As I said in the previous chapter, in fact I totally didn’t know what happened during my surgery. Never mind that, my last consciousness was when an anesthesiologist injected something in my right arm and then after a short talk, I fell asleep so soundly…
As while I wasn’t conscious I didn’t know what happened to me, I just relied on the stories told by my relatives, friends, and students to “reconstruct” the story of what really happened to me at that time.
[Picture : when I was in ICU and can eat for the first time..]
When I was treated in the ICU of Harapan Kita Heart Hospital
Whether there was a bloody bleeding after my surgery – supposedly up to 3 times I got severe bleeding – I only heard it from people. Thus I was surprised and didn’t know what it meant when one of my students sent an SMS, “Sir, I saw you in the ICU, but you haven’t been conscious…” I didn’t know what he meant, although I initially thought that this student, whose uncle’s surgery date was close to mine, was visiting his uncle in the ICU. In fact, what happened was many of my students from Binus – including other students that I didn’t know – came to Harapan Kita Heart Hospital to donate their blood to me – both fresh blood and frozen blood.
When other patients rapidly regained consciousness after surgery, but I remembered the nurse’s words on the night before the surgery, “Ladies and gentlemen, how long a patient will regain consciousness from anesthesia in the operating room depends on the physical condition of the patient himself.” After the surgery I then realized what the nurse said at that time, that there are patients who regain consciousness rapidly – generally they who undergo a by-pass heart surgery – and there are patients who regain consciousness slowly after the surgery – which generally they who undergo heart valve replacement surgery (every human heart has 4 valves which have their own name).
As I recall, I began to be conscious at 5:30 in the afternoon. Yet I didn’t know at what day I was conscious. Was it at Friday evening or Saturday afternoon? (even up to now I still don’t have any idea). The first time I got my consciousness, my view around the ICU, along with the nurses and the patients there was an opaque and an obscure, even the visions were stacked 4 or 5 “copies”. When some nurse greeted me, “Wow, you are already aware now…” with a smile, so I replied with a smile even though this nurse had 4 heads, 4 bodies, and 8 hands, … just like Ravana in “Arjuna Sasrabahu” comic which I used to read when I was in elementary school.
Not only the vision of the nurse but also the doctors, other patients, which became quadruple even quintuple… Yet I hadn’t fully gained consciousness. As if I tried to be aware and aware completely while the sleeping pills affected me to sleep and sleep completely. As a result, there happened an exciting “war”… between the will to be aware fighting with the will to sleep. Perhaps because of the remaining anesthetic in my body, I came to see the vision world of what I saw became doubled and even worse…. it spun clockwise, with the colors that accompanied it. Later, when explaining this to a friend, I said, “You know … just like playing tracks in Windows Media Player but the motion picture is 10 times faster than the circular motion of the music picture in Windows Media Player…”
Apparently, I got hallucinations….
Hallucination is our vision of what we face now, but with some addition or subtraction of the images, sounds, or existing nature. In the hallucination, the visions which are seen by our eyes can be increased or decreased, so do the sounds we hear can be increased or decreased as compared with the actual, moreover a man’s nature…. can be changed easily by our hallucinations…
That afternoon… (According to my hallucination, it was 6:00 pm) …. across from my bed in the ICU room there were 3 patients who were lying on bed. At the leftmost there was someone who always used Padang language to communicate, he was dark skinned, mostly silent, and occasionally his lungs needed to be “fumed” so that the mucus on his chest could be fused. Right in front of my bed there was Mr. Waluyo from Lampung and at the night before the surgery he attended the briefing together with me. At the rightmost across from me there was a patient who was special because his mouth was always installed an air bag which could twitch along with the exit and entry of the breath. His right hand was tied by iron on the patient’s bed. Apparently, this patient was the noisiest one by banging his hand to the iron bars in the bed. I couldn’t see the patients at the left and right side of me, but they were fine, quiet (later I found out that while I was still unconscious, three of the patients on either side of me was summoned by the Almighty)…
The Patients in the ICU room were manned by 2 doctors, the first doctor was a surgeon who was still studying at Harapan Kita Heart Hospital, the second doctor was an anesthetist who most often appeared in the ICU room. There were five nurses who manned this ICU room, which consisted of 3 male nurses and 2 female nurses. The doctors’ duty was to check the patients here and there, while the nurses’ duty was more serious – which was, they filled out a stripped form, A3 in size which it seemed that every 5 minutes the patients’ progress should be written in the form. Each nurse wrote the progress of two patients in the ICU room.
Suddenly I felt that the “image” or “vision” that I could gather from this ICU room was increasingly bleak. And I heard some pretty scary sounds. Accompanied by the music sound coming out of some radios, with a type of house music that was pounding….
