Post by Nathan Morrison on Sept 9, 2006 21:02:44 GMT -5
Loathing In LA
September 9th, 2006 6:46PM Pacific Time
by Victor E. Lopez
It was hard to hear through the loud "beep" in my ears. The lady doctor asking me how many aspirin I'd taken and I'd told her about 400. She said flatly, "Mr. Lopez, you've ingested a lethal amount of aspirin and I'm not sure that I can save you." She looked at me indifferently. "You have decided to save your life and that is very important right now," the doctor said. Her final remarks were: "tonight you are going to have to fight for your life. You've allowed the aspirin to work into your system." Funny enough I had come about needing to save my life because hours prior I'd tried to rid myself of it.
I was 17 years old, in my shared apartment in Hollywood, California. I'd just finished shutting the door as I'd left the PD Quick driver bewildered. "That is an awful lot of aspirin you ordered," the delivery man said. (PD Quick was a grocer who delivered - a perk of being in LA). All I could think to say in response was, "I get a lot of headaches." As I shut my door I wondered briefly if I'd been a bit rude in my response.
My roommate, a semi-famous Irish singer, was fast asleep in the next room. I went to my room and then to the master bathroom and started popping open the bottles of extra-strength aspirin, emptying them into a bowl and after a few moments of stark reflection I proceeded to swallow 400 pills of aspirin.
I remember praying to whomever would hear that I wanted to die this night under no uncertain terms. I was sick and tired of life. I was hurt - my whole body hurt; my mind hurt; it seemed that existing hurt. Life was just a labyrinth of pain and around each corner. I used to associate pain with life. My heart had been broken into a million pieces and I'd just felt worthless at the time. I'd come to Los Angeles from Illinois on many occasions and that was my dwelling in the West, so I figured I'd just as well die there.
So there I was - praying to whomever would hear me (basically talking to myself) and asking the being at the other end to take me quickly and also I asked for forgiveness in advance for any stuff I'd violated in the journey of life. I went to sleep without making a note of any kind, no last words. I figured the few people I knew would most likely understand the underlying cause of the temporal insanity and so I went to sleep thinking and hoping I'd never again wake up.
Then it happened. Two hours later I woke up with pain all over my body; my innards hurt me. My hearing was consumed by a maddening "beep..." which I would have for a couple of days. It's a side effect of taking too much aspirin. I began to vomit a white foam and decided just then that I'd made an extremely poor choice and if there was ever a feeling associated with dying I was encountering it.
I knocked on my roommate's door and informed her that I was sick and needed her to call 911. She of course wanted to know why and since I didn't feel complete enough to discuss the merits by which I'd thought as I tried killing myself hours earlier, I simply said "I'm dying. I took some pills; call 911."
I whispered to the paramedic not to tell my roommate but I'd taken a lot of aspirin. When he walked over to the bathroom trash can and looked, he asked "All of them?" They hooked me up to a dozen machines and to the ER I went.
Enter then the doctor and her telling me I may not live. Which didn't really trouble me. It was just the pain in my body. The dry heaves were so bad I really thought I was going to die. Each time, in the midst of the pain, I'd get the strongest urge to sleep. The doctor reminded me it was my life I was trying to preserve and she'd mention to the nurse they were losing me.
As they inserted the catheter, I let out a moan which was involuntary. Moments faded away: the x-ray machines, the charcoal drinks, throwing up the charcoal, the IVs, basically every form of physical hell one could think of... fighting for my life... drinking more charcoal.
My roommate finally found what hospital I was at and surprised me by visiting me while I was in intensive care.
The paramedics never told her I'd overdosed. It was while she was cleaning up my room that she found the empty bottles in the wastebasket. She said she'd sat on the floor of the bathroom and cried. She and I had become quite close; she loved women more than men, but sometimes we'd cuddle together, not saying a word, but enjoying each other's silent (but understood) company.
"What did you plan to do, have me find you dead?" she asked in her Irish accent, her green eyes picking apart my soul. Apologies would come later, not while I was sitting in a bed while the IVs dripped away, the monitors hearing my heartbeat. I'd made a mistake, in a moment of complete and utter despair I'd tried ending my life. I had thought a part of me was dead when really it was simply underdeveloped and as fate would have it, thankfully, I survived.
My roommate brought me some clothes and had bought me a gift, a green shirt with red lettering that said, "f**k Christmas." She draped it over a chair in my room. She then turned on the TV which showed the first inauguration of George W. Bush. It was so depressing, like a funeral.
"Junior, King of Texas, Victor, what are we going to do?" She asked me.
For a second or two I forgot I was in the hospital, that a week before I'd fruitlessly attempted to take my life.
"It's downhill from here," I said.
As she left, I looked up at the TV once more and shut it off. The intensive care unit sounded like death and I knew with the murderous regime which was taking office that soon hospitals in oil country would be overrun with death and destruction; it would only be a matter of time.
I then looked at the green shirt with the red lettering and I thought to myself, f**k Christmas indeed!
Until the next time, in the words of my good friend, Mike Malloy, host of the Mike Malloy Show on Air America Radio, "watch your back."
