#5

It might be part of the story.  It might not.  In case it is, I'll tell you that last Saturday night Dr. Girvin and I moved some furniture.  That's not a euphemism or code for anything.  No wink.  No nod.  Furniture: tables, chairs, sofas.  Moving: you get one end, I'll get the other.  I'll go up the steps backwards.  Watch your hand.  It's tight through here.  I backed into a door jamb carrying a table.  Sorta pinched my non-dominant hand (L) between the table I was carrying and the door frame.  Ouch.  Keep moving.  Did NOT drop the table or need to stop.  Really had no reason to give it another thought.

Except Sunday morning I woke up with terrific pain in my thumb.  I've broken a couple bones.  I thought: this hurts bad enough to be broken.  How did I break my thumb?  Went to one of those quick med places.  Clean, little wait.  Half the co-pay of an ER visit.  About half the doctoring ability.  Meh, get what you pay for.  X-ray: negative.  Thumb NOT broken.  Went to bed fairly pain tolerant, woke up a sissy.  Huh.  My thumb REALLY hurts.  Why?  Bruised, the half doc said.  It didn't look bruised.  It was kinda red and stiff.  And hurt.

I went home.  Feelin' kinda cranky.  Started shivering.  Why's it so cold in here?  H and kids: "It's not really cold."  But I'm freezing.  If you're a reader of this blog, you know that random fevers FREAK me out.  Fevers are not good.  Least of all, unexplained fevers.  Fevers w/o explanation get filed under catastrophic illness.  So I took some Motrin and six blankets and shivered away.  Getting ready for the worse.  Didn't sleep all that well.

In the morning, my hand looked like I had a goalie glove on.  I did not have a goalie glove on.  I wear my goalie gloves only when I'm knitting.  And I never wear just one goalie glove.  I'm not a poser.  But my hand: wow.  Swollen.  Hot.  Stiff.  Red.  Went about my day.  Sorta.  What is wrong with my hand?  Should I get a blood test?  Driving with one hand is my default.  But when you can drive with ONLY one hand it's harder than you think.  Around noon noticed that the hot red color of my hand was making tracks up my forearm.  I'm not a doctor, but it didn't seem right.  Much as I hate hospitals, seemed like the time to go.

The triage nurse said, come with me.  Speedy service at the ER is always a bad sign.  I had a 103 fever and BP was 86/60.  These are bad signs too.  The first doctor took a look.  At this point the red tracks were up in my biceps.  She said:  Just a minute.  It wasn't a whole minute.  In about 45 seconds she was back with like 7 doctors.  And student doctors.  And a couple nurses.  Felt like an Eakins painting, Agnew Clinic or whatever.  Head guy spoke up:  you're gonna start IV antibiotics right away.  I said, sorry, presentations in my class at the art school tomorrow, doesn't really work for me.  He said: if you don't start treatment right now, you won't SEE tomorrow.  Those tracks are headed for your heart.  If they get there you're done.  Done is short for done living.  Doctors are known for their colorful language.

So I give him my arm.  the other arm.  My IV arm and say time's a wasting doc.  Tick tock.

But first, I want an MRI.  Then we'll start the meds.  FUT BIRST:  just so you know, if the infection is in the muscle you will need surgery tomorrow.  If it's in the bone we might need to take your hand.  You should know this and be prepared.  It's very serious. . .

TAKE MY HAND?!  Take it where?  My hand goes with me.  I go with my hand.  That's the way hands work.  You're doctors, you should know this.  TAKE MY HAND? What the Christ?  Christ only got nails through his hand.  They didn't TAKE his hand.  TAKE MY HAND?  I parked in handicapped thinking I'd be out in a jiff, not because I thought I'd be handicapped.  Handicapped is short for Cap-in-hand, like a beggar out of Dickens.  Without a hand you can't hold a cap for people to drop change or lint into.  You can't be handicapped without a hand.  You can only be one-handicapped and that sounds like something from golf.  Doctors suck.

But the machine is in motion.  You can't stop it.  The giant wood chipper.  For bodies.  The giant body chipper, doctors nurses, tests monitors, insurance, hideous food, sadness, loneliness, despair.  wonder how long it'd take to get a one arm pull up?  And just so you know:  you don't have to wear the hospital gown.  It's just how they make you feel helpless and needy.  It's part of the control.  Don't wear it.  Say:  I'm not wearing that.  And give 'em the finger if you need to.  They can't make you wear it.  Don't wear it.  But, so: MRI.  Ever done one of these? Not really much to recommend them.  They're loud and cold and usually mean something's wrong.  But there was headphone music, anything I wanted as long as it was country or western.  From the MRI they whisked me right to a room in the hospital and stuck me.  Commence the miracle of modern medicine.

