Prompt 26: Hospital Visits

I broke many bones as a child. I broke my right wrist jumping from my bunk bed, then a year later sprained it. I sprained my ankle causing it to swell up like a balloon. My left elbow was broken after falling out of a tree. I wouldn't stop poking an older kid with a stick apparently making him quite angry. He picked me up and threw me, and landing on my back, I broke my collarbone. Finally, to top things off, I was attacked and bitten by a chow; that's a big dog for those who don't know. To summarize, I was making headway for while on beating Evil Knievel’s record. I spent many an afternoon in the hospital back then. But after all of that, I did not return to the hospital for over ten years. Not one broken bone. Not one bog bite. I was as healthy as a hockey puck in a hurricane for over a decade. But then came the stomach pains, and I returned once again. This time without my Mom or Dad to pay for it.

I vaguely remember the times in which I visited the local hospital as a child. I can recall entering the ER and being ushered to a waiting room where I would sit in excruciating pain for what seemed like forever with a dozen other people who looked as bad as me. A lady with strings on her glasses sat behind a pane of sliding glass, a quizzical look on her face. When finally we were brought into the ER and sat in an exam room, we would have to wait even longer for a doctor to show up. I remember sitting their on a crunchy, paper covered bed, waiting. Most of your time in a hospital is spent waiting. Everything was so white. White floors. White walls. White ceiling. Even the pens the doctor wrote with were white. He wore a long white jacket and had short, white hair. You can almost go snow blind with all the white in a hospital.

My Mom would sit there next to me in a chair, comforting me as best she could. It smelled like plastic. Plastic and bleached linen. I would be taken to get X-Rays which were scary. A huge metal machine being brought to bear on your tiny little arm. And the people taking the X-Rays would take shelter in a dark room. If they are way back there, I thought, why am I out here? The doctor would set the bone and then a bright colored cast would be gooped onto my arm, wrist, or whatever, and over a month later I would return to get the thing chopped off. Not my arm but the cast.

I had not been to the hospital for a long time until over a year ago. Pains in my stomach forced me to return. Yet the whole place had been flipped inside out and upside down. I had met with a doctor and scheduled a colonoscopy to determine if the doctors tentative diagnosis was correct. Funny thing is, my dad showed up to visit with me. As a grown man, it was a little awkward to have your parent be there with you, but he wanted to come so I was not about to say no. Lucky for me though, he would not be allowed into the operating room.

The whole place looked different. They had renovated the entire building, adding on a massive new structure. The entrance was now different, the hallways were different. There were more windows, more light. But one thing remained the same. The waiting. And in the words of Tom Petty, the waiting is the hardest part. I arrived in the pre-op area after weaving my way through a labyrinthine maze of hallways that were totally unrecognizable from my past visits. I was ushered behind a light blue curtain, given a gown, and told by a very kind nurse to strip down. The curtain seemed like the flimsiest way possible to ensure that my dignity remain intact. It hung there like the drapery hiding King Kong from the theater audience, hardly an effective protection measure. I quickly undressed, putting on that gown as fast as I could. Stuffing my clothes into a tiny locker on the wall, I then sat down in a crunchy, paper covered chair. Everything you sit or lay on in a hospital is crunchy.

When they renovated, they must have realized that a little color never hurt anyone. They had added a dash of color here and there, mostly neutrals, making the whole place as least a bit more hospitable on the eyes. The doctor came in as the anesthesiologist placed the IV in my arm and explained what was going to take place. I was nervous having never been in an operation before. But nervousness soon gave way to delirium. They wheeled me through the double doors and into the operation room area. Immediately it was like being plunged into a meat locker. I instantly started to shiver in the antarctic like climate. I could feel the chemicals in my body start to take hold, making me a little goofy. There were around half a dozen people in the operating room. Each of them was calibrating something or wiring something; busy getting ready for the procedure. I stood up out of the crunchy chair and laid on the crunchy operating table. I was freezing. The temperature must have been forty degrees. Moments after I laid down, I was gone. I don't remember one single thing. It is like a thirty minute black hole in the span of my life.

I woke up feeling like a Monday morning drunk in the room where I began; that thin, blue curtain hanging in front of me. Wondering how I got there, I moved my arms to see if they were still functioning. The groggy delirium soon wore off and I put my clothes back on; quickly. The doctor told me that he believed that the original prognosis was confirmed but that a biopsy had to be done to confirm it. I left the institution feeling a sense of relief, winding my way back through the opal corridors and into the freshly paved parking lot. I had been dealing with this for some time and had waited for an answer. I hate waiting. At least now I knew what I was dealing with. It may be another decade before my next hospital visit though. I wonder what it will be like then. Maybe an espresso?