For the last week everybody at the Sleep Center has been talking about our newest chronic patient, Hank Gradowski. Nobody really told me about him, I just heard his name getting thrown about. When he first introduced himself to me last week I said, “Hank…Hank the Tank…Ka-boom!” He smiled and said that’s right. But when he shuffled away, Rex came up from behind and said, “Nice work, Typhus. He’s dying.” I asked if he was dying from a tank injury, and Rex said I was the biggest idiot he had ever met.
I later found out in the break room thank Hank is not dying from a tank injury (I was then called an idiot again, this time by Marcus, one of the assistant). Instead, Hank Gradowski has Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which is the polite way of saying human mad cow disease. Marcel tried to explain to me what exactly was happening in Hank’s brain using words like “spongebob encepholopod,” “prius,” and “microscope.” I tuned him out until he said it’s kind of like his brain is liquefying. Hank is slowly losing the ability to fall asleep, which Rex says is going to make Hank go "ape." The Sleep Center is doing what it can for him before he either dies or goes into a coma.
Hank’s a pretty great guy, though. I asked him if he was dreaming when he slept, and he was, and then I told him I’m a good dream interpreter and sketch artist. Hank got excited because, since he has memory loss, he likes to know about the dreams he doesn’t remember. He told one dream about how he went to an underground rodeo with the leader of North Korea, only to find out they went on the wrong day and so instead sat on the ocean and ate Mentos breath mints together. I sketched it for him and he was pretty happy, and told me he’s excited to look at it when the deterioration of his neurons causes his dementia to create further memory loss. That Hank!
He commissioned me to draw as many of his dreams as I possibly can. Last night Marcel and Marcie, an assistant, were working with him, and he told me another dream he had. His speech is pretty slurred so it took a while for me to understand, but it seems Hank was in a fitness center with a whole bunch of identical twins, and he was walking around pouring Pepsi on everyone from a two-liter bottle. I started working on it immediately in the utility closet. Marcel told me that Hank had also told him about a dream involving a book being shot to space that leaked milk on its way to the sun. On the way out with his caretakers Hank whispered to me not to tell anyone, but that he didn’t see those things in his dreams, but when he was awake. I told him I wouldn't tell because sometimes I wish people are around so badly it's almost like they really are there.
Then he said he hopes he starts hallucinating about pretty birds just for me, and I told him that would be awesome. Then I told him if he didn’t hallucinate about birds that would be okay, too. And then I called him "Hank the Tank," because Rex is the one who's an idiot.
