Humiliation ~ A Heavy Dose of it

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The perfect question, at the ideal time. Exactly four weeks ago, on the night of February 6th to February 7th, I rested in a hospital bed and recovered from surgery.

No, worries, this post is not about my health. I was in good hands. The nurses and my doctor were wonderful, and they made sure I was taken care of when I felt the most vulnerable. It was my attitude, that was the problem, and the universe had decided it was again time to teach me a lesson.

I could count on the universe all my life. The heavens some might call it. The Cosmos is the one thing I can rely on. Just like karma, it seems to watch me from afar and it will show up when needed. Maybe it’s neither the heavens nor the universe, but my own conscience who knows instinctively that it’s time to change something – but what?

I am a light sleeper. Like so many children who grew up with abusive parents, or women and who lived through an abusive relationship, I rest but I am never all relaxed. While my body is sleeping, something inside me is always on high alert. The nights are for sleeping but the darkness can also be dangerous. That’s when most abusers, in my case violent alcoholic parents so many decades ago – show their worst behavior. The evening hours and the night, that’s when children hide under the bed or in closets. That’s when women run for their lives and if they are lucky, they get a chance to call for help. Awake hours in the night appear double as long.

Perhaps it’s not only the negative experiences in our past that make us sleep lightly but it’s also a Woman Thing and by nature, we sleep with one eye open, so we can hear the babies and children and the ones we care for. To not miss when they need us. Whatever the reason might be, I am a light sleeper.

I had woken around 6:30 pm in the ICU, had sent my husband home to the dogs when I realized he was still around, and four hours later they had a bed for me and a group of nurses rolled me through the hospital wings from one elevator to the next, to bring me there.

My room was dimmed, the empty spot on the wall between all the machines had just been waiting for my bed. A very nice nurse welcomed me and I smiled. I was awake and felt comfortable. Through the large windows, I could see parts of the other hospital facilities. The buildings were mostly dark, only some lights were on, and a flickering glow indicated that some patients were watching TV.

Jacky, the night nurse showed me the remote and attached it to my bed frame, so I could reach it at all times. “This one is for the TV, the other one is the call button, don’t hesitate and press it if you need something.”

“You must sleep upright for a few nights,” she continued. The head of my bed had to be elevated at least 30% I learned and I understood. I didn’t like it.

I am by nature a side sleeper, a pillow pusher, who climbs every night in a beautifully made bed, to find the next morning all the pillows scattered around the bed somewhere on the floor. I am also a hot sleeper, ever since nature gave me the gift of menopause, which left me with sleeping patterns that seem a bit all over the place. Let me say it nicely. You don’t want to sleep with me. 🙂

And so I lay in bed in a hospital, upright, on my back like a turtle, and wondered how I would be able to rest. Of course, I wasn’t as awake as I make it sound now. The anesthesia and the pain meds they had given me, made sure I felt sleepy and I closed my eyes and dozed off.

Have you ever been in a hospital? Have you ever tried to sleep in a hospital? It’s impossible. They won’t let you. Every hour someone is coming by, checking on something. They poke you and take blood, they open and close the curtains and give you medications you didn’t know you needed. They take your vital signs and give you ice chips and water, they do something meaningful and necessary.

In the middle of the night, they rolled another bed in, and I could hear them talk quietly. The patient was awake as I had been at my arrival. We lay on opposite sides of the room, separated by a large curtain wall.

The nurse greeted her as nicely as she had greeted me. They talked for a while quietly, and then the nurse left. Our room was dark now, I could see the TV on the other side flickering. Her TV wasn’t loud, but loud enough that I could hear Colonel Sherman Potter from M*A*S*H* barking his orders.

The volume on the TV was so low, that I couldn’t understand the words, only bits and pieces. Still, I could hear it.

I closed my eyes again and tried to drift off with the goal in mind to sleep as much as possible so time would pass faster until I would hopefully go back home that afternoon.

The TV noise bothered me and I hoped she would turn the ‘damn thing’ off soon. I know some people use the TV to fall asleep. I always wondered about it. “How in the world does somebody sleep with so much noise?”

I snoozed off but was awakened by the quiet alarm peep that called the nurse to my roommate’s bed. They were whispering, something was wrong with her IV.

“Thank you for taking care of me,” I heard the patient say to the nurse, a short moment later the room was quiet again, or would have been quiet if the TV behind the curtain had been off.

The woman on the other side of the room, a stranger who I didn’t know, started to aggravate me. I wanted to go back to sleep, to forget the pain that finally came to the surface. I tried to ignore that I had to use the bathroom soon because I wasn’t looking forward to that.

I am not sure how long I had managed to doze off again, just to be awakened by the next alarm for the nurse. My head was pounding, I laid still but I just know that I rolled my eyes in the darkness. Something was wrong with her IV again and a second nurse came into the room and they took care of the problem on my roommate’s bed.

They checked on me as well, gave me a calcium pill, and asked if I needed something. I took the chance to mention the bathroom. “Can you make it?” the nurse asked me.

“We will find out,” I managed to whisper and held on to my IV like a cane on my wobbly walk. I got an ice chip as a reward when I came back, which I gladly took. A sippy cup with cold water was placed on the tray beside my bed.

“Do you want the TV on,” the sweet nurse asked me.

I shook my head, laid back down in the upright position, and closed my eyes. I wanted out of this hospital, I missed my bed, I didn’t like the pain or any of this. I was not a happy camper.

