The Miracle of Modern Medicine

Yesterday at 9:30 AM, I was slipped The Heavy Gear in my IV drip and told "bye-bye" by a mouthy punk of an anesthesiologist. Doctors then ministered to my lifeless body, slicing it and dicing it in ways that only the generally surgical can.

I awoke an hour later, about a half-ounce lighter, in a fog from the anesthesia, headachy and cranky. My throat hurt where a tube had been inserted, and I was numb from the waist down. I spent the rest of the day watching rented movies and floating in and out of sleep. I rested.

Today, an incredibly soft and lissome spring day, on my hands and knees I fertilized, weeded and mulched twelve fruit trees and a strawberry patch, raked all my pullings into the compost heap, sprayed fungicide on four lilac bushes, administered a first spring spraying to said trees (apples, sour cherries and Asian pears, if you must insist on knowing), and began pulling out bramble and pokeberry in an area the previous owners had left shamefully untended but that will become my potato patch when I get it whipped into shape. I stopped when evening drew on, at which point I went inside and whipped up a grilled chicken Caesar salad that was a major hit with a grateful family.

How did I perform this miracle of Martha-Stewartry, one day after the kind of surgery that requires general anesthesia?

Painkillers.

Genus Codeine, species Vicodin. Ask for it by name. Not much; only the 5 milligram pills. I find in the arms of Nepenthe, often Less is More.

Not only did they give me the power to get up and git 'er done (as they say around here), but they put me in this utterly perfect meditative state where nothing could be more satisfying than the the endlessly fascinating task of fumbling for the next wild strawberry node, yanking it out and throwing it into my pile -- scrabble, pull, throw, scrabble, pull, throw, scrabble, pull, throw.... For hours and hours and hours.

Genus Codeine, species Vicodin. Ask for it by name.

I would make such a great junkie. Think William Burroughs, not Sid Vicious.

Ask for it by name!