My best friend washed my hair last night. It was matted and vomitty and she poured water over my head that ran down my back and drenched my borrowed dress. It was sublime. Today my sister came over and shaved my legs. She did a much better job than I’ve ever done.   Maybe I can get her to do it from now on.

In the hospital, I shared a room with Dorothy, an 85 year old woman whose voice was weak and quavery.   Poor Dorothy had been in the hospital for four weeks without getting a diagnosis. She complained that her hands and arms were purple from being stuck with needles.

Dorothy was miserable. She suffered endless indignities, like a night nurse who inquired loudly “You need go poo-poo?”

One day, Dorothy’s son came to visit. I couldn’t see them behind the curtain that divided our beds. The son had a deep booming voice and began reading letters from lawyers, concerning a quarrel over her estate. Her younger son was mentioned and characterized as a shyster. The Booming Man, Gene, wanted to be named executor of the estate, instead of the shyster. Dorothy was barely able to respond. She probably just wanted a sip of water or a bedpan.

One night I started crying and told Dorothy that I just wanted someone to shoot me. She answered back, “Me too.”

When I’m back on my feet, and I will be, I’m going to find Gene. I’m going   to make him sorry for being a monster and a douchebag. I’m completely serious. That’s how I know I’m still me.

Being helpless triggers a shifting array of emotions. I’m so grateful for assistance and so touched by kindness. When my husband is careless for a moment, I want to kill him.   I tell him that I’m going to read for a while, and he leaves the room, aware that I have no books or magazines within reach. I’m testing him, to savor my anger.

He’s better than a nurse, though. At least he’s not actually trying to hurt me. If he needed to stick a catheter tube up my bladder, he’d fucking well do it.

When I couldn’t pee and it went on for days, the nurse on duty couldn’t find my bladder. She went to get another nurse to help. The two of them stuck tubes up me, peering between my legs as though they were explorers on the Amazon River. “Where is it? It should be right THERE!”

They couldn’t find it. I started to worry that my bladder was now somewhere else. When they changed shifts, a new nurse, named Sol, rolled her eyes and promised “I find it.” She was a young Filipina with beautiful white teeth, and she knew how to find a bladder.

The temperature in my bedroom at home is around 100 degrees. I’m always sweaty. All my visitors complain about the heat but it doesn’t make any difference to me. I’m only concerned with degrees of pain. I experiment with leg placement, trying to relieve the pressure on my tail-bone. I smell awful but no one offers to wash me. My sister suggests Female Wipes. She also eyes my Oxycodone.

When I left the hospital in an ambulance, I had just started shitting after 5 days of laxatives. Morphine is constipating, as it turns out. My stomach was churning in agony but the ambulance had been ordered for 4 o’clock.

The nurse put me in an adult diaper, big enough for a 500 pound man. She put my friend’s cotton dress over my head and didn’t bother to zip it up. The two young ambulance guys lifted me onto a gurney, showing great respect for my pain.   One of them flirted with me a little, unaware of my shit-filled diaper.

Finally home on a hospital bed, I couldn’t stop shitting. Eventually, I lifted my body to the bedside commode with excruciating effort. I cried while ten thousand tons of Morphine marinaded shit flooded through my bowels with a sickening force.

The next morning I was still shitting. I chewed tablets that promised to stop the tide but nothing worked. By nighttime, my stomach was finally peaceful and most of the shit was cleaned up. Now I could return to worrying about constipation.

My husband bought bright red sheets for my home hospital bed. Friends are reminded of Frida Kahlo when they see me. I feel a new affinity with Frida. I am Frida without the paint.

The nurses know that you’re helpless and when they try to roll you over and you scream in pain, they just keep pushing you. If you say “I can’t!” they take that as a challenge to their authority.

If you throw up all over yourself and your hair, they yell at you in annoyance. “Why jou dint use the pan!” They cluck their tongue and tie your hair back as tight as they can with a piece of torn latex glove. That’ll teach you.

The instant you hit the pavement, your whole world turns over. You can feel all your organs rearranging inside you like planets.

After six days, the image of a squashed cockroach won’t go away. I’ve just inched across my bed using my arms to support me, dragging my legs together like a broken mermaid. If you move slowly enough, you might be able to avoid the stabbing burst of pain in your groin. The fractured tail-bone is always in play, but the pain from that at least stays where it belongs.

Any sudden noise or unexpected movement sends shock-waves of pain radiating from my pelvis. I jerked when a bottle of water spilled on my bed, and it took hours to move again. “Bones have feelings too,” my physical therapist explained. “It’s only been a week. Your body is still in shock.”

My helplessness only matters to me. No one sees it as a call to duty. My husband plays music in the other room, blasting all the bands I hate. When I call his name, he won’t answer. Finally, I start screaming HELP at the top of my lungs as if I were on fire.   Still, he won’t come. Just as I start to cry, he says “What?” He was taking a nap.