September 9th, 2006 6:46PM Pacific Time
by Victor E. Lopez
It was hard to hear through the loud "beep" in my ears. The lady doctor asking me how many aspirin I'd taken and I'd told her about 400. She said flatly, "Mr. Lopez, you've ingested a lethal amount of aspirin and I'm not sure that I can save you." She looked at me indifferently. "You have decided to save your life and that is very important right now," the doctor said. Her final remarks were: "tonight you are going to have to fight for your life. You've allowed the aspirin to work into your system." Funny enough I had come about needing to save my life because hours prior I'd tried to rid myself of it.
I was 17 years old, in my shared apartment in Hollywood, California. I'd just finished shutting the door as I'd left the PD Quick driver bewildered. "That is an awful lot of aspirin you ordered," the delivery man said. (PD Quick was a grocer who delivered - a perk of being in LA). All I could think to say in response was, "I get a lot of headaches." As I shut my door I wondered briefly if I'd been a bit rude in my response.
My roommate, a semi-famous Irish singer, was fast asleep in the next room. I went to my room and then to the master bathroom and started popping open the bottles of extra-strength aspirin, emptying them into a bowl and after a few moments of stark reflection I proceeded to swallow 400 pills of aspirin.
I remember praying to whomever would hear that I wanted to die this night under no uncertain terms. I was sick and tired of life. I was hurt - my whole body hurt; my mind hurt; it seemed that existing hurt. Life was just a labyrinth of pain and around each corner. I used to associate pain with life. My heart had been broken into a million pieces and I'd just felt worthless at the time. I'd come to Los Angeles from Illinois on many occasions and that was my dwelling in the West, so I figured I'd just as well die there.
So there I was - praying to whomever would hear me (basically talking to myself) and asking the being at the other end to take me quickly and also I asked for forgiveness in advance for any stuff I'd violated in the journey of life. I went to sleep without making a note of any kind, no last words. I figured the few people I knew would most likely understand the underlying cause of the temporal insanity and so I went to sleep thinking and hoping I'd never again wake up.
Then it happened. Two hours later I woke up with pain all over my body; my innards hurt me. My hearing was consumed by a maddening "beep..." which I would have for a couple of days. It's a side effect of taking too much aspirin. I began to vomit a white foam and decided just then that I'd made an extremely poor choice and if there was ever a feeling associated with dying I was encountering it.
I knocked on my roommate's door and informed her that I was sick and needed her to call 911. She of course wanted to know why and since I didn't feel complete enough to discuss the merits by which I'd thought as I tried killing myself hours earlier, I simply said "I'm dying. I took some pills; call 911."
I whispered to the paramedic not to tell my roommate but I'd taken a lot of aspirin. When he walked over to the bathroom trash can and looked, he asked "All of them?" They hooked me up to a dozen machines and to the ER I went.
Enter then the doctor and her telling me I may not live. Which didn't really trouble me. It was just the pain in my body. The dry heaves were so bad I really thought I was going to die. Each time, in the midst of the pain, I'd get the strongest urge to sleep. The doctor reminded me it was my life I was trying to preserve and she'd mention to the nurse they were losing me.
As they inserted the catheter, I let out a moan which was involuntary. Moments faded away: the x-ray machines, the charcoal drinks, throwing up the charcoal, the IVs, basically every form of physical hell one could think of... fighting for my life... drinking more charcoal.
My roommate finally found what hospital I was at and surprised me by visiting me while I was in intensive care.
The paramedics never told her I'd overdosed. It was while she was cleaning up my room that she found the empty bottles in the wastebasket. She said she'd sat on the floor of the bathroom and cried. She and I had become quite close; she loved women more than men, but sometimes we'd cuddle together, not saying a word, but enjoying each other's silent (but understood) company.
"What did you plan to do, have me find you dead?" she asked in her Irish accent, her green eyes picking apart my soul. Apologies would come later, not while I was sitting in a bed while the IVs dripped away, the monitors hearing my heartbeat. I'd made a mistake, in a moment of complete and utter despair I'd tried ending my life. I had thought a part of me was dead when really it was simply underdeveloped and as fate would have it, thankfully, I survived.
My roommate brought me some clothes and had bought me a gift, a green shirt with red lettering that said, "f**k Christmas." She draped it over a chair in my room. She then turned on the TV which showed the first inauguration of George W. Bush. It was so depressing, like a funeral.
"Junior, King of Texas, Victor, what are we going to do?" She asked me.
For a second or two I forgot I was in the hospital, that a week before I'd fruitlessly attempted to take my life.
"It's downhill from here," I said.
As she left, I looked up at the TV once more and shut it off. The intensive care unit sounded like death and I knew with the murderous regime which was taking office that soon hospitals in oil country would be overrun with death and destruction; it would only be a matter of time.
I then looked at the green shirt with the red lettering and I thought to myself, f**k Christmas indeed!
Until the next time, in the words of my good friend, Mike Malloy, host of the Mike Malloy Show on Air America Radio, "watch your back."
