- Body Breakdowns, Tales of Illness and Recovery
- Anvil Press (2007)
I was grocery shopping in a Superstore when I took, as a friend put it, a nosedive into the frozen peas.
It's OK for her to talk to me like that -- we're members of the same club. She paid for her membership with a bilateral mastectomy; I bought mine with a cardiac arrest. After her operation, we tried to think of ways she could tell any new boyfriends that she was, shall we say, a couple of prows short of a Queen Mary. I suggested tasteful euphemisms like "hooterectomy" and "disemboobment," but she didn't care for them.
But anyway. We're all destined to become members of the club -- some of us are just more involved in it than others are.
I want to give a few tips to the boomers who are beginning to crash upon the medical profession like waves on rocks. Some of us almost-60s got a head start with our hearts and hooters and strokes and such, so why not share and tell our pals what they'll be dealing with? And who.
Get used to nurses
Mainly, don't be overly respectful of anyone. Waking up a medical prisoner tends to generate a bit of the old Stockholm Syndrome, but don't give in to it. If you do, they win.
Medical people are working stiffs like any other and will sometimes screw up. If this is bothersome it's not because they fail to be perfect, but because we expect them to be perfect.
Some of them may be caring, selfless humanitarians, but let's not dwell on them. Screw ups are more interesting to us. We're funny that way.
The first people you'll see when you wake up in a hospital are probably going to be nurses, and, sad to learn, they're about the same as any kind of staff in any kind of job, even the human meat-processing industry. A few nurses will be excellent; most will be competent but nothing special; and a few of them you wouldn't want taking care of a dog, much less a person. Your period of being in awe of nurses will expire at about the time one of them accidentally yanks out your intravenous line because she's not paying attention, maybe still thinking about last night's episode of ER, wondering why her own life pales in comparison and where it all went so terribly wrong.
The intensive care ward, after serious surgery, is a sub-habitat with its own peculiarities. After you wake up, see if you can spot the nurse who'd be most likely to sneak you a mickey of rum and a deck of smokes. She won't, but she might boost your morphine a tad. And we had great fun when she yanked out my catheter for me. Oh, how we laughed. Guys, you might want to be ready for that, so you can explain that some things change in size in certain situations, and it's bound to be smaller when you're sick, but at other times will be a lot bigger, honest. Try a Pinocchio analogy.
Intensive care is not without its good times. When one of the nurses said, "Hey, this guy's oxygen ran out, he's been breathing room air for the last hour," we all enjoyed a hearty chuckle.
Doctor's orders
Don't respect doctors too much either. Your supply of doctor-worship will run low when they keep calling you by the wrong name. I mean, the cat's vet can remember my name, but a cardiologist can't?
You won't be having a lot of discussion with doctors anyway. If a patient asks a specific question, they'll answer it, but if a patient doesn't know what questions to ask, the doctor won't volunteer much. Giving patients more information than they ask for might confuse the poor things. I swear, I want to make a card for patients who are exhausted and full of strange drugs, so they can just hand it to their doctors. It will read as follows: "Please give me all the information I'd ask for if I knew the right questions to ask and if I wasn't exhausted and full of drugs, and if we both didn't know there was somewhere else you'd rather be."
There's one group I can't find fault with: the surgeons. I mean, imagine having a complete stranger carve you open like a fresh-caught trout and stick his hands into your chest cavity -- isn't that just too weird and icky? -- and then you're able to go home a few days later with only a handful of Tylenol.
Of course, what do I know, really? I was asleep. Maybe my surgeon smoked while he worked and dropped ashes into me and rinsed me out with the dregs from his coffee cup. I mean, how would I know? But I choose to think surgeons are great, because you can't fuss over every little damn thing. You won't see much of the hospital's rank and file, who scurry in darkness below the ground. Technicians will ascend now and then to take blood and stick things into you. My ministering angel whined on and on and bloody on about how much she hated her job the whole time she was using me for poking practice.
Survival? meh
Don't think life turns into a bowl of cherries if you survive the hospital to see the light of day again. After you flee the place, you still have to deal with doctors, labs, and clinics on the outside. Their staff are invariably short, blonde, slightly overweight girls of twenty-something who are only too willing to send you chasing all over the province for tests you could have had done practically next door to your home. It's just easier for them to send you chasing all over the province than to make a few phone calls, while they ponder the last episode of Grey's Anatomy, wondering why their own lives are so lacking in romance and where did it all go so terribly wrong.
Don't believe anything these bimbettes tell you. They are not on your side. For that matter, no one in a hospital is completely on your side, except maybe the other patients, and they can be incredibly sweet because they're in our club. Medical people are in a different club, and will choose whatever treatment they want to, or whatever they think you want, or whatever they think you should want. What they won't do is ask what you do want. If you're lucky, their agenda will coincide with yours. Just remember: An educated guess is still a guess.
So think kind thoughts about Tommy Douglas and enjoy the drugs. The aging hippies among us will appreciate the wisdom of that advice. As the free pharmaceuticals drip into you, see if you can still say "far out" as if you really mean it. Your attending pipsqueaks can't understand how much more expensive dope has become since the '60s. Lawsy, child, the prices nowadays.
Sliding home
As for me, three years later, I'm pretty much back to normal and back at home. I have a new apartment; it's between a hospital and a graveyard, and I think that's great. And my friend sans rack is still dating.
Maybe all of this will help when you're an active member of the club and getting ready to move on. Eventually there won't be anyone left in the club -- only echoes of us all and those won't last long.
One day, in my hospital room, a four-bedder in cardiac central, an old man of maybe 80 was talking to his doctor, and I pulled a curtain around my bed to give them privacy, but I could still hear them talking.
Doctor: "The tests show one of your carotid arteries is completely blocked, and the other one's too far gone to be helped."
Old man: "Well. That's it then."
Doctor: "Is there someone who can pick you up?
Old man: "My son's coming to get me."
Clever of him to escape the clutches of the hordes hell-bent on keeping his body warm and moving for as long as they could.
When the old man left a few minutes later, he looked around the edge of my curtain and smiled and waved goodbye to me. He seemed content and was very pleasant. Graduating from the club. Going, as they say, in style. Smile and wave goodbye to us, old partner. We'll meet again in a better place than this, speed the day.
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