I first spent the night in a hospital in 1956. My brother Rick had been there for a couple of days when I arrived. Together, we weighed maybe 100 pounds. Ears and gigantic brown eyes compiled most of that.

We had a stomach virus; a scary thing in the 50s. Rabies and polio were pretty frightening, too. So was Undertoad, but he only lived near the beach. Lucky for us there were no internet predators or mad cow disease.

I went to the doctor's office earlier that day and made it almost to the front door before spewing scrambled eggs and hot chocolate all over the waiting room. That's when they booked me into Rick's room.

Neither of us could bear to have any relationship with food even though we kept hearing rumors about an ominous new childhood threat called glucose. This punishment awaited the one who quit eating totally.

The first thing I did upon arrival was push my replacement breakfast away. Then the unthinkable happened. A nurse wheeled some type of torture device next to Rick's bed. It was long and silver with tubes and odd containers swinging from hooks. Somewhere we could sense the presence of an 11- inch needle. Glucose!

A horrible shrieking sound came from Rick as the nurse wrapped a tractor tire tube around his arm and inserted the ever growing needle into my frail sibling. With dramatic background music pounding my senses, I grabbed the powdered eggs, surplus meat and week old hardtack biscuit, and ate. When my plate was clean I asked for more.

My next hospital stay was two weeks ago. A series of events led me to a place where many new wonders awaited. The IV was eerily similar but capable of much more. Before my first pitcher of ice melted, I was being wheeled to someplace called CT scan for pictures. This was so a garden hose length tube could be inserted into my body to drain Alien III- like liquid from inside me.

Being restrained like this for five days was easier than I thought. I had no desire to read, TV was horrible, and sleeping was impossible. The food was surprisingly bearable. I was far from hungry and something bad happened each time I digested anything, but I still ate. For some reason, I had white hose on my legs; I looked like Peggy Lipton in Mod Squad. At least no one mentioned rabies, glucose, or Undertoad.

The worst time for me was late Saturday as Alabama tried their darndest to give away the season by mailing in a contest with Kentucky. The too close game was easier to deal with because of a neat thing hospitals have; something called a Morphine pump. Mixed into the maze of the IV, this thing is an innocent looking device that makes dealing with everything much easier. They need to sell these at Wal Mart.

The only drawback involves unbelievably weird dream sequences. Time stands still, weird incoherent sounds race through the body until you finally fade away from sheer exhaustion, only to awake with a start at the next noise. Much like a John Tesh concert.