Perdition: Thy Name is Hernia - Part Eight

At 6:00 AM on the 16^th began my first (of two) remaining days in the hernia repair centre and therefore was my first day of ‘Recovery’. An older Jamaican nurse came into the room and said “Rise and Shine Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Roommate, time for your pain medication”, which was, I believe, extra-strength generic Tylenol. We were then told that we were expected at Breakfast that morning. Back downstairs, but now I was not a New Guy, gone was the jaunty quick step, gone was the impatience and annoyance of the ‘smell’ of the lounge. Gone, was the self-confidence of rebellion against the mavens of the hospital, gone was any self-assurance, self-reliance. I was broken like a circus animal. I was now a Shuffler myself: a farty degenerate crank on medication, moving slower than Evolution, thinking about nothing except the next meal time or the prune juice between them. Black lines began to surface under my eyes, I did not understand time or sleep, I would not engage in conversation with others unless prompted. I would acquiesce to every whim and demand from staff and nurse. I was cheerful at the slightest suggestion or activity.

The largest case in point was the “Exercise Routine” at 11:30. If one needed the ne plus ultra example of the nagging suspicion that one was perhaps not in the sanest environment devised, this was it. The PA rang out with a message from the saccharine voiced nurse: “Come, all those who have had surgery, to the second floor lounge for exercise.” Great, I thought, will do, yes, time to walk there. Upon feeling out the best place to manoeuvre I gazed upon our “fitness instructor”. She was a nurse in her late sixties and was to ‘fitness’ what a pedophile would be to ‘early child development.’ She put on Elvis and began to move in ways that were obviously coming from the top of her head. She jerked and manovered in ways Margie Gillis could only dream of. Randomly, she seemed to think, “OK, better move some other way”…she put her arms outstretched and began to rotate and then, OK, now she laterally moved her arms, now she bent over, but, no, oh wait, now she was twisting to and fro…I imagine this actually put back my healing timeframe by three weeks, but in my Tylenol 3 stupor (I also suspect the food was sprinkled with sedatives) I was on the verge of hysterical laughter and popped and twisted with the ‘nurse’ when all of a sudden, the most absurd thing I have ever took part in (and I was at a ‘Pots and Pans’ themed music party in University, and a ‘Dog’ themed university party where two Labradors did battle in a one bedroom apartment with 15 other people): The fitness instructor cued up the theme song from the “Bridge over the river kwai.” The song is a marshal ditty with whistling and drums and fife, and all the stuff that one associates with 1960s war movies set in the Pacific theatre of World War Two. She then extolled us to, and I quote: “Kick up your heels and clap your hands above your head! Yeah! Let’s march around the second floor lounge, keep it up and push yourself!” Thus began the parade of ludicrous madness. I was second in line from an older effeminate Japanese man who really seemed to channel George Takei while marching. He was, as it were, “in the moment.” The gentlemen was kicking his legs, tilting his head like a dancer in a Bolly-wood four hour long monstrosity while laying on the mustard thick with his fleshy hand clapping. I was trying not to laugh as I could feel my abdominal muscles searing painfully in my brain…so I focused on the sights and my movements…”To hell with it,” I thought, “I can march with the best of them.” I tried to goose step and with mixed results, the mixed results being I almost kicked the man in front in the head while at the same time doubling over in shocking idiocy induced pain. The long snaking rubric of madness continued unabated behind the pied piper and now I could see the rest of the line behind me. Grimacing zamboni drivers who were supplementing their old-age security cheques who got a hernia from clearing some ice from the boards were trying to lift their legs in a futile attempt to ‘exercise’, or the bookish civil servant who was trying his best to ape the movements of the nurse, thinking that one must follow “Correct Procedure” without realizing this whole production was based on whim and craziness and had nothing to do with Work Place Safety, or C-456 Forms, or Measured Improvements, or Benchmarks, or Year to Date progress, or Statistics or Stability or Upward Mobility. No, this was relentless nonsense, as his forms and figures were, in the end, also nonsense. I knew all at once that if someone drove up the plush wooded estate and entered the white washed wooden edifice of the hospital and knew nothing about a Hernia Centre and merely watched the nurses interacting with the patients via the PA system about meals or exercise, about seeing shuffling zombie-like patients with empty grey-black eyes, about catatonic like husks of men watching hour after empty, insipid hour of Sports on the HD TV, of seeing this absolutely preposterous spectacle of men and one woman marching to the Bridge over the River Quay or Kwai one would come to an immediate and implacable conclusion: this is a proper Nuthouse. This would have been correctly perceived as a hold-over from the good old days of the proper welfare state era of the just society, when crazies and people who needed a good shot in the arm (as it were) would be fed, housed, and corrected in an edifice catered to the purpose. Would not have this been better than drop in centres and half-subsidized medication depots where homeless men and women thinking that Jesus talked to them through the microwave in the Junior ‘B’ hockey arena visitor lounge could get their Schizophrenia pills? I am not sure, the experience at the Hernia repair Centre has complicated the debate and I was becoming increasingly confused in my politics of care as the days rolled on under watch of staff, camera, stupor and self-regulation (the last was a fleeting notion as I retreated into self-oblivion). The music stopped and sure enough, it was lunch time, the nurse disappeared, the radio was put away, and I was shuffling, empty eyed and empty brained, down into the lunch-room, as I noticed a thirty-something man, well dressed, collared shirt, khakis, as he bound up the stairs almost knocking me over…”Bloody New Guy”, I muttered.