The TV on the other side of the room indicated that a new episode of M*A*S*H* was going to start. I looked outside the window into the darkness, wondered about all the rooms that had the lights on in the middle of the night, and I drifted off again.

Not for long. The same routine happened all night long on an hourly base. The patient on the other side of the room needed the nurse. The IV connectors were not compatible, that’s the only thing I could understand and her TV stayed on all night long. The patient always thanked the nurses for taking care of her, something I noticed but tried to ignore. She bugged me.

Around 5:30 am a nurse came in and took my vital signs, poked me again, a covered plate on my bed tray showed that my breakfast had been delivered already.

“Could you sleep a bit?” The nurse wanted to know and I shook my head. “Kind of hard to sleep if a TV is keeping you up all night long,” I whispered. I couldn’t talk right away, my voice would soon come back though.

I felt aggravated, irritated, annoyed. You name it. I sat up and inspected my breakfast. Two strips of very thin bacon and an egg patty or something like it. A small box of milk, which I pushed away, the diet Sprite seemed more tempting.

I tried chewing for the first time after the surgery on the front of my neck. During eating I tried to inspect the scar with my fingertip. The bathrooms didn’t have a mirror, so I was left with my imagination.

My roommate was on the phone. “They took more than they had told me,” I think she said and then I heard her cry a bit. Then she cheered up quickly when she talked to a young child. Her voice changed and she sounded happy.

I looked at my purse on the window seal. My phone was inside and I debated if I should get up to get it, but decided it was not worth risking a fall. Who would I call at 6 am in the morning?

After breakfast, I tried to sleep a bit, but now the TV was louder and the annoying woman on the other side of the room seemed to spend a couple of hours on the phone, talking to everybody she knew, so it seemed.

I didn’t like her, she irked me more and more. Didn’t she know that another patient was sharing her room with her? Did she ever think about me and how much her behavior and her rudeness affected me? Yes, I felt sorry for myself and I had every right to feel that way. My head was still pounding, my left arm was asleep, the incision hurt and my lip was trembling, which is a sign of calcium deficiency I learned.

“We let you go home if your calcium is back to normal,” everybody told me and they raised the amount of oyster shell tablets I had to take for four more weeks.

Around 10 am I gave up sleeping and sat on my bed, sidewise. I could see the corridor, I had now my TV on and tried to find an acceptable channel. The other side of the room was quiet. It looked like now she was finally sleeping and I entertained the thought to pay her back. I should turn my TV on loud now. Perhaps then she would understand what she had done to me all night long but I didn’t. Gratefully I didn’t.

Around 12 pm the good news came, right when I closed the lid on a highly questionable lunch. “You will be discharged in about an hour,” Zaccary the nurse told me, then he sat down and explained to me what I had to do today.

“Do you want to come back and we pull the drain tube, or can you do it yourself?”

“I do it,” I quickly answered because at a certain age, you stop being fearful and you just do what you have to do. What’s the worst that can happen? You do it wrong and then you can still go to the hospital. It was a no-brainer.

My phone was now on my tray and I called my husband to give him the good news. He had been waiting at home, he was nervous and I could hear the relief in his voice.

We talked for a while. On the other side, there was a commotion, the woman in the other bed needed to use the restroom as well and she was left with the same options. Either a bed pan, or she could go to the bathroom with a walker, guided by nurses.

Finally, I would see the lady who had tortured me all night long. While I couldn’t look at the other side behind the curtain, the small curtain on the right side of my bed had been left open and she had to walk by.

And then I saw her and I don’t think I have ever felt shittier in my whole life.

A young woman in her mid-thirties pushed a walker in front of her, she missed a leg, it had been amputated above the knee. Big, bulky bandages were covering what was left of her upper leg. She hopped with the other foot toward the walker, and both nurses encouraged her nicely.

I was in a cancer hospital, perhaps one of a handful of lucky patients who didn’t have cancer and I had felt sorry for myself because I had an insignificant scar on my neck? My thyroid got removed, and my head hurt. So what?

The nurse closed the curtain to my bedside and I felt grateful.

I wanted to be alone now. I turned my TV off and I sat quietly on my hospital bed for a long time.

We never know what other people have to go through, or what inner and outer pains they have to deal with. How could I have been so shallow to be aggravated by a little bit of TV noise?

I had every reason to be grateful, yet I had brought myself into a position where I felt ashamed.

On the other side of the room there was a lady half my age, who had lost a limb, and who had to stay for many more nights, while I would go home quickly.

I don’t know if any of what I write will make sense now, but that day I will not forget. May it stay with me for the rest of my life and may I remember how small and little I had felt when I had been confronted with my own shortcomings.

When I was ready to leave, I felt brave and I hoped my voice would not give up. “I hope you will go home soon as well,” I said toward the curtain and she heard me. She thanked me.

We talked for a while and I heard her story. I listened with my ears and with my heart. I am glad a curtain separated us.

I was reminded to be kind and understanding. When you are an agnostic like I am, or if you are a non-believer then there is no ultimate forgiveness from a higher power. Whatever you do has consequences that can be felt. The only forgiveness I can find is the one within me. To be kind to myself has been a bit tricky lately.

I am a very fortunate person, who had acted like a spoiled brat. Not my proudest moment!

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Daily writing prompt

What is the last thing you learned?

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