“Here I give you anesthetic… not bad, it can last until 10 hours… So you will wake up again 10 hours later…“, a nurse injected anesthetic in my right arm…
“Search it in all the patients’ pockets…“, said a nurse …
“Open their wallet, take their money….“, said another nurse …
“Come on… all of you close your eyes… don’t you dare to open your eyes…!“, said another nurse.
“Beware if you dare to open your eyes, I’ll plug my finger in your eyes …“, said another nurse louder.
I then tried to open my eyes then I saw an image in front of me which was completely different (from the image I saw after I was fully conscious in the next day) … I felt that my bed in ICU room had been shifted to a lab – because I saw some sinks and their tap on top of them. The position of the sinks was only around 1 meter from my bed…
In accordance with the threat that I heard, I then only dared to peek (to open my eyes a bit) because opening eyes is prohibited. I then also felt regretful for myself asking why I didn’t bring my wallet. If I didn’t bring my wallet, I would be punished hard for sure and I had to do something which the effect was very bad for me, I thought.
A moment later, I heard a voice:
“Let’s party..! Okayyy… it’s already 6 pm, time to party!” said a nurse as he adjusted his radio out loud. I also saw two other nurses set their own radio. So there were 3 radio’s sounds coming into my ears….
After a few moments the “madness” happened, I then took a deep breath. Not long after that, as I saw a doctor called someone in the next room, but his voice was loud enough that I could hear the details of the conversation…
“Yeah Boss, I apologize… this time we can’t raise a large amount of money”, said the doctor pleading.
“But before now, we had managed to hand over Rp 17 million deposit for People Struggle…”, said the doctor, trying to make an excuse.
“Yes Boss…. Yes Boss…”, the doctor tried to close the conversation …
As I kept my eyes closed, I then thought how mean the doctors and nurses at this hospital. My heart then was beating fast.
Suddenly I heard a voice, “Sir, please take this medicine, Sir”, said the nurse who was dancing in front of me in my vision.
I then asked, “Nurse, will this medicine kill me or nourish me?” in firm voice…
The nurse then replied, “Oh my God… I do wear the hijab headscarf … you see me, take a look, how could I lie to you, Sir?“, said the nurse seriously.
I then took some pills which the two of them were big (the pills were caplet pills which were fairly big and their color was light blue that later on I knew that they were Paracetamol as pain reliever)…
Soon, I fell asleep…. by reciting ayat al kursi (the verse of the throne) as if there were colorful Arabic alphabet – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet – which quickly spun to the right just like the music display on Windows Media Player, but this rotation was much faster and made me dizzy ….
Suddenly I became totally aware. I saw the “image” or “vision” in front of me had stopped spinning, and replaced by a clear and bright vision. But then I took a deep breath because I had escaped from the “robbery” of the money like the other patients’ purses. I felt lucky because I was still alive. Apparently this was the end of my hallucination in the ICU room….
In the afternoon (I thought it was afternoon) during the visiting hours at 11:00 am to 12:00 am, my daughter Dessa and her husband came into my room. Although I’ve done with the hallucination, but the effects of the hallucination was still there….
I then said to Dessa (later she confirmed that I said so), “Dess … get rid Papa out of this room, all the nurses and doctors are evil. They will kill Papa“, I said quietly but firmly…
My daughter, Dessa then held her husband out of my room quickly with her eyes kept staring at my eyes, she just said, “Nah … No, Papa…. No, Papa...” and eventually, Dessa was up on the ICU exit door and disappeared…
I then thought about escaping from this ICU room. Although my mouth was still gagged with a respirator (breathing apparatus in the form of 1 cm diameter tube that was inserted into my mouth), I also saw 3 channel infusions on my left neck and 3 channel infusions on my right neck. I quickly assessed which of the infusion tubes on the left and right neck which was the less dangerous …
I decided that the channel infusion on my right side is the most safe to be released, and I immediately took off all intravenous lines on the right side of my neck. And I also tried to get down from that ICU bed which actually was set high enough… with the intention to escape…
“Hey… hey … hey … Nurse….! Nurse….! There is a patient who wants to run away..!“, screamed a female wellwisher ho visited her relative in the ICU room…
Three male nurses then came to my bed and pressed my chest so that it’s flat on the bed.
“I want to be cooperative…. I want to cooperate… I will stay here if you are cooperative too…” I said to the three nurses who were still pressing my chest to the bed…
“Yes, we want to be cooperative, so you can just relax here…“, said a nurse…
And I then fell asleep not long after that….. (To be continued).
Ceritaku Ceritamu Ceritakita 
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