Book cover

A HOSPITAL STAY CAN BE A REAL KICK

The young nurse had just finished taking my blood pressure—the only steady numbers my body gives off—and she turned her attention to my pulse. Her tiny fingers gently pinched my writs searching for the radial artery. I remained quietly seated on the hospital bed as she stared at the simple gold chain bracelet on her otherwise naked wrist. "where's your watch?" I asked.
"it's in the shop for repairs," she said.
"How can you take my pulse without a watch?" I asked.
"If your pulse seems to be running unusually fast or slow, I borrow a watch. I'll get one." Under the circumstances, could there be any doubt that my pulse had just taken a quick run for the record?
As she left the room, I shouted, "When you come back, bring me a copy of your credentials."
I was joking of course. I didn't really want to see her credentials. If Iantagonized her, she might make up numbers about my pulse rate, maybe even substitute the room temperature for my body temperature. A nurse who is willing to estimate a pulse is capable of colorizing my chest X-rays or switching the channel on my monitor to show me brain dead. Admittedly, these responses of mine are a bit hysterical and paranoiac, but when I'm a patient in a hospital I worry about the little things. Since I don't know how to read mu EKG or respond sensibly to numbers from my blood work and cure myself, I pay attention to the little things that I should be able to understand. Then I am set off stride when I discover that the nurse taking my pulse is not wearing a watch.
I've been around hospitals long enough to know that these institutions are hi-tech, miracle-working processes far beyond the comprehension of non-medical personnel. I also know that for the patient at the nitty-gritty level of understanding, hospitals can be a zoo.
There are rules about surviving a stay in the hospital, standard rules like never anger your nurse or argue with your surgeon before surgery. I also know, for example, that jokes about institutional food have a mysterious way of ending up in the hospital food chain. When I asked the dietician why I was now all of a sudden being given a sugar substitute instead of the real thing, she said I was a diabetic. "Since when?" I asked. She pointed at the menu with the diet for diabetics encircled. "Those aren't my circlings," I shouted, shamelessly baring my anxiety. "Someone is forging my circlings, making me a diabetic." I had been crowned "diabetic for a day."
If you've been healthy so far and you don't really know about hospitals, you should realize that the logic of these institutions is on a higher plane. They can cure nearly any illness and repair nearly any organ. They have shiny machines that can curl the hairs on your soul, and they play in the big leagues of life and death. Life means you win; death means you lose. But in between the Great Mystery of winning and losing are thousands of little ordinary things that just don't make sense, things that test the patient's patience.
The medical wisdom guides me to eat a low-sodium diet, well balanced diet that tastes like sand, while the medical staff at the nurse's station are munching corn chips, packing cheese dips and sodas. They celebrate birthdays with chocolate cake and ice cream. The doctors and nurses who advise me to take it easy when I get back on the job, work twelve-hour days. The nurse who scolds me for crossing my legs—a position in hospitals because it impedes circulation of the blood—smells like cigarette smoke. She rejects my deal that I'll keep my legs uncrossed if she'll quit smoking. Thirty minutes before my big opening in the O.R. I ask why I haven't been prepped for surgery. They say I have been. I insist I haven't. Their only proof that I have is that the "prep" has been checked off on my chart. I remember the absurd world of Joseph Heller's Catch-22 where Yossarian doctors up the map by moving the bomb line up over Bologna, thereby convincing the officers that Bologna has been captured when in fact hasn't.
Of course, we are grateful when the servants of medicine change our oil, flush out the pipes, grind the valves and reset our timing so we can walk out into the world healthy and productive. But if only we could just drop off our bodies for repairs and pick them up later. It seems a shame to have to have our heads there to hang around and witness the repair work, trying to make sense out of people and procedures. Our heads keep wanting to understand why we are eligible for pain medication only once every four hours, but the medication only provides one hour of relief.
When the lab technician wants to draw blood—"You're going to feel a little stick"—it would be nice if we didn't have to be there. We don't need to hear the announcements of pain. One man's "little stick" is another man's terror. What we need is a hospital where we can send our bodies for repair while we stay home. On a note we'd write, "Fix the gall bladder. Leave the keys under the big toe and I'll pick me up Friday afternoon. If you have time, you might biopsy the mole on the left cheek." And while we're spinning our wheels inside this automotive metaphor, how about a 30-day warranty when we leave the hospital? Used cars get no less.
During a hospital stay a few years ago, I was asked if I would mind being moved to another room where a patient was dying. His previous roommate wanted out of that gloomy situation. I said if my presence didn't bother the dying man, the move was all right with me. This man—let's call him Gregor Samsa—was in a coma and had not touched his food tray: a can of ginger ale, a carton of milk, a bowl of jello and a plastic container of juice—a liquid diet. Eventually the kitchen personnel removed the tray. Early in the evening the nurse asked me if I would like something tasty before turning in for the night. I wasn't thirsty, but I said, "A cup of custard or pudding sounds good to me."
The nurse responded, "Don't try to fool me, Mr. Samsa. You know you're on a liquid diet."
I worried that I too was dying, that I too was in a coma. Or if the nurse thought I was Samsa, did she think I was dying? Was the man in the next bed told the same story about me, that he, Gregor Samsa, was sharing a room with a dying man? If I fell asleep, how would I wake up? Which brings me to more rules for surviving hospitals: 1. Never fall asleep. 2. If you must sleep, never lose consciousness. 3. If you lose consciousness, keep your fingers (not your legs) crossed.
When you are awake and conscious, the best you can do is stay alert to the absurdities. You leave the life and death business to the larger forces. You believe that the hospital is committed to saving your life. And you try to remember that as long as you're laughing, you're not dead.

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