I wrote this while I was in the hospital.
Our brains are connection machines. No matter how old a memory, when the brain fishermen throw out the neural net, the memory fish are often one connected with the present.
Last time I was in a hospital for any reason, I was in 5th grade. Then they sliced and diced out my appendix. That, my friends, was a miserable experience, probably would have been for anyone, but most certainly for a kid.
Mystery Pain
I’m not sure why I remember this detail, but early one Wednesday, I was doing my usual thing, climbing on huge stacks of lumber in a place we always called the empty lot. There was a factory of some sort there. Hence the piles of lumber. It was always empty at night, though, and that is where we played ball. I think that’s why we called it the empty lot.
I began to get a twinge of pain in my side the day before this, maybe two days – that part is somewhat vague. It was, looking with the clarity of hindsight, a prescient event. The pain emanated from the same area that brought me here today. On that day, too many decades ago, the pain had me doubled over. I mean literally. That was the only way I could walk by the time my thick skull told me I should probably head home. You can picture it. I am doing an imitation bent over duck walk, with my head tilted up as far as I could get it so I could see. Crossing the streets was a real treat.
Had I waited much longer – my dad told me this later – would probably have been my permanent undoing. The doctor – I remember his name to this day, Doctor Volgame’, but I wouldn’t vouch for the spelling – told them that my appendix was “ready to burst.” Apparently that is not a desirable outcome.
An Ordeal Wrapped in an Ordeal
That event, which should have been a routine surgery, turned out to be one of the more memorable ordeals of my life. Actually, it was an ordeal within and ordeal. For a day or so after I had the surgery, I was golden. My parents brought me comic books, treats, and lavished more attention on me than I ever got at home. My fifth grade class sent me a card signed by all of them, and addressed to “Master Michael Kirkeberg.” “Master?” I never did find out where that term came from. Even better than the card was what Sister Celestine didn’t do. She didn’t send me a bunch of homework.
The Garden Hose
I was sharing my room with two adult men. I tell you that because the next thing that happened scared them almost more than me. It was the third day. This was getting suspicious now. I know they kept people in the hospital longer back then, but I thought it would be a day or two.
I could not pee. Not a good problem to have when in the hospital. The nurses came in with a catheter that must have been as big as a garden hose and started to jam it into my tiny little appendage. I think I screamed louder than I ever had in my life, before or since.
The one thing I remember vividly outside that pain is the look of terror on the faces of those two men. When it was over, as I lay there drenched in sweat, maybe even crying, one of them said to the other, “I don’t give a shit how hard it is, I’ll pee on my own whatever it takes.”
Couldn’t agree with them more. Glad to be of service, gentlemen. And I was just this semi-pudgy little kid with a long plastic hose up my urinary canal.
That was the ordeal within the ordeal. It got worse. The next day, a doctor came in and started snipping at my stitches. The gaping hole left by his doing that is with me yet today as an ugly scar. He had a bottle of yellow liquid – I swear it must have been a gallon – that looked like yellow anti-freeze. He proceeded to pour it into the hole he had just made.
Half an hour later, a group of hospital storm-troopers came and took me, bed and all, down the hall into “the hole.” This was not a time when I wanted to be in a private room. I was scared to death.
I had what I know now to be a staph infection. I spent the next lonely month in that room at the Glenwood Hills Hospital, held prisoner by the diabolical Doctor Volgame’.
So, here I am now, in a hospital bed for the second time in my life. Although it seems like I am never left alone, it is just as lonely. Even in a shared room.
What occurs to me as I close this post is that everything is relative. My cellmate roommate was told a while ago that he is ready to be discharged. He hasn’t been too talkative since I got here, except to ask for pain medication. When they told him he was going to be leaving, he did everything but beg them to let him stay, saying, “I can’t go back there; I’ll just end up in the same situation. I just can’t do it. Please don’t make me go today.”
I’m not sure what else he said, but it worked. He’s still here, asking for his pain meds – “Is it time for my prn’s?” – and watching the Bucs trounce the Packers.
On the other hand, I would like nothing better than to go home.
One Man’s Home is Another Man’s Prison
The person I love is at home. The things, my old chair, books — everything that makes home, home, is there.
For my friend here in the next bed, his safety is here, no matter how temporary. It’s warm, it’s safe, and there are three hots and a cot.
For me, this is prison. I am treated well here, I get drugs for pain, I get food brought to me and I have reading material. But “here” represents something else, too. Threatening, ominous, and dismal.
I guess home really is where the heart is.
