IT was only after my professor doctor brother, Dr Edmund Ong, had told me much later after the fact, that for three nights in a row in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) after my triple heart bypass CABG procedure at the Sarawak Heart Centre (SHC) at Kota Samarahan, that I first heard the term ‘morphine dreams’.
Apparently morphine dreams are very rare, only a very small percentage of those who have undergone a cocktail of drugs to anesthetise you for major surgery would actually experience it. What a wild ride it was.
Let me start at the very beginning. It should also serve as a precautionary tale for all those above 50 years of age, who have led a sedentary life with virtually no or very little exercise but who love the good life – you know, the wine, women, and song bit, with lots of fatty food and dangerously inactive hobbies like reading, writing, and movies. The only bit of exercise I tend to get is to walk 100 metres to the nearest food stall if I can’t find a free parking spot right in front of it!
For a period of a couple of months about three years ago, I was getting more and more frequent spells of being short of breath coupled with hyper-fast heartbeats (tachycardia), which didn’t sort themselves out as swiftly as in the past. A visit to Datuk Dr Sim Kui Hian at the SHC quickly diagnosed that I had three blockages in my major blood vessels, which could only be taken care of by CABG (coronary artery bypass grafting). A date was fixed and I had my procedure done at the end of November 2016.
I prepared myself for the procedure by praying and taking advice and listening to those who have had experience either first-hand or had professional expertise on the subject. Instrumental among those who boosted my confidence was Revd George Tay and his wife Eunice, both from Singapore. Eunice had been inside an OT when a CABG procedure was being carried out and I was told in very minute detail on what to expect. The visuals going through my head then were matched with YouTube videos of real life CABG procedures I had seen as well.
Mr Jong Yuan Shun, the chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery at SHC, performed my CABG procedure with utmost care and skill. Within four and a half hours the OT doors opened and I was out and admitted into the ICU. It was a success. There I stayed for the next four nights.
People in ICUs are given many separate medicines, including sedatives and painkillers, and they can affect each individual in different ways. Some people say they drifted on and off, others found it very difficult to sleep as the ICU itself has an entirely alien environment to it. The lighting, frequent medical interventions, visitors, and noise all work towards making it rather strange and unnatural for the patient.
I don’t exactly know how to describe how I had felt. During the daytime it was fine, I could read and listen to music, I had the immediate family visit and a few close friends. It’s the nights that were strange. Up till today I am still torn between describing the nature of my state of mind during the first three nights in the ICU as between ‘heaven and hell’, in a state of being in a dream, nightmare, hallucination, or fantasy.
The very first night I was certain that I didn’t sleep at all – as the hallucinations or dreams were so real – I was right in the middle of a bacchanalian feast or festival where there were men and women of all ages, in all forms of dress and undress, merrymaking and feasting, and wining and dining in some huge Roman hall! This had gone on and on and although after some time I had wanted to leave and just go home or back to sleep I couldn’t – something or someone kept holding me back. It became a bit torturous after that.
What suddenly woke me up from that was the feeling that I was freezing to death. The air-conditioning of the ICU was on full blast and I was shivering. I quickly called for the nurse, who came and I wondered if they could turn the temperature higher; her answer was that the temperature was fixed and couldn’t be adjusted. I then asked for something to warm me up; she looked for a heating machine. It came after sometime – a sort of suspended hot-plate the size of a 24-inch flat screen TV. She said they’ve never used it before, so needed to set it up. I felt a bit warmer after that.
On the second night, I had another strange ‘visionary’ nightmare of sorts – I was attending Elton John’s birthday party in one of his mansions; and all of his celebrity friends were there – again lots of merrymaking and food and booze flowed. He even performed live! That hallucination lasted a bit more than I had wanted as well. Luckily I was woken by my full bladder.
On the third night, the ‘happening’ took a different turn: I was deep inside my PC at home, exchanging comments and replies to a few nasty cyber-troopers trying to instigate all sorts of political and racial mischief on my personal Facebook page and my public forum. It just went on and on for a few hours; it became so heated that I could sense both my stress and anger when the comments became too real and nasty. I never managed to resolve what happened to the thread as a nurse woke me to take my medication. Saved by the pills!
By the fourth night I had asked Mr Jong, the chief surgeon who attended to me, if I was ready for the general ward as I couldn’t get any sleep at all in ICU. I got transferred there on the fifth day; and by then my morphine must have worn off as I no longer had any more fitful dreams or nightmares.
I am sure that a good psychiatrist or psycho-analyst like my good friend Ellen Whyte would be able to interpret those morphine dreams I had – from deep within the recesses of my mind.
Good luck if you want to try!