Post by sasha on Nov 6, 2022 16:49:23 GMT -5
Room 226A - my home for the next 24 hours. I'm in one of those folding hospital beds with a set of pushbutton controls on a side panel for setting the angle of lumbar support and knee elevation. I play with these for a while to find the most comfortable position. I'm also sitting on the tv remote. I untangle myself from the cord and wrap it around a handle built into the side panel so the remote is accessible, but out of the way. There's a small rolling tray on the other side with a box of tissues and a plastic bag with my reading & writing materials. I undertake to organize all this stuff into the tiny space available to me, and when I've minimized the entropy as much as I reasonably can, decide to surf the tv to see what's available. I note that the windowside bed appears to be unoccupied, nor ready to be any time soon, so at least I don't feel compelled to turn the volume down to a barely audible level.
The usual dreadful selection of daytime television - celebrity talk; an hour's worth of sports news stretched into an afternoon's broadcast; the travails of a family of moonshiners in Alaska; a huckster selling an inflatable belt guaranteed to melt the pounds away. But when I fortuitously stumble across an old episode of "Seinfeld", I take the time to graze on a bit of comedic nostalgia.
A kitchen staffer with a digital tablet arrives and asks if I'd be interested in dinner. It's been nearly 24 hrs since I've eaten anything at all, so I respond in the affirmative, and order the baked salmon, despite having found it a bit dry on my previous visit. The claim of a lemon-pesto sauce gives me hope that the kitchen has found a workaround, and subsequent developments justify that hope. Although my belly is empty, I prefer to keep my colon that way for a while longer, and order nothing further than a side of slaw and a mug of coffee. It all hits the spot.
A nurse arrives to check my vitals, asks about my pain level, and offers me an oxycodone. I'm in some discomfort, especially if I move, but decline the offer, accepting an OTC pain med instead. Fateful misstep.
Darkness falls early, and when the dinner tray has been removed, I return to channel surfing. A zoo vet lancing a boil on a diamondback rattlesnake. Another vet attempting to artificially inseminate a kiwi, and still another tagging sharks in the wild. I'd slept poorly the night before, and while the events of the day have not taken much of an emotional toll, by body has undergone significant trauma, and I'm ready to try sleeping by 8:00 p.m. Lights out.
But now the pain in my thigh is a constant throbbing and after nearly an hour of pretending it's not there, give in and press the call button. "Sorry to be a bother," I say to the night nurse, "but I've changed my mind about the oxy."
"Not a problem," she says, and returns a moment later with a pill and a styrofoam cup of water. I swallow the pill, thank her, and lay back. I watch a little more tube to give the drug time to take effect, and when the throbbing lessens, I try for sleep again. But first I try pushing the bedside tray a little further from me, and in the process knock over the glass of water - into my bed. My jonny, pillow, blanket, and sheets are soaked. "Goddammit," I mutter, realizing I'm going to have to summon them again.
This time two of them arrive, and in no time they've replaced my jonny, pillow & blanket, and maneuvered a rubberized mat under me. Brushing off my profuse apologies ("you're not the first to do this"), they turn off the light and return to their station.
By this time I have to pee. Now, I need to describe the apparatus they have given me to accomplish this. Picture a Tupperware or Rubbermaid juice bottle - a rectangular cross-section HDPE container narrowing down to an open neck at its top. Now imagine that rather than being in line with the vessel's vertical axis, the neck is angled 45 degrees from it. That's my urinal for the night. I adjust the bed so I can sit as straight as I can, and since I can't swing my legs over the edge, move the bottle under the covers until I can stick my weiner into the opening. I tilt the bottle to get the neck as far uphill as I can, and hope for the best. Then I let 'er rip.
All goes reasonably well - for a while. As I near completion, I'm concerned that the neck of the bottle might be drifting downhill, and try to readjust - and in the process my member pops out of the opening and sprays wildly onto my fresh jonny, blanket, and sheets. "Son of a fucking bitch!"
Once again, the nurses seem unfazed and perform their duty without comment - but I'm beginning to worry about becoming That Asshole in 226.....
The usual dreadful selection of daytime television - celebrity talk; an hour's worth of sports news stretched into an afternoon's broadcast; the travails of a family of moonshiners in Alaska; a huckster selling an inflatable belt guaranteed to melt the pounds away. But when I fortuitously stumble across an old episode of "Seinfeld", I take the time to graze on a bit of comedic nostalgia.
A kitchen staffer with a digital tablet arrives and asks if I'd be interested in dinner. It's been nearly 24 hrs since I've eaten anything at all, so I respond in the affirmative, and order the baked salmon, despite having found it a bit dry on my previous visit. The claim of a lemon-pesto sauce gives me hope that the kitchen has found a workaround, and subsequent developments justify that hope. Although my belly is empty, I prefer to keep my colon that way for a while longer, and order nothing further than a side of slaw and a mug of coffee. It all hits the spot.
A nurse arrives to check my vitals, asks about my pain level, and offers me an oxycodone. I'm in some discomfort, especially if I move, but decline the offer, accepting an OTC pain med instead. Fateful misstep.
Darkness falls early, and when the dinner tray has been removed, I return to channel surfing. A zoo vet lancing a boil on a diamondback rattlesnake. Another vet attempting to artificially inseminate a kiwi, and still another tagging sharks in the wild. I'd slept poorly the night before, and while the events of the day have not taken much of an emotional toll, by body has undergone significant trauma, and I'm ready to try sleeping by 8:00 p.m. Lights out.
But now the pain in my thigh is a constant throbbing and after nearly an hour of pretending it's not there, give in and press the call button. "Sorry to be a bother," I say to the night nurse, "but I've changed my mind about the oxy."
"Not a problem," she says, and returns a moment later with a pill and a styrofoam cup of water. I swallow the pill, thank her, and lay back. I watch a little more tube to give the drug time to take effect, and when the throbbing lessens, I try for sleep again. But first I try pushing the bedside tray a little further from me, and in the process knock over the glass of water - into my bed. My jonny, pillow, blanket, and sheets are soaked. "Goddammit," I mutter, realizing I'm going to have to summon them again.
This time two of them arrive, and in no time they've replaced my jonny, pillow & blanket, and maneuvered a rubberized mat under me. Brushing off my profuse apologies ("you're not the first to do this"), they turn off the light and return to their station.
By this time I have to pee. Now, I need to describe the apparatus they have given me to accomplish this. Picture a Tupperware or Rubbermaid juice bottle - a rectangular cross-section HDPE container narrowing down to an open neck at its top. Now imagine that rather than being in line with the vessel's vertical axis, the neck is angled 45 degrees from it. That's my urinal for the night. I adjust the bed so I can sit as straight as I can, and since I can't swing my legs over the edge, move the bottle under the covers until I can stick my weiner into the opening. I tilt the bottle to get the neck as far uphill as I can, and hope for the best. Then I let 'er rip.
All goes reasonably well - for a while. As I near completion, I'm concerned that the neck of the bottle might be drifting downhill, and try to readjust - and in the process my member pops out of the opening and sprays wildly onto my fresh jonny, blanket, and sheets. "Son of a fucking bitch!"
Once again, the nurses seem unfazed and perform their duty without comment - but I'm beginning to worry about becoming That Asshole in 226.....