Open Writing

If you have been following my “Mediland” chronicle, you will recall that the last account (American Pie, December 27) described my experiences from entering the hospital to arriving in the operating theater.

By the time I was being lifted from the gurney to the operating table, the “forgetting drugs” were starting to do their work, so my next recollection is of regaining consciousness in my room, though according to my wife I had been roused from my slumbers whilst in the recovery area. If you have been fortunate enough to avoid major surgery, based on my two experiences, the first thought that crosses your mind upon regaining consciousness is relief that it is over, and the second is to wonder why you’re feeling no pain.

Then I remembered the femoral block. True to Dr. Anna Thesis’ promise, the block continued its good work for the fourteen hours she said it would, then quit. Man, did it ever hurt after that! Fortunately, one of the happiest advances in modern medicine is that the medical staffs don’t treat you like a wimp, as they did in my young days, if you ask for pain medication. Somewhere along the line they realized that forcing patients to endure extreme pain doesn’t contribute a darn thing towards their recovery. Seems simple to me.

Nowadays, they have a battery of pretty nifty pain killers to offer. Some of them have been created for use as tools in detoxification therapy for drug addiction rehabilitation, and are quite addictive in themselves. So don’t get carried away by the idea that they’ll be handed out by the bag full. Even so, the few I was allowed not only took away my pain, but filled me with such a rosy euphoria that I can readily understand how unhappy people become hooked.

Lurking in the back of my mind during this first, post operative twelve hours, was the knowledge that I would soon be taken out of my bed and asked to walk on a leg that had been reconstructed only hours before. The first time I had been informed of this preposterous practice, my reaction was that they had to be out of their medical minds. But no, they were deadly serious, and at the appointed time, two wisps of girls, who together weighed less than I, announced that they would get me out of bed and walk me down the corridor.

I almost choked laughing. “Ladies,” I gasped, “I probably weigh as much as the two of you put together, and if I fall on one or both of you, serious injury to us all will result.”

“Mr. Merchant,” one of them said disapprovingly, “You need to know that we’re qualified physical therapists, and no amount of finagling on your part is going to get you out of going walkies.”

Appropriately chastened, I leaned heavily into the walker they had provided and took the first couple of hesitant steps. Amazingly, my newly created knee didn’t collapse as I was sure it would, but man, did it complain. Against all probability, Les Therapistes and I made it down the corridor and back without incident, though by the time we got back to the room my bed had taken on the significance of an oasis in the desert.

The remaining hours of my hospital stay were taken up mainly with the usual trivia that institutes of medicine have honed to a fine art over the years. You know, waking the patient in the middle of the night to ask if they need anything to help them sleep. Yeah, how about turning out the light and going away. That would work. Then, what seems only minutes later, on goes the light again; this time to check vital signs. Happily, technological advancements have been on the side of the patient in this regard.

Blood pressure is now taken automatically, which blessedly avoids the situation of a nurse with a hearing problem being forced to inflate and deflate the cuff innumerable times to get a reading. Pulse and temperature readings are similarly automated. But even with these advancements, the procedures intrude sufficiently on one’s slumbers that by the time the nurse leaves, one is wide awake and pain begins to penetrate one’s consciousness. So there’s nothing for it but to press the nurse call-button to ask for pain medication. I’m not pushy by nature, so when there is no response, I wait - and wait - and wait before I press the button again. Where do they go in the middle of the night?

Eventually, salvation arrives, and with a couple of tablets and a very large glass of water, I’m ready to try sleeping again. Unfortunately, the very large glass of water goes straight to my bladder, and the nurse hadn’t noticed before she left that my urine bottle was already full. So it’s back to the button pushing again, this time with a good deal more urgency. That little emergency dealt with, I succumb once more to the rosy glow imparted by the pain medication, and drift off peacefully.

Of course, there’s always a price to be paid for wonder drugs. Ultimately they’ll destroy your perfectly good liver, or give you a heart attack, or, in the case of pain medication, turn everything in your intestines to concrete. They have medicine to treat that too, but if you’re not able to get out of bed in a hurry, or at all in my case, and it takes for ever for the nurse to answer the call button, resorting to “loosening” medicine is not wise, except in life threatening situations.

But in the end, I survived the rest of my hospital stay, and was returned to the loving ministrations of my wife, who never ignores the call button. She feeds me prunes and raisins, and coaches my bowel movements like they are a basketball team. A failure to score brings commiserations and encouragement, and a slam dunk inspires cheers and applause. Things could be a lot worse.