Perdition: Thy Name is Hernia. Part Seven

The rest of the 15^th was awash in strange and unfocused activity. I remember distinctly disobeying the ‘four hour’ lie down rule, or at least trying to, by telling myself that the hockey game must be watched. I Must represent minority hockey rights (read: not be a Leafs fan) in the TV chamber. I tried to move, a burning pain shot throughout my entire body, a purposeful tearing sensation screeched in my groin…”oh boy, well, I am half way there”…meaning, I was half way to sitting up on the bed, let alone any standing on my own accord or any success in shuffling to the toilet. Sitting on the edge of the bed became a problem immediately…waves, waves of nausea not unlike those created by the eruption of Krakatoa were sent upwards and reverse peristaltic reactions began in earnest…”back down, back down, back down, ok” and I went back to the opiate induced stupor.

Throughout the initial aborted attempt at movement, and all subsequent aborted attempts at movement during those tenuous hours on the 15^th, I could hear braying chatter emanating from the left side of the bed-chamber. My procedure ended at around 3:00 in the afternoon and therefore right in the middle of the first round of visiting hours (2:00 – 4:00). I knew this would present an interesting situation as I was already familiar with the parents of Roommate. He was, as mentioned, a chap of 19 (born in 1992) and therefore still in the bosom of the 21^st century of the Cradle to Grave Hellaparent. He intimated to me that his mother was texting incessantly regarding absolutely everything and anything related to surgery, a hospital, walking, eating, personal hygiene, breathing, moving one’s eyeballs, existing, you name it. They were in the room when I arrived, the parents I mean, and they were really en place, as it were. Roommate was well solidified by Mommy’s insistence that the clothes were well placed in the closet, that the entire table was well engrossed with the personal effects of Roommate. Forget three days in a hernia hospital, this chap was outfitted for a ninety day slog with Wolseley to put down that irascible Riel across the Great North West. You would think he had ten sherpas popping out of his bag with steaming Ceylon tea and a birch bark canoe to paddle down into the OR. Only ten years ago, a boy of 19 would be perspiring with embarrassment at the intrusion, yes, intrusion of mommy and daddy in preparation for surgery. I would probably have received one phone call from my mom…she loves me, on that score I am certain, and I her, but never would she have been so involved with a 72 hour sojourn into the Herniated unknown. But, I imagine in this age of festering narcissism, it never occurred to parents and child that anything was out of the ordinary. I could see a nurse eyeing all of this and muttering to herself: “uh-huh, white boy problems”. Or maybe I am just bitter, maybe I was bitter because no-one called me, no one visited, I am not sure people even knew I was in the hospital. Or, maybe because of years of self-imposed exile and a well-known streak of high-minded misanthropy, coupled with a Total and Unrelenting Hatred of personal communication devices, I could not communicate with anyone, nor really wanted to. I mean, really, what could I articulate in a fog of opiates that could not be inferred by anyone realizing that I came out of surgery only an hour ago. What really would be on the docket of conversation? Let’s see, down to brass tacks over the euro-debt problem, or that latent homosexual optometrist in Syria, how do we deal with such an effeminate tyrant? Or, oh wait, I can’t even sit up!

Which brings me back to the original observation . . . even roommate was now getting annoyed at the shrill-hee hawing of Mommy in the room. After Roommate’s second Tylenol-3..he stated: “Well, I can’t really stay awake here, why don’t you guys head back to the hotel?”…Indeed, I thought to myself, please get out! I was not acknowledged, not really, and this was amusing to me, all I could think of at this point was, aha, yes, I can eat in peace once the nurses come. Come the night. I was in pain, yes, and I was nauseous, yes, but the last thing a man wants to hear is hard-edged bitching from anyone, and luckily, all of that manner of audible tyranny was put to rest as Roommate drifted into a fitful sleep. At this point, the meal cart came in and I enjoyed two sandwiches (Roommate could not keep anything down), a mug of coffee, the best cookie I have eaten up to this point (or so I thought, this was the first proper ‘unhealthy’ desert I had eaten in 50 days, and I was fairly high on the opiates) and raspberry Jello. By this point I thought to myself, “well, it must be around 7:00 PM and I must make my way to the TV lounge”. The time was actually now two in the morning and I realized that I was therefore not apparently conscious after that final bliss inducing swallow of Jello, the room was black, and there was no food tray. At this point, my bladder was explaining to my brain that after such a long relationship with coffee and litres of IV fluid, that it was time to withdraw all funds and close the account. So, it was up and at them time again, and I could barely shuffle into the bathroom…Discomfort was at fever pitch, I was completely nauseous, as one feels after an eight hour Scotch drunk, only to wake up half-drunk, with the room spinning, but also with the urge to pee…so, in this state, I had to sit on the toilet. I have never done this before, and felt Donald Smith look down on me, with those Granite Eye-Brows furrowed and dire, his mouth, hidden behind that mighty beard, pursed in a droop and his Blue-Steel Celtic eyes looking at me with shame and disdain..Yes, I felt ashamed, to pee sitting down for me was a nadir of sorts, a surrender to the mad-house, with the red-heat lamp seemingly filming the whole ordeal and bathing me in rusty embarrassment. After what seemed like three hours (and it may well have been this long) I used the hand rail (!) to stand. I pulled my smock pants up, with the effort usually required to design the CERN cyclotron, and tried not to vomit on the lengthy 4 foot trip back to bed.