Editor’s note: Walt Amses is a writer and former educator who lives in North Calais.
[U]nfortunately, there comes a time in everyone’s life when their apparatus requires some adjustment — like repairing a squeaky door or leaky aortic valve. Some things may need replacement — a hip, knee or other eroded joint — while still others become completely expendable and get discarded — think gall bladder, appendix or those tiny flesh bags hanging from your neck. I’ve experienced a situation or two like these, always managing to flee the scene before nightfall just as vampires began stirring, sharpening their bicuspids and unfurling their leathery wings. I figure you can’t be too careful.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have not spent even one night in a hospital in five centuries of dog years; since I was born, well before such facilities were run by insurance companies. New moms — and their new arrivals — could expect to spend several days hospitalized, in the care of compassionate nurses — all women in those days — with white uniforms, polished white shoes, starched white caps, white nylons and smiles filtered through sparkling white teeth. My own memory of nurses is rooted somewhere prior to being born, coinciding with the iconic photograph, of the couple, deliriously celebrating the end of World War ll with the Times Square kiss heard round the world. When he, a sailor, passed away recently, I imagined her at his bedside.
Warm, fuzzy fantasies aside, nurses today, although still predominantly women, have seen an increasing number of men joining their ranks since the early 1970s and are far more likely to work in medical scrubs than white uniforms. The role of nursing has also expanded over the years with nurses today taking on far more responsibility, often maintaining a caseload of patients and performing many tasks once the purview of medical doctors, such as coordinating a patient’s care plan or supervising a medical support team.
So I was at their mercy, escape routes cut off, and even now, in the age of stitch ‘em up & park ‘em at the curb, I had a confirmed, one-night reservation at the Dartmouth B&B for “minor” surgery. Minor presumably because my doctor would be wielding a laser rather than a scalpel. The sleeping arrangement frankly had me in more of a tizzy than the procedure itself until I realized it was scheduled the morning after St. Patrick’s Day.
Although my days around the McSorleys’ pot-bellied stove are safely in the rearview mirror, I couldn’t be sure about the other 25 random strangers surrounding me in the operating room. While interrogating each on their whereabouts the previous evening, I woke up somewhere else, darker and more mysterious than the OR.
Groggy but alarmed that the maneuver had evidently been executed before my investigation was complete and despite the fact that those hovering now seem suspiciously clear-eyed and innocent, I remain unconvinced. I decide that since it was already early afternoon and I had work to do, I’d let this slide and begin planning my liberation.
I figured the easiest and quickest route home would be demanding release immediately. Editing the adage “The customer is always right” to include “patient,” on my doctor’s first post-op visit I boldly said: “Would it be possible for me to go home today … please?” He said, “No way,” explaining exactly why, which made too much sense for me to dig in my heels, instead I heard myself saying, “OK, Doc, you know best” … So much for that. I was grounded like an adolescent, in for the night.
So I unpack my overnight bag while lying down and casually distribute my few belongings in futile effort to jazz up my room, cubicle really. I fail as completely as I failed negotiating my departure. No matter what I do, it still looks like a Motel 5½, setting up for a David Lynch movie or a BDSM convention. I’m surrounded by more machines than minor surgery should require, constrained by tubes both entering and exiting my premises (don’t ask) and enough wires to confirm nothing is Bluetooth capable.
As if the noise of these contraptions isn’t enough of a sleep deterrent, I become entangled in their tentacles, dreaming of Kirk Douglas and a giant squid. My feet are for all practical purposes, manacled to the end of the bed in what appear to be moon boots, velcro fastened around my calves, inflating and deflating throughout the night, providing my legs with what feels like their own lungs. Designed to prevent post-surgery clots, these “intermittent pneumatic compression devices” increased blood flow and were an integral part of the plan to keep me awake most of the night, supplemented as required by regular staff visits to insure I was alive enough to appreciate being tormented.
But the following day, when the fog begins to lift, as the pharmaceutically enhanced cobwebs and sleep deprived paranoia dissipate, I find myself in the car heading north on I-89, astounded at what medical technology can accomplish in a mere 24 hours. And it also flutters into focus that if not for my incredible torturers at DHMC, I wouldn’t be going home right now and I feel genuine gratitude for their dedication, however inconvenient it seemed at 3 a.m.
I may even be ready to do this again at some point … hopefully that’s still 500 dog years down the road.
