Eccentric Flower:199905/estonian dead letter office
From Eccentric Flower
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may fourth estonian dead letter office I cannot send email to my friend in Estonia. It's the same address she's always used, but when I send, it spits back that it cannot relay mail, which is strange since I am not attempting to relay. So this postcard is for her ... although others might find it interesting as well. Who knows? - - - She and I were going to trade hospital stories. She asked me to tell mine first. Here it is: I went to the hospital for hernia surgery. Basically a loop of intestine had pushed out through my abdominal wall and dangled down into my scrotum. (Those who prefer that Columbine not pull back the curtain, simply strike those last six words from the record.) The process is simple - they make a cut across the hip, at the top of your leg, push the intestine back in through the ruptured area (I could do that myself, and did several times - it didn't hurt) and stitch up the rupture, incorporating a kind of strengthening mesh so it won't rupture again. Then they stitch up the incision they had to make in order to get to the affected area. This was an overnight stay, I believe. I had never been overnight in a hospital before. I woke up from the anaesthesia and I had been slit like a filleted trout. In addition to the tiny incision, maybe 5 cm long, from the hernia operation, I had a huge incision from the top of my pubes to my sternum - a vertical seam all the way across my stomach. It hurt like hell. It developed that while the surgeon was working on the hernia, he had found blood in my intestinal cavity - not blood from the work he was doing, either. This worried him and he made the exploratory incision to find out what, if anything was wrong. I did not fault him for the decision, then or now. The hernia operation had been done under a local anaesthetic, not a general one (that is, I had been awake during the operation, or theoretically awake). He says he told me what he needed to do, and asked my permission to switch to the general anaesthetic to make the big cut - he says I said yes - I don't remember any of it. But internal bleeding is serious, and I would have done the same, I'm sure. He didn't find a cause, and if internal bleeding has happened again, I don't experience any bad symptoms of it. Meanwhile I have an amazing scar, and I was in the hospital for five days, not overnight. I got a lot of reading done. I read Snow Crash in one day and I had Nonelvis bring me The Diamond Age that night and I read it the next day. - - - On hospitals, she also had the following comments, which I place here with my replies. I feel like putting her words here is a breach of privacy, but I have no other way, and my comments hardly make sense without hers. Some people prefer to wear their own clothes in hospitals. Not me. I feel like I could shred personality and responsibility together with my material possessions. If I could, I would probably like to shred even my name and answer to some number instead. It would be so neat, ruled with exact rules, everyone sticking to their roles. That's what most people resist here. Americans must have the illusion of independence at all times. In a hospital, of course, one has very little independence, but Americans also have a vast capacity for denial. (That would lead me to Kosovo if I kept going, so just assume I'm bitter about my countrymen and we'll leave it at that.) I guess I would hate any hospitals that do not look like barracks. Rows of beds. Again, most Americans would see this the other way 'round. Sharing a bedroom - especially when one has to do humiliating things like use a bedpan - is considered dehumanizing. The most frequent "upgrade" to insurance coverage (i.e. the patient pays out of pocket in order to get something the insurance won't pay for) is a private hospital room. (And, in response to some other comment about beds which I didn't keep in my reply and so can't remember:) I have problems sharing a bed. I am 6'4" - let's see, 2.54 cm to the inch, that makes me 193 cm - and usually buy the biggest bed I can find, then I am capable of occupying most of it if I spread out. It took me months before I could fall asleep in the same bed with Nonelvis easily. - - - Finally there is the email about being a Puritan, but only becoming aware of our differences because of a discussion of food: But I wanted to write about food, not sex... Plain old northern food .... Boiled potatoes, rye bread, fish .... "Humans eat to live, humans never live to eat." The Puritan half in me heartily agrees .... If I would have to choose a reason for not trusting you, I would go for that: "He thinks food is important? That's really bad ...." Of course, it also means I would like to have you around .... Cooking (I am not talking about boiling potatoes here) for myself is a sin, cooking for others is not .... And it's worse than you know, my friend ... because I can understand it when someone doesn't care for the pleasures of sex ... but I do not understand people who do not love food. Then again, maybe you do love food but do not like to embellish it. And yet again: Maybe there have been times when you have gone hungry. People who have been starving lose some of their ability to see the sensual aspects of food - they have struggled too hard to get it, any of it. I myself - although I have never gone truly hungry, consumingly hungry - have been poor enough that I'd eat whatever I could get. While I want to keep some of that around - hunger being the best sauce and all that - I'm glad my priorities and my taste buds recovered from that period. "As god is my witness, I'll never eat ramen again." It may be that we just have to agree that we don't understand each other on this subject. That's all right. There are many things about you I don't understand, and I'm sure you feel the same way about me. I just wish I could write you to talk to you about them.
© columbine |
