Robert A. Wagner +/- The Little Wretches: Music

• MP3 play whole song, hi-fi (broadband)

One day, I was a happy, popular, talented college kid, delivering pizzas during summer break. The next day, I was getting poked by medical students. The next day I underwent surgery.

It took me about five minutes to write this song. Then I spent the next two-and-a-half years undergoing chemotherapy.

I did not fear death. I knew that God had a plan for me, and I had yet to fulfill that plan. He wouldn't send me on a mission and not let me stick around to complete it.

Still, I spent the next twenty years fighting with God for letting this happen to me.

THANKS FOR SAVING MY LIFE

The people in this place treat you like a piece of plastic
You're wrapped around their finger like a piece of elastic
They treat you like a moron and bathe you like a spastic
then stick you with more needles till you think it's fantastic
thanks for saving my life

The people in this place treat me like I'm doomed
Discussing my prognosis, they stand outside my room
They come in while I'm sleeping and stand around my bed
and talk about arrangements they will make when I am dead.

They've been shooting you with morphine as a comfort to your pain
As long as it keeps coming, you've no cause to complain.
You're getting poked and punctured till your body must react
They come to draw more blood, they find that all your veins collapse
It's not that nurses don't care, it's just they're getting robbed
They're too worn out to be concerned, it's really just a job
A ward of dying patients and a sixteen hour shift
Even Florence Nightingale would need some kind of lift
thanks for saving my life

And the people that you need now don't need you
So you spend your hours dialing, trying to catch someone at home
And when they finally answer you push guilt-trips all the time
And they've got no love or money so they can't be by your side
so you lie there like a zombie with your I.V. and your pills
They'll let you know on Tuesday if you're terminally ill
It makes no difference to them just as long as you pay your bills
Come on and get me some more morphine. Can't you see I need a thrill?
Thanks for saving my life.

Your visitors are so petty that you wish they'd disappear
but you end up acting happy any you never show your fear
When loved ones finally show up, you don't know how to explain
You need their company so much but you end up playing games
You tell them that you're fine although you're really feeling rotten
after you've seen your blood saturate a wad of cotton
They remember that you're sick, that you're a human is forgotten
So what if blood flows freely, it's your mind that does the clotting
Thanks for saving my life

So you lie in pain at night and you soak your bed with sweat
scheming in your mind about how you'll get even yet
and you think of your life story, you've been clipped
Oh God, I've been gypped
How long you pace the hallways always searching for a cure
They don't care if you're dying just as long as you're insured
and they'll use you as a guinea pig if it turns out that you're poor
and no one's gonna say what you're going to have in store
so drag your cancer-ridden body over into this wheelchair
We'll take you downstairs and stick some needles in you
so forget your expectations, pal, we're going to dissect you
and shoot so many x-rays through you, your skin will peel
Thanks for saving my life

And if I ever live through this, you won't know who I'll be
but I'll be keeping track of everyone who didn't see
Those who stood beside me and who crossed me off the list
and went about their petty lives like I would not be missed
And I'll battle with the heavens till they finally give
and return to me the healthy life that I deserve to live
and I'll hurl it in the faces of the feeble-hearted mass
who couldn't stay awake enough to watch it all go past
Thanks for saving my life