At 6:00 AM on the 16th 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.
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