h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I checked into the hospital last Friday at 1 pm for my cardiac cath (all of us experienced laymen call it that, you know) and I was released around 10:30 pm. I found it nerve-racking but I'm feeling fine now. This is after 11 hours of sleep into Saturday plus a two hour nap, and doing just about nothing all day. My sister picked up the girls for the weekend, so no booooored children were forced to suffer through our long lassitude.
I met new people and got to do new things while waiting. While lying on a bed in the same-day surgery center, I saw a lot of "The Lion in Winter", that excellent 1968 movie with Peter O'Toole as King Henry the nth and Catherine Hepburn as his Queen, whom he has imprisoned in a tower for attempting to overthrow him. They, their kids (Richard Lion Heart, Geoffrey and John) and nephew the king of France are intriguing people, because they all are engaging in intrigue to get power, land and advantageous marriages. It was exhausting.
I saw a series of nurses walk by, each one absurdly clutching a brightly-colored box of Froot Loops or Lucky Charms cereal, as if David Lynch had scripted this day for me. It turns out one of the nurses sells cereal at bargain prices to the others. Where does she get it? Even knowing this does nothing to dilute the whiff of absurdity that remains.
I saw slowly-dawning comprehension on the face of an orderly as I told him: "Uh, no, I can't walk...". People seemed constantly amazed at how little I can do when deprived of my adaptations to daily life, and seemed befuddled when I would ask them for help undressing and dressing or to be repositioned higher up in the bed. I'd have thought long experience with sick or old people would have set them up for more mental flexibility.
As they performed the procedure, I got the chance to view the progresss of the catheter thru my arteries and into my own coronary arteries, which as I had forgotten, are in constant motion with the heart, which itself is regularly displaced by the motion of the diaphragm and lungs, also something I never thought of before. I saw the contours of my coronary arteries, delineated with each puff of xray-opaque dye he sent through. I observed my vertebrae and discs, looking disturbingly natural and irregular, obviously the product of growth and the stress of life rather than an idealized form from a textbook.
I say I'm skeptical of both God and Man, but sometimes I just have to praise someone....
"I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well." -- Ps. 139

"How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in't!" -- Shakespeare, The Tempest