Fumes

It has to be one of the largest hospitals in the nation.  It is many hospitals.  There is a Children's Hospital, a Cancer Institute, and other specialized buildings.  It has massive conference halls and teaching labs and a nursing school.  I guess you'd call it a "campus."  Walking from one of the many parking lots will take you awhile.  I only noticed a few days ago that there are air bridges connecting the parking garage to several buildings so one needn't walk in inclement weather.  The parking garages are many storied and quite often full.  For ten dollars, you can have a valet park your car.  Every walkway is full of people.

My mother had her surgery yesterday afternoon.  Late.  Her doctor was a gem.  I looked him up.  He is the head of neurology for the hospital and he teaches at the medical school for the university.  He has lectured and published in peer reviewed journals.  

He called me when the procedure was over to say that everything went well.  

I went to the room where they were holding my mother.  She was full of misery and complaints.  I stayed with her when they took her back to her room.  She had to lie flat for an hour.  She whined and bitched and complained.  Eventually, after six hours of hospital sitting, I left.  When I called her later to see how she was doing, she was complaining.  

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know.  I need somebody to talk to."

For fuck's sake, sure.  I could feel my blood pressure spike.  

"We all do," I said.  "You have just gotten used to doing nothing and having everybody take care of you."

I was blowing a gasket, I could tell.  I wasn't feeling well.  I've picked up something in these long days and hours in the hospital.  My throat is sore.  My nose is running.  I keep sneezing violently.  My house is falling apart around me.  I am sick of it all.  

I made dinner from whatever was in the house last night.  At some point, sitting up, I fell asleep on the couch.  I woke up as usual around eleven.  I cleaned the kitchen, took my nightly pills, and went to bed.  I woke in the night with terrible dreams and a bloated stomach.  It was 2:30.  I went to the bathroom and walked around the house.  I went back to bed.  I was dreaming but thinking about what I was dreaming.  Strange sounds kept waking me.  I felt like giving up.  What the fuck was I doing in life?  It wasn't living in the old sense of the word.  

When I woke, the sun was up.  It had been up for a long time.  My body was shot, heavy as lead, dull.  I knew I would be bringing my mother back to her home today.  I didn't have it in me, I thought.  I'll need to stay with her.  There was too much to do.  I wanted someone to take care of me for awhile.  Maybe longer.  

I have chills, but I know I must rally.  There is no help for it.  My responsibility.  My burden.  

My mother, I know, is not going to "get better."  There will be a series of things that doctors can "fix," but she will not get better.  Still, she may go on for a long, long time.  Needing care.  

Fuck, I feel like shit.  I just want to take pills and go into a coma for awhile.  

The phone rings.  I can't get to it in time.  It is the carpenter.  He leaves a message.  Vague.  He is not happy with his trip to the doctor.  He says something about starting the job here.  I should call him back, he says, but I haven't the strength right now.  I wonder if he is the man for the job.  

Rain.  Lots of rain.  Flooding on the Gulf Coast.  It is only mid-July.  I can't see out of the windows for the condensation.  It will be sticky from now on.  

Have you read about all the things you should do to stay healthy and age well?  It's a lot.  There is some, if not much, conflicting information, though.  

When people look at me now, I wonder what they see.  It is not comforting.  Once bright and shiny, I am just worn the fuck out.  I might as well simply move my mother into assisted living and go with her.  She'd like that, I know.  

O.K.  I'm just journaling.  I should delete all that, but I won't.  I want it on "the permanent record."  

"And if I die before I wake. . . "

This is not what I wanted to write about.  I wanted to write about my hospital observations.  A hospital is one of the better examples of a democratic hierarchy.  It encompasses and employs every "walk of life."  There is dignity in it, I believe, but a staggered, weighted one.  Being a cashier at the hospital cafeteria, I think, carries more grace than working the same job at a McDonalds.  It is much the same, of course, but there is an adjustment in protocol, too.  In the hallways, if you don't know, you have to guess what position the man or woman wearing scrubs has. . . .   Techs speak to nurses.  There are hierarchies in those ranks.  There are nurses, head nurses, ward leaders, nurse practitioners, and there is a deference one to another.  There are doctors, but there are hierarchies there as well.  The doctor overseeing the floor or wing is deferential to the specialist.  Watch the nurse's posture when he or she accompanies the doctor into the patient's room.  Watch the person cleaning the room step out quiet as a ghost.  One nurse kisses her husband goodbye when he drops her off before he goes to work at the auto shop.  She tells him she loves him.  Just then a doctor drives by in his new Ferrari.  The janitor steps off the city bus.  

It disturbs me in deep ways.  It is a matter of aspiration.  Choices are not equal, nor expectations.  

And yet, there is a dignity one assumes when stepping inside, a nobility of purpose, etc.  

I am not up to writing this, though.  That was awfully and terribly clumsy.  I just have the dreadful feeling that the nurse and the mechanic somehow are not going to make it.  Watching them there on the hospital steps was heartbreaking.  

I've got to go.  There are many people wanting things from me just now.  My gas tank is empty.  I'm running on fumes.  My mother, I'm sure, is waiting.