Thoughts Before Surgery

In 1996 I was living in DC while serving as a diplomat At the State Department My wife was in the military Serving as a major in San Antonio That fateful morning, I went jogging Early in the morning Fell down a ledge I did not see in the dark I shattered my heal Into a millions pieces Had to have heel surgery The ER patched me up I went to San Antonio And had the first Of 15 surgeries Over the course of the next nine months After the army doctors Preformed an experimental procedure Using shark cartridge in my heel The staph infection got lodged Behind the cartridge Morphing into an evil, malignant Mutant, multiple drug resistance staph infection Had to take IV antibiotics Using vancomycin the nuclear bomb of antibiotics Blood tested four times per day The dosage had to be constantly adjusted Too little won’t kill the bacteria Too much could end killing the patient Meaning me of course I Almost lost my leg And my life Left me with lifelong arthritic pain Fibromyalgia and hammer toes Five years later had two hammer toe surgeries And will have to do it again within a year I soon developed a ritual The night before the surgery I would call my wife My mother My two brothers My sister My five best friends My wife I knew She would be my side Even if she was far away I felt that my brothers Were indifferent It would not really matter If I died or not. My sister would mourn me My friends would miss me My best friend was in DC And visited me before And after each surgery My mother was slipping Into dementia. And I was not sure She understood What I was going through. But still I wanted to hear Their voices perhaps for the last time before going under the surgeon’s knife.