So I'm taking the pills as directed. Bactrim, it's called. Time for bed. In the bathroom I remove my contact lenses and the room is suddenly ablaze with hallucinations. My shower curtain, which has various travel-themed designs on it, becomes a canvas of odd things flashing across it.
What the hell is going on? Carl Yeager's photo of a pink tulip has become a live Picasso.
In bed, I see words rolling across the dark room. It matters not if my eyes are open or shut. The hallucinations won't stop.
I had already told myself it must be from the Bactrim and had goggled its side effex. Vision-change was not among them.
At the pharmacy today, I asked Bobby.
It's the Bactrim, he said.
ROBERT, THE DIABETES MAN
Robert, I knew the moment I entered your darkened hospital room
diabetes had his way with you.
And always has, his death grip starting when you were four.
The madman, diabetes, wrapped his fangs around your kidney,
and bit.
He choked your pancreas and heart,
licks his lips as
he slowly blinds your other eye.
Swooping low, he made your feet numb
I saw them wrapped in hospital socks in the television-loud room.
The tracheotomy lies like a whistle in your neck.
The python tried his death grip but surgeons saved you.
It is best, I think, your parents who adopted you when they were
sixty – cannot see the further damage to their bonny young son
Would I be wrong to compare you, at 54, to a mallard skimming across
a frozen lake, while hundreds of rifles aim to bring down
your feathers green.
What’s next? The madman hadn’t counted on corrections:
two new kidneys, a pancreas, and surgeons at Einstein who
foil the offender again and again.
You enjoy the ride down on Route 73 from the family home in
Boyertown.
Don’t go back to work, the surgeons said, after your first kidney came in.
You worked seven years. In food. Restaurateur, you could not keep away
from your cream cakes and gingerbread.
Which jab will bring you down and force you to quit?
The python pounced. He got you in your legs,
pain so bad you could not stand.
You have not changed, my fun-loving Robert. See you again at Tower
Building, on the transplant floor, Room 8018.
Another good poem! Makes me think of my brother, though. Diabetes also had its way with him.
ReplyDeleteBactrim did odd things to Kim also, who took it for uti's with the MS. Most of the time they gave him the uti's in the hospital unfortunately. My husband tells me that if Medicare reviewers find that someone got a uti in the hospital, they won't pay the hospital for the stay anymore.
PS Hope the hallucinations stop quickly, or maybe they need to prescribe something else.
ReplyDeletei'm on cipro now. i went to the arspital b/c i got the uti, which i now call Yuti.
ReplyDeleteYuti, sounds a little like an Israeli name to me. Yuti Shimon Haffenberg. Just made that up.
ReplyDeletei'm laffing hysterically now!
ReplyDelete