Hospital Diaries IV: The Gurney Hall

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This is part of a series. You can begin at Part I and follow the link at the end of each installment to read the next.

A hospital is a strange world filled with machines and enigmatic people speaking unintelligible languages. For example, after only a few hours at the hospital, my vital signs had already been checked several times (I guess to make sure I was still alive), I had been incubated and rolled away on a stretcher through a maze of hallways to a “gurney hall.”

The gurney hall was actually a large square room of the emergency ward where patients waited either for a diagnosis or for a bed to become available. Along the outer walls, about 20 cubicles could accommodate two gurneys each, separated by a thin curtain. In addition, five glassed-in rooms were used to isolate contagious patients and the dying.

My cubicle neighbour was an unfortunate victim of a sporting accident, a 42 year-old woman who broke her back hitting a mogul while tobogganing with her children.

A toboggan is a runnerless sled used to travel over snow in Canada. It was designed by Natives to haul supplies and young children. Nowadays tobogganing is popular among Canadian children and their parents who have forgotten they are not as flexible as in their youth. Illustration: Dog-sledges of the Mandans by Johann Carl Bodmer. Source: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, public domain

A nurse showed up at my bedside bringing with her the usual equipment for taking blood pressure and temperature as well as a clipboard to scribble notes.

“Good morning sir, my name is Florence and I will be your nurse today. Are you in pain? Can you give me an estimate of your pain?”

Maybe I was confused because of my sufferings but I didn’t understand the question: for a moment I thought I was supposed to estimate my pain in Canadian or US dollars.

“On a scale from 0 to 10 could you rate your pain?” explained the nurse.

“It hurts a lot,” I muttered.

“Very well. Let’s describe your pain as an 8 then. I will bring you some painkillers. If you need anything, just ring,” she said showing me an alarm button tied by its wire to my gurney’s railing. She then disappeared with her machines.

The pain was excruciating. With every move I made I moaned. Soon my cries were joined by my neighbour’s whimpers and the wailings of other patients in the gurney hall, cascading into a tormented concerto accentuated by the bells and alarms of monitoring machines.

After an hour of waiting for the painkillers that Florence promised me, I remembered I had some ibuprofen in my shoulder bag. I swallowed two capsules and drifted into a restless sleep.

“Wake up sir! I brought your medicine!”

It was Florence who was handing me two caplets of acetaminophen and a glass of water.

As I was about to take the pills from my nurse, she noticed the bottle of ibuprofen on my bed.

“What’s that? Who gave you this medication?” she enquired as she picked up the muscle relaxant.

“Nobody, I answered, it’s the medicine I was taking at home to ease the pain and the swelling.”

“Did your doctor prescribe this?”

“Not at all, it’s available over the counter in any drugstore and it provides me with some relief,” I replied.

“Sir, you are not to take medication that is not prescribed by a doctor. I must report this right away.”

And she left taking with her my valuable remedy and the painkillers she was supposed to give me.

Stunned to see my medication confiscated, I uneasily managed to doze off.

When I woke up, a smiling bearded little man who looked like a leprechaun was sitting at the foot of my stretcher, tapping on my leg.

“Good day, how are you today?” he said.

Still in a daze, I felt like I had magically awakened in Middle-earth and that anytime Gandalf the Grey and Frodo Baggins would come to take me on some outlandish journey.

“Not very well, but who are you?” I replied.

“My name is doctor Ogham and I am a neurologist. Please tell me how you ended up in my hospital.”

One more time I explained the unbelievable story of a gout attack that