day is it?” she asked.
“Thursday,” I said.
“No, it’s Tuesday,” she said. “How do you feel?”
“Confused, I croaked.
“You’ve been hallucinating,” she said.
“There was a bad reaction to post-op drugs.
But at least you sound a bit better today.
and you can start eating again.
Just then my wife walked in,
“How are you, my love?”
“Confused. The nurse said I’ve kinda been out of it.”
“I’m so glad that’s over,” my wife said.
“You were acting crazy.
Sometimes you lost words,
Replacing them with
sounds that made no sense.”
In the following days
I spoke with friends who said
I was “out of it”
when they called or visited.
I thought about those days
and realized I had drifted back decades
to a time I purposefully
lost my mind with mescaline
to examine the me behind this all.
And I didn’t find an answer.
Just like the last two days.
Hello Tuesday,
How’d you like being
Thursday for a while?
Type Dancing 