I’M WRITING THIS for one major reason: to see whether I still can.
My posture (flat on my back in a hospital bed) and physical discomfort (pressure pain, itching, mucous blocking my airway) are parts of the problem, my main concern is my mental state.
My columns aren’t always humorous or insightful or relevant to much of anything beyond my limited personal experience, but I do strive for a vague coherence. Writing means everything to me; if I lose that ability, I’ve lost my reason for living. I’ve been living in a car off and on for several years. A few months ago everything I owned was stolen. New Year’s Eve I got in a fender-bender. Then on February 24, as near as I can figure, the wonderful Jenn, the superhuman assistant manager of a local convenience store, saved my life by performing CPR on me. I had just bought some Chinese, and wanted a soda to go with it.
I say it that way, as a simple event, because I’ve no memory of it at all, just a horrifying dream that apparently represented myself subconsciously clinging to life. When the EMTs arrived they performed a tracheotomy so I could I breathe, and here I am, after too much time ‘resting,’ weak as a soggy kitten. I can’t talk or walk, eat solid food or control my bowels. A man down the hall begins screaming for help when the sun goes down, and my roommate’s TV has been on and tuned to some cowboy channel since I got here, programs filmed, and lame, before I was born.
When I worked as a nursing assistant 25 years ago there were patients we referred to as ‘frequent flyers.’ These people weren’t especially sick or even hypochondriacs, they just enjoyed being in hospital. To me this is like enjoying electric shock or being intermittently prodded with a pointy stick. For some, evidently, lying in an incredibly uncomfortable bed, being fed mediocre food, watching TV and sleeping constitutes a good time. (To be fair, the food at the local hospital is pretty decent, but the drugs I was on befouled the taste after a time.) They were there to be pampered, enjoy an occasional ice cream, get foot rubs, have the thermostat adjusted and the blinds drawn, while insurance picked up the tab. Sort of a low-rent, industrialized spa.
How anyone could derive pleasure from this experience I can’t begin to speculate. Of course they weren’t actually sick, so that might make some difference. It just seems perverse. I’d rather go to a movie.
I started compiling a list of complaints, some perhaps petty, others I still think legitimate. It seems pointless now to list them, but they mostly boiled down to slipshod organization, a shortage of staff, poor communication and staff disinterest, with only a few small instances of possibly life-threatening incompetence. I probably won’t pursue these matters if I get out of here alive. All I want is a cold drink.
Am I glad to be alive? Well, I am, so there it is. The alternative probably involves less suffering and indignity, but I’m still here due the actions and heroism of others, so the least I can do is honor their efforts by staying alive. Which involves work, and hope, which is pretty tenuous for me at the moment. I’m not much given to greeting-card sentiment. Maybe you out there, my several readers (assuming you exist), friends, family and general well-wishers can handle the hope, and I’ll take a swing at the work.
My family, 1,700 miles away, is doing their best to finance my needs and recovery (Medicaid only goes so far). My car was rescued and is being kept by the woman who saved my life (incidentally, my ailment seems to have been pneumonia so severe it stopped my heart). While I’ve been ‘fortunate’ to a degree, a few months from my 62nd birthday I’m terrified that I’m destined to die in the street of poverty. I almost did it already, so it’s no stretch of the imagination.
So, did I pull it off? Does this column make any sense, or is it all gibberish? Did I really write anything, or am I in Hell, dreaming of writing and an ice-cold Sprite?
