“I’m aware of the mystery around us, so I write about coincidences, premonitions, emotions, dreams, the power of nature, magic.” ~ Isabel Allende.
I was reminded this week of the time one of my older sisters went to the hospital for three weeks, after she suffered a ruptured appendix. She had a complicated stay, but two significant things happened as a result (well three, but more about the third later): she decided on her future career (nursing), and she decided she would never, could never, insert a naso-gastric tube on another human being after having experienced it herself.
In those days, (I think, I was only seven at the time), visits from younger siblings were discouraged, so she only had the distractions of my parents visiting when they could. Even when I was a nursing student in the UK a decade later, visiting hours were limited, and at the end of the allotted time, visitors went home. I remember doing my pediatric rotation in a children’s hospital, on a boys’ surgical ward, where many appendixes were removed and hernias repaired (little kids walking around like old men after their surgery). There I learnt about the manipulative power of children. They would huddle at the door, crying, at the end of visiting hours, mothers also weeping, trying to pry their children off their legs, looking backwards with guilty looks as they had to leave their poor, poorly (an old-fashioned English term for the sick!) children in the cold hospital. And as soon as the parents cleared the corridor, the boys would run (or limp) to the dayroom to go back to their toys, or the TV, tears miraculously gone from their faces.
The third interesting thing about my sister’s hospitalization was my fascination with her sutures once removed – they looked (it is reported that I said) like three-legged spiders. My father was even more inventive – he thought they took two pieces of brown string and tied them in a ‘granny knot’. In the end they were given to my brother as a memento, because, why not? Since my sister was deprived of our loving company during her long hospitalization, we were told we each had to write her a letter or two during her stay. To her credit, she saved these museum quality artifacts, and recently shared them with us. A fascinating glimpse into the minds of our younger selves.
This morning I should have been writing this message from the island of Jamaica. We planned to travel there on Tuesday, having (count them) TWO parties this upcoming weekend to celebrate with friends and family. Monday, while doing last minute shopping, visiting last minute family and friends, completing last minute errands, I started feeling some abdominal pain, but we continued on our rounds. Once home I realized I was not going to be able to finalize packing as the pain had taken over. Eventually, when I realized the pain had moved from over my belly-button (medical terminology!) to my right lower quadrant, I recognized the classic signs of appendicitis. Reluctantly (who wants to go to an ER when you’re in pain?) I realized I would have to go. We rescheduled our planned trip, and off I went.
Two days later, after an emergency appendectomy (done laparoscopically, so the recovery is much quicker) I was home and doing well. Quite a different experience to what my sister had all those years ago! And in the English medical terminology, she had an appendicectomy – so no wonder it was more complicated!
As always when I have an encounter with health care from within the bed, I am part patient, part observer. I must say, that although I could list critical things, I could name missing actions by the nursing staff, what I came away with was a good feeling. Nurses (for those are the ones I am always going to be concerned about) are still caring, empathetic human beings. Even when stressed out in a crazy ER (stretchers in the hallways, patients who swing at you when you try to administer care), they are friendly, concerned, and present. Once admitted, I met another crew of nurses. By the way: Night nurses, it is true, it sounds as if you are having a party out there. And could you possibly cluster your activities so you are not coming in every half hour for another crucial task? Especially when your patient is in pain and just received morphine so is finally drifting off to sleep?
But for the most part I found the nursing staff to be patient, attentive, communicative, educational, and friendly. Not just to me, but to my room-mate, a young woman who could do nothing for herself (and was not small). It was a pleasant reminder that computers may be ever present, technology may replace much of what we do, but the therapeutic relationship between nurse and patient, between care-giver and cared-for is essential to a patient’s well-being.
I cannot end my message this week without giving a hoot and a holler for the people of Mississippi. (Do you have to repeat M – I – S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I every time you write it? I do!). Ever since this country was founded, Mississippi has represented the worst of the white supremacy traditions, both during the enslavement of Africans and their descendants, and particularly after emancipation. It was the lynchings in the South that produced the song ‘Southern trees bear strange fruit’ – a song which basically lost Billie Holiday her career and her life. And Mississippi was the worst. Once African American men were given the right to vote, they changed their constitution to make the requirements to be registered practically impossible. And the KKK followed up with cross burnings and more lynchings. It was the death of Medger Evers (along with the bombing of the Alabama Baptist Church, and other racial violence) that prompted Nina Simone’s song ‘Mississippi G*dd*am!’, and also made her career impossible in this country.
And if you really want to have nightmares, read the story of Fannie Lou Hamer, an activist who was harassed and shot at for her attempts at registering voters. She herself went every 30 days to register to vote, each time ‘failing’ on one requirement or another. But her worst experience was when she and a group of activists were threatened by an officer for being in a café. When one of the group decided to take down the patrolman’s license plate number, the situation escalated and the party was arrested. Once arrested, they were beaten, one for not calling the policeman ‘sir’. In her cell, Hamer was beaten again (two other male inmates were forced to administer an almost fatal beating), from which she never fully recovered. And yet, once released, she continued to work to register voters, and demand that African Americans be fully represented in the Democratic party, and to fight for the right to be seated to represent Mississippi at the Democratic Convention. The white delegation walked out once this happened.
So, yes, this week’s win by Scott Colom is momentous, it is historic, it is monumental. But the message that keeps emerging from all of the noise and rancor of political infighting, not only in Mississippi but across the country, is the desire to see a return to a world where we respect each other, where we can work together, that we stop seeing people as our enemies. Messages of love, and faith, and hope. Messages of recognizing the pain that working people are experiencing. Messages of a desire for an end to corruption, and a need for accountability on the part of those who are supposed to serve in the interests of all people, not just their people.
This Friday morning, as I struggle to be a good patient and do those things I know I must do to ensure a good recovery, I am thankful for the concern of friends and family who have reached out and showed they care. I am grateful for the ability to access the healthcare system with the minimum of fuss, and to see that healthcare professionals still care. I am hopeful in the signs we are seeing of hope and recovery in a country torn apart by the authoritarian wishes of the few. And I am aware that the universe works in mysterious ways, making sure that I got to the hospital in time to avoid potential complications.
Have a wonderful weekend, Family!
One Love!
Namaste.
