Our family was quite well-known at the hospital, due mainly to the fact that if I was not the first child to have to live in a plastic bubble in Canada then I most certainly was the first in the town where we grew up along with my mother's brief breaks from our turbulent and violent domestic situation.
Not only were we familiar faces, we were also highly regarded by all medical staff for our incredibly high pain tolerance levels, demonstrated by the variety of maladies and injuries that kept us coming back for some professional TLC, as well as geniunely regarded with awe by the same medical staff for the severity of the most truly original and inventive injuries that they had ever seen. Many highly respected anesthesiologists and brilliantly skilled surgeons owe their careers to our family. We have always been big believers in scientific advancement...
Of course, those of you that know me know that this rare form of brilliance is still to be found occurring today, although not quite as regularly as it did in my younger years.
But yes, the ever-growing collection of scars, wounds, various nagging ailments, what have you, didn't so much begin as much as it was genetically inherited...a sort of generational passing down...a medical legacy, if you will.
God only knows how many times we heard doctors and surgeons tell us "Well, I'm afraid you're going to lose it." or "We tried everything we can think of, we have to remove it." or "You're not going to walk again." or "You're going to have to get used to the fact that you can no longer use that organ." or "We can't set it, we can't re-break it and we can't fuse it..."
And with no embellishment whatsoever, I cannot begin to recount how many times interns, having had one of us dumped onto them for experience gain, looked up at or over us (depending on the injury that week...) with utter bewilderment and total bafflement and asked "I have never seen this, read about this, or dreamt of this. I heard about this in med school but we all thought it was an urban legend professors told their students to freak them out for a bit of fun...you say this happened before? What did the doctor then do?" And we would calmly proceed to talk the aspiring rookies through the correct procedure.
It has gotten to the point where we all have had to remind or completely correct doctors with their medical treatments..."Uhh excuse me doc, but you're sewing me up with 0 and 2-0 gauge sutures. Well, you can use the loop to strand knot with that thickness of suture AS LONG as you tie it with a FLAT square knot. The suture will fail if you tie it with an unidentical sliding knot. What do you mean how do I know that?" or my personal favourite of all time, when my mother had had enough of ineptness, "You cannot adminster that dosage over such a short period of time unless of course, in your professional medical opinion, you feel it is best to discontinue treatment and move on to KILLING ME, YOU DOLT! DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT? Listen up toots, they've had to INVENT drugs for me okay? That drug encyclopedia you carry around with you? I AM THAT BOOK. In fact, I remember being consulted by its authors when they wrote it because they had forgotten a bunch of drugs...they called me while I was having coffee and asked what they had missed, so don't tell me I got my dosages wrong. I've got more drugs in me than all of LED ZEPPELIN'S and MOTLEY CRUE'S world tours combined! Oh never mind, stop your crying and give me the syringe, I've got it from here...."
My mother then proceeded to console the student and in a soft comforting tone, reassured the student that she would be fine and would become a great doctor, and that she only needed to review and take some time for things to digest and that we all make mistakes and forget things and...all the while she was hooking up her own I.V. and administering heavy narcotics to herself.
Having just visited her in the hospital after massive lung failure and a stroke made her decide to skip shopping for the afternoon, I noticed that she was all too willing to lie in her bed and say nothing and question nothing. And for the first time in my life, I had to struggle with the insane idea that my mother is in way over her head this time and the immortality gene our family possesses along with our data base of medicine that Google wants to purchase just might not be enough to save her.
The only question I have is whether the next fight that is looming before us all is hers or ours. We are a strange bunch since we find no discomfort in being in a hospital, in fact where some families go to church to strengthen their faith and behold a healing power, we congregate in a hospital room to display and revel in the power we possess as well as make fun of whoever's turn it is to have their day wrecked..."You call THAT a fracture? Scar schmar. It's only 40 STITCHES! My first one when I was 6 was better than that. Oh boo hoo hoo, they have to amputate, you're LYING DOWN in a COMFY bed, I was still standing and the ferris wheel was still moving when mine got cut off...suck it up buttercup. What do you mean you want a couple of Tylenol 3's? You're SUCH a baby sometimes...sighhhhh."
I guess it comes down to whether medical science can come up with a way to surgically reattach one's strength to continue to fight on or invent a antibiotic that kills off acceptance.
In the meantime, I'm going to take a couple of beers...call me in the morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment