Here you will find a wide variety of stories not related to running. This is more of a "change-of-pace" page dedicated to sharing anecdotes that will make you think, laugh, wonder, or just make you scratch your head. Enjoy.
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE HUMAN KIND 8/5/11
Cold. Cold enough the sweat from my anxiety freezes to my arms, neck. Operating room. Two massive electrical machines squealing from the power they produce squeeze an operating chair between them, so close it seems the chair has no room to move – or breath. The air, so crisp, is accompanied by an eerie darkness only a science fiction book could describe.
My dreary entrance into this room desolated of any home comfort makes that anxious sweat freeze to my body. I lie down on the OR chair and stare upwards, only to see the two massive machines that will cleanse my handicap of seeing – at least that is what I believe the contraptions surrounding me do. Ambient voices surround the room. Sounds like three, maybe two. The doctor appears above me in my view.
Doc: Name?
Me: Jonathan Lusch.
Doc: Date of Birth?
Me: March 2nd, 1983.
Doc: Surgery?
Me: Lasik. Custom. Both eyes.
Doc (to nurses): prep left eye. Tape right eye.
Me: …….
A circular apparatus engulfs my left eye holding the lids apart. I am only staring at a peculiar red dot that won’t stop flashing.
Doc: Ready for suction.
Me: ….
As the suction feels like it’s pulling my eye upwards, all I can see are white balls, as white as silk from heaven, surrounding a bright fuzzy light in the middle. My eye felt like my body, and I was being slowly drawn to it. I ask myself, “Is this the light people see after they pass away and go to heaven? No. This looks, and feels like, I am being abducted – by aliens. The pressure on the eye hits my body and I feel the suction lifting my whole body up. I am in the OR.of some alien ship hovering over Columbus, Ohio.
The Head Alien pulls back a flap from my cornea to the side with one of its appendages using some sort of foreign tool. All is hazy. There, the red flashing dot appears again. I hear indistinct voices and suddenly the alien machine over my eye starts making noises. “Zap! Zap Zap! Zap! Zap Zap! Zap! Zap Zap!” Are my eyes being harvested? Am I being experimented on?
The smell of an over-worked care engine engulfs the room. My Cornea flap is put back in place.
Head Alien: Irrigation.
Subordinate Alien: (inaudible).
Head Alien: More.
Subordinate Alien: (inaudible).
Head Alien: Swab.
Head Alien: Next eye.
Left eye taped. Right eye open. Same procedure again. Same thoughts. Same feelings.
Right eye finished – finally. Indistinct chatter goes on around the room like there is an audience of beings watching the procedure. I am startled by two cold, soggy palms grabbing my forearms. The feeling of foreign creatures holding me sends chills throughout my body. I am pulled up.
Subordinate Alien: Open your eyes now.
I open a door and peer out into a waiting room. I can see. I can see – better. Already. I turn around and there are two nurses donned in blue scrubs and a female doctor in a clad-white uniform.
Me: Thank you?
Doc: You’re welcome.
As I walk through the beige colored hallway on my way to the post-op room, I can’t help think to myself, “Was I abducted by aliens? Where did they go?”
My wife tries to console me, but I still can’t get the images out of my mind: the feeling of being sucked up into a space station, my eyes being harvested, and the non-human sounds in the O.R.
All I can think is, “Damn. That was one hell of a Xanax pill I took!”
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