Reading In A Drug Induced Haze

A little over a month ago I woke up from surgery connected to a morphine pump. Having also had surgery years ago, when a patient in pain had to use a button to call a nurse, request medication, wait for the nurse to go back and get it, wait for her to get back to the room, get a shot in the hip, then wait for it to work, I can tell you that a pain pump is an incredible invention. And I wasn't even in agony. I was sore as hell and, according to the nurses, not taking anywhere near as much morphine as I had coming to me. They kept saying things like, "You know what? You've got an order for blah-blah for pain. Let's load up your IV with a little of that."

I wasn't aware of getting much of a kick from the morphine or anything else, but I may have been more under the influence than I was aware. I had brought a copy of Sarah Vowell's Take the Cannolli, a book of essays on what I'd call cultural history. When I came home after my weekend in bed, my bookmark was around the halfway point. During my recovery weeks, I continued with Vowell's terrific essay about following the Trail of Tears with her sister. But I realized that except that the book's title came from the phrase "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli," I remembered nothing about any of the essays that come before it.

Rereading the essays has been a fascinating experience. The first two, which relate to her family, brought back nothing to me. I suspect I skipped them while I was in the hospital. But as I read the others, bits and pieces come back to me. Oh, yeah. The cannoli business was from one of the Godfather movies. The trip to DisneyWorld with her Canadian friend...that was familiar in a lovely way. I remembered the fact of the Frank Sinatra essay once I got to it.

I'm within pages of catching up to the new material I've read since I got home from the hospital. Reading from that point on is going to be an entirely different experience.Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World