Last year during surgery my body was still recovering, and now I can finally continue my studies.

Before surgery, a skin test is done first, which basically means injecting a few antibiotics into the skin to see how the patient reacts. If there is no abnormal reaction, it means the patient is not allergic to the antibiotics, and these antibiotics may be used for treatment during or after surgery.

When the surgery notice came, the nurse informed me that drinking water was forbidden. Fasting started at that point, and surgery usually began three or four hours later, with the medical staff from the operating room pushing a surgical cart to the ward to pick up the patient (this carries two meanings: either the surgery cures the illness, or the person may not come back).

I remember that after entering the operating room, there were eight or nine doctors and nurses inside. From what I recall, the nurses were all men too. Then I was told to lie flat on a table shaped somewhat like a cross, and to place both hands flat on the two sides of the cross. Then a nurse inserted a needle into the artery of my left hand, but missed on the first try and did not succeed, so they switched to my right hand. At the time the nurse said not to be afraid of the pain, it would be over soon.

I remember a doctor asking me whether I felt any difficulty breathing. To be honest, I did not feel any discomfort at the time. It seemed a nurse had a mask ready nearby, probably prepared for oxygen. After the needle was inserted in my right hand, I do not know what happened next, and I had already lost consciousness.

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By the time I woke up again, five days had passed. The day of surgery was April 23, and when I woke up it was around May 27-28. When I woke up it seemed to be nighttime, and I felt extremely uncomfortable. Then I saw a nurse come over and ask me: Are you feeling very uncomfortable?

Me: I nodded. At the time I was on a ventilator with tubes in my nose and mouth, so I could not speak at all.

Nurse: You wait, I will get a tube to suction your sputum. You will feel better in a bit.

It seemed the nurse pulled out the ventilator tube, inserted the tube, and it seemed to curl up and then the suction was done.

After waking up I really could not sleep, and I just looked around the room. I thought to myself, the extracorporeal circulation everyone talked about before surgery, could this big room be the extracorporeal circulation? I thought no wonder this equipment is so expensive, it turns out it is this big. (Later I realized it was just a room.)

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Then, looking around the room, I saw something in front of my eyes that looked like a camera, and in front of it were the words "photo collection" in extra-large gilded characters. I thought to myself, why would the ICU install such equipment? Could it be surveillance installed to prevent patients from attempting suicide? But even so, it should not be installed like that, how frightening. With a slight change, those few words become: portrait collection! Is that not cursing someone?

Then came May Day. Early in the morning I heard that my uncle and other relatives from my hometown had come to see me, and I even saw them carrying a coffin over. I thought, could my relatives have prepared it because they thought I died during surgery, or is this some custom in my hometown?

...Strange stories like this kept playing out over the next few days. Only later did I learn that they were all hallucinations. During those ten days in the ICU after surgery, apart from my parents who guarded the ICU door every day waiting for news about me, no one from my hometown came. It was just that my hallucinations kept playing out. Perhaps the hallucinations were also related to the general anesthesia.