I always knew that they would have to fix my head into place somehow, and a cast wasn't an option because it was at an awkward location.
Soft collar? Brace? I was hoping for some things like that.
So, when they told me they were going to use a halo brace which would require four pins being screwed into my skull, I got scared.
Actually I had seen those before.
When I was 16, I shadowed doctors in Thailand. We went to an orthopedic ward and saw all sorts of metal stuff that is used to fix people's bones. The doctor showed us a little boy whose arm was broken because he fell asleep whilst on his dad's motorcycle and his scarf pulled him under (I remember that story so clearly) and needed pins and traction to fix it, and another person with that thing fastened to their skull.
At that time I was a bit faint. I told the organizer "Hey... I'm a bit dizzy, I will go sit a bit.," because it looked scary. It was the type of feeling of being suffocated. Even though I was taking deep breaths through my nose none of the oxygen went to my brain, that kind of thing. It was the same feeling as the time I smelled searing flesh in a surgical theater.
Naturally, 3 years later when I was the one getting pins screwed into my bones... I cried like a baby.
Really, I would have been fine with surgery. Not only would you be knocked out (I've never been high from anesthesia, it sounds fun lol) and surely the scar would look cooler. (Of course teenage girls have priorities). But for convenience, safety and cost purposes, external fixation was used in the end.
Even though I am always the one to cry in school vaccination programs, the pain was pretty low ranked on my concerns. I remember at that time I was pissed because they had to cut open my shirt and shave my hair.
... As I said, I have priorities.
The reason I'm fucking pissed they had to shave my hair is because it was totally unnecessary and wasn't standard protocol. Hell I haven't heard of anyone shaving their head for a halo brace. The nurses always try to act in your best interest but you can see on their smug faces it's just for convenience and possibly sadism.
"It's because we need to clean the area where the pins go."
Then just shave that part.
"It'll look ugly if you only shave parts of it."
Don't make decision for me about what's ugly and what's not. My mom thought bowl haircut was nice and now I want to kill my childhood self for that embarrassment. PS I also think your ass face is ugly but I'm not telling you to wear a paper bag.
"It's also difficult to wash."
No one's telling you to wash my hair. Even afterwards, I always showered by myself.
I remember asking my mum to ask the nurse to let me keep my hair and she was like 'huh? You mean like keep in a bag?' I was like no no omg annoying shits
Whatever. By then it was evident that they weren't even giving an option so that was the reason I am fucking pissed.
As for my clothes... I really liked that shirt. I specifically chose that cute shirt for boxing day. I was sad they had to cut it not because it was expensive (it's made in China) but because I didn't know if I could find a replacement. I don't accept things easily so if something is gone I will try to replace it. Long story short, the online shop stopped selling it but I managed to buy secondhand the following June, and right now I'm wearing it :D I treasure it dearly.
Where was I? Getting pins screwed into my head, right? Actually, before that... Let me tell you, pity is a joke.
Movies and novels always like to paint tragedy in a way that is... how do I explain it? They want to make the ugliness of the victim beautiful. Whether it's Your Lie in April or One Thousand Liters of Tears, patients are always well natured and yearning for company in their cold dark hospital bed.
I'm not like that. Should I repeat it again? Don't make extrapolations from bullshit manga.
Even when I am well I am a shut-in who prefers to play inside my room, read a bit and watch movies as I please. When I'm sick or injured, idiots usually assume that my condition is the cause. It's not. You're a dumb shit.
I usually keep my cool around people but do not use my patience, I don't have much of it. If I tell you not to visit, please don't. Especially the kind who like to come and look miserable and do nothing useful. Yes I know it's bad condition, you don't have to speak my thoughts. I can console myself but what the fuck you want me to do when you hold my hand and cry? The only person who's feeling better by your presence is you yourself.
You know that normally I will walk away from your condolences. You can think I am pathetic but I will not reply tearfully and make Koizora scene with you because I am born with a bitch personality and will die with one. By forcing someone who is physically unable to punch your dumb face to listen to your useless words of worry, you are a cruel person.
Call me selfish but this is the truth.
So after my dad is done with his monologue and wiping away his tears, the only people left is my mom and her boyfriend, aka. the only two people whose presence I appreciate. (Don't go assuming you're someone's 'special person' whose presence they'll appreciate. The odds are against it.) That's the point where I start bawling my eyes out because I don't want to look like a monk.
You see I have bangs in my face because my face is fat. Even in highschool I refused to tie all of my hair up because I needed to leave some bits on the side to cover the fat.
I was also crying because I don't want pinhole scars on my forehead and it hit me that the more times I end up in the emergency room the uglier I get, and I was already born ugly. (My dad told me that I'm not ugly but I have his face and he isn't exactly a looker himself).
My mom asked the nurses if she could be the one to cut my shirt, because she's a careful and crafty type of person. At that time she said we can always sew the shirt back together but of course that never happened because I got a new one. In any case, because the shirt had ribbons on the side, it kind of got destroyed beyond repair anyway lol.
Again she told me the story about how her younger brother got stitches on his head without anesthesia. She said that he cussed every time they put the needle in he screamed fuck! and if it hurts I can do the same. After that I guess I pretty much gave up my humanity and let whatever happen happened.
They wheeled me into the operations room, and that was the first time I really got to look at the doctors and nurses. One of the nurses was pretty short and had cute features, looked kinda young and for a split second I worried it was my cosplayer friend who's also a RN xD
For the first ten, twenty minutes, it was just trivial preparation stuff. They got all the parts: The fluffy vest, the metal rods, the halo ring etc. They were measuring it against my head and measuring it against the length of the pin and that kind of stuff. Then they lined my head and body up and asked me if it felt straight. A bit tilted...? Ok, we'll move it a bit. When they actually started shaving my hair I kind of gave up already. The depressing bit was seeing the hair on the floor out of the corner of my eye. There was some bits at the back that was hard to get since I was lying on it, so they left it and finished it up after the halo brace was installed.
When they actually put the pins in, I remember imagining some anime scene where I am a dead person. For some reason my imagination is morbid and I always love to imagine that I am a dead person. When I can't sleep in my middle school days, imagining the process of dying somehow makes me feel calmer and sleepier. When I'm bored on long transport rides, imagining death also makes me think of the things that I better do in my lifetime. Ironically, I feel like if I died when I broke my neck I wouldn't be that sad. If I'm dead I can't be sad, no?
Well that time I was imagining death, because if something painful happens and you pretend that it is the thing that killed you, it doesn't seem that painful anymore. There is a figure of speech in Cantonese anyway, that goes like 'so painful I die!' but if you think about it literally you realize how stupid it sounds. If you compare it to Re Zero scene where someone impales the protagonist with a sword, eats them or stuff like that... Even though I am really scared of painful things, I end up tolerating it because I tell myself 'This doesn't hurt enough to be the cause of your death'.
The doctor said something about the first anesthesia injection hurting more than the actual pins. My only response was 'yeah, okay, I understand.'
The needle stung but I didn't scream anything because I was pretending to be dead XD
The screw part was just weird. It was like, you can feel the pressure of someone screwing something into your skull. You can feel the pressure squishing your skull but it didn't hurt in that way, because the force felt kind of diffused instead of on a specific point.
They repeated that four times and then I officially had an IKEA shelf on my head. When they wheeled me back out they raised the back of the bed a few degrees and I could already feel that my head is heavy. Was it because of the frame? Or was it because I was lying down for so long? I don't know but I think it was the latter, because when I weighed the brace afterwards it wasn't even that heavy... lol
I really procrastinated on this story huh... My original plan was to have it done for the one year anniversary at least. Time flies when your spine is intact. My mother jokingly asked me, hey, want to go back to the park? ... I don't know, we'll see.