The Brown Laptop Chronicles: A Gonzo Descent Into the Third Circle

It began on a Tuesday—one of those deceptively normal days when the universe is secretly sharpening its knives. I could still see out of both eyes, including the one harboring the resident rat-bastard charlie. But charlie’s tenancy was up, and the landlord (me) was about to evict him with extreme prejudice. Like I always say, the rat bastard must die.

TUESDAY — ADMISSION TO THE UNDERWORLD

I arrive at Day Surgery around 2 p.m., where they require only the removal of my shirt. Not the shoes, though—apparently, they draw the line at full dignity extraction. An IV is started, and the nurse helpfully forgets to turn off the line, donating several ounces of my finest blood cells to the stainless-steel railing. A preview of coming attractions: leaks everywhere. Then the gurney ride. Why is it always like being smuggled through a warzone in a wobbly shopping cart? Doors open in opposing directions, hallways stretch like sterile cathedrals to the gods of bad decisions, and then a sudden pivot—now I’m being delivered headfirst to my fate. Inside the OR: lights, gadgets, chirps, beeps, enough machinery to reboot Frankenstein. A pillow gets shoved under my legs. Someone lies to me about “just oxygen,” the anesthesia mask comes down, and the Sleep Lady hits me with the good stuff.

**Exit: Consciousness.

Enter: Hell.**

POST-OP — THE FOUR-STOP TOUR OF REALITY

I awaken to that classic medical question: “How do you feel?” Like I just got punched through a dimension, thanks. They want the shirt back on—meaning the bed must be needed for the next poor soul. Soon I’m in a wheelchair, rolled toward the portable cattle chute, and loaded into the getaway car with Super Spouse at the wheel. The next forty miles of consciousness happen in four snapshots: a loop near Lowe’s, Green’s Sausage House, Highway 77, and finally the driveway of the Forest Compound. For the record, the procedure was to remove the eye and replace it with a prosthetic later. Eventually, I’ll even get a big-ass contact lens to accessorize the void. Very cyberpunk. Very “post-apocalyptic pirate.”

TUESDAY NIGHT — HELLO, FIREHOSE

I stumble inside feeling bizarrely okay. Crack open a Coke. Mouth is dustier than a desert corpse. I decide to “get ahead of the pain” with Tylenol 3 + codeine. Ten minutes later: Heat wave. Sweating like a sinner at a baptism. Then the apocalypse erupts. Projectile vomiting—full firehose mode—six or seven rounds, possibly more. Hard to count when your internal organs are trying to exit through your mouth. After the initial purge, the body kept trying anyway, just out of spite. Water only provokes more revolt. Super Spouse performs a heroic midnight drive back to Temple to acquire “don’t-hurl-your-soul-out” medication while I simmer in a fog of confusion and misery.

WEDNESDAY — UP, DOWN, NAUSEA, REPEAT

The day becomes a loop: sit up, sip water, slowly collapse horizontal, nausea explodes, jolt upright. Repeat until madness. At some point, acid starts leaking into my throat. Heartburn? Reflux? A message from the demons? Two Tums later—sweet relief. So begins the Tums Regimen: two tablets every hour because sanity is relative and I’m clearly willing to chew chalk like a goat if it keeps the retching at bay. By evening, I’m managing actual horizontal sleep—1 to 2 hours at a time. Progress! Except minor issue: I’m now exceeding the daily Tums limit like a man training for the Calcium Olympics. Super Spouse rescues me again with Pepcid AC. Game. Changer. Tums gave me 60 minutes. Pepcid gave me 12 hours. I swear the heavens opened.

THURSDAY — THANKSGIVING IN THE NETHER REALM

Sleep, pee, sleep, pee—my kidneys running like industrial pumps. This is when the hallucinations hit full stride. A thick brown laptop materializes in my mind. A beautiful, ornate machine running Windows 10 upgraded to 11. When I open it, it displays a pop-up motif of unknown origin. And the best part? I can enter text with pure thought. My inner blogger ascends to god-tier productivity levels. I’m banging out witty, snarky, brilliant entries—dark humor flowing like wine. I’m explaining the hallucinations, the furry animals I keep seeing, the madness of it all. I’m a genius. I’m unstoppable. I’m also not actually typing anything anywhere at all. Meanwhile, Super Spouse is cooking Thanksgiving dinner, and the smell makes me want to revisit the firehose era. But around noon: A fart. A glorious, earth-shattering fart. Proof my guts are rebooting. I sleep away most of Thursday. Praise Pepcid. Also: congratulations me—now officially allergic to Tylenol with codeine. And apparently a long-time sufferer of acid reflux without knowing it. The pieces begin to click.

FRIDAY — PATCHES, STITCHES, AND NIGHTMARES

Time to clean the eye area. I peel off the patch, expecting the metal shield my hallucinations promised—complete with cooling vents at the cardinal points. Reality offers… plastic. Just a plastic disk. Even worse, I vividly remember the doctor sewing my eyelids shut top-to-bottom in a giant plus-sign pattern. Nope. Just standard sutures. But they felt real. Still foggy, still confused, but inching toward sanity. I prep to resume my ritual Saturday financials—five years of tradition demands it.

SATURDAY — THE GREAT WEIGHT DROP

Up at 7 a.m. Weight: 162.2, down from 182.2 on Tuesday. Congratulations: I have lost an entire Thanksgiving turkey in body mass. Breakfast: cranberry bread and honeyed coffee. I will soon be my svelte, debonair self again—whether I want to or not. Financials take me all day because I keep running out of steam. But by evening, I stay awake most of the day, with only two rest stops. A major win. Big Saturday night for Pirate Pedro: in bed by 8.

SUNDAY — THE RECKONING

I wake early—pain minimal, but the sewn-shut eyelid drives me insane. In that foggy, pre-waking limbo, I start adding to the “blog” again. And then the truth hits me like a frying pan: I don’t own a brown laptop. There is no brown laptop. None of this was ever written down. Houston, we have a problem. The entire Magnum Opus of Dark Humor and Hallucinated Wisdom has evaporated into the ether. Sunday otherwise proceeds uneventfully. Four to five hours upright, three hours down. Repeat. Weight creeping back up: 165.8. Apparently, I can nap after just finishing a nap.

MONDAY — STAMINA: PARTIALLY RESTORED

Up at 6, deleting spam emails like a man possessed. Same vertical/horizontal cycle. Watched a movie start to finish—an achievement worthy of fireworks. By 10 a.m., steam gone. Back to horizontal. Later I start the attempt to reconstruct the blog from the void. Honestly, what I created mentally at the time seemed much better. But then again I was in semi la-la land. Catch Greg Gutfeld’s monologue before face-planting.

TUESDAY — BACK ON PEDRO TIME

Up at 5. Feel almost normal—by my standards. It has taken two plus days to reconstruct the story because hallucinations and faulty memories keep overlapping like cursed Venn diagrams. But through it all: Super Spouse and Sister-Friend Pam treat me like the recovering Grand Poohbah of the Forest Compound. Actual heroes. Soon enough the next wave of craziness will arrive, and I’ll be ready—with a real notebook this time.

________________________________________

Final Words From the Cynical Narrator

You’re not crazy if you’re laughing.

You’re not lost if you know the way back eventually.

You’re not alone—hell veterans always return with stories.

And with my new found love of Pepcid , buy stock

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