Except it's not really a hospital in the common understanding of a place to go with competent medical care.  It's more like a really expensive, bad hotel.  Say the Highmark Hilton and smirk to yourself.  Don't smirk to others.  Smirks are very easy to misinterpret.  All the rooms in the Highmark Hilton have TV's and video games that other people come in and play while you're trying to sleep.  It's weird because you're part of the game.  The people come in and do things to you and watch their progress on the screens of the games.  And all the games are too loud and the people playing them are not very good at the game.  However, there are stunning rooftop-vent views.  The beds are awful and the mattresses are rubber coated.  Frankly I don't know how they get away with charging so much per night.

Instructed to wear an Ice pack on the hand, I had to keep begging ice.  This is apparently below most staff's pay grade despite the fact that the Highmark Hilton calls itself all inclusive.  They give you a bracelet for free drinks and everything.  But ice and ice getters are scarce.  And when it comes it's not frozen water, it's a cold gel pack thing.  Good enough but goes room-temp way faster than frozen water.  So you ask for a lot of cold gel packs.  This goes on into the night.  Nurses aid says at one point, sorry not frozen yet.  Huh?

Yeah, we don't have any more, they're not frozen yet.

Um, It's a Hilton, go find some. Please

Sir, you'll have to be patient.  (pun not intended, not smart enough to pun).

Look, I have medical orders to maintain ice treatments.  Please find me some.  The aid would really like me to understand how demanding and unreasonable I'm being.  I'd really like the aid to stop acting like I'm asking the recipe for Coke.  I need ice.  It's like aspirin.  You can't tell guests at the Highmark Hilton you're out of aspirin.  Or ice.  Sorry no ice?  In a hospital?  Even a bad one?  My Yelp review will not be pleasant.

Antibiotics are really a wonder.  Blue mold.  What a discovery.  But really opiates are the oil in the engine.  Antibiotics save your life.  Opiates make you not so cathected with your life.  Win-win.  I like morphine.  I do.  I call it sister morphine.  Nah, just kiddin' that was Keith Richards.  But I do like her.  And cousin oxy.  Rumor is if you crush up oxy and suck it up your nose you will loose your house and car and wife and kids and eat from dumpsters.  Or go on with your successful career as a right wing radio host.  Praise god.

And the food at the Hilton is, well, there is no food at the Highmark Hilton.  Imagine a place that expensive without food?  Weird!  They shove hot objects around on plates but it's not food.  People eat it but it's not food.  They even refer to it as food, but.  You follow me.  I don't like to eat not food.

Spoiler alert: I am typing this with two hands.  Antibiotics ate up the "infection."  That was the fancy term the doctors used.  Saw several of them.  Not one of them saw it twice.  Each one asked me the same questions.  Like: Do you think it's getting better?

"Uh, I thought you'd have a more informed opinion.  I'm a little concerned about the continuity of care.  Every shift someone new looks at my arm, asks the same questions, says the same things.  No one seems to be in charge."

"Well, I can understand why it looks that way to you Mr. Potter, but what you need to know is we talk about you.  A lot. [headed for exit]

I don't know what you'd say, no one's seen me more than once.  What data would you discuss?"

I will put a note in your chart that you'd like to discuss this further with someone. [hand on door]

Why can't I discuss it with you?

[Gone]

I had a good friend bring me real food and a couple others visited.  And some of you called.  It was all touching and poignant but I don't really like hospitals much.  I hate them.  Hate only begins to describe the emotion I have for hospitals.  I'm starting to hate doctors too.  Even nurses who are like angels, are starting to chap me.  I think I might be like the aboriginal men who die if they are taken out of the wild.  Except just for hospitals.  I feel myself dying in hospitals.  No more hospitals.  Please.  I can only survive outside of hospitals

There ain't no moral.  No lesson.  Except I have good friends and a long suffering wife and brave kids.  I called Boston and didn't get an answer.  But last year when I got a pneumonia they said, you have the immune system of a toddler and the mobility of an adult.  You're gonna run into some stuff you shouldn't.  Like close-out 9ft waves and bacteria.  My immunity is naive.  That's the clinical expression.  I kinda like the term, unexpected but apt. What I regret is what it means.  Like I'm a hayseed.  First time in the saloon.  Girls?  In the back?  That do what??  My cells are like: hey pretty bacteria, let's do something we'll regret.  Oh, no.  What are you?  Call 911.  Where's the medicine?  Where's the morphine?

Rilke says the point of life is to get devoured by greater and greater things.  Kerouac says if you own a rug you own too much.

Here's to finding the greater things and moving less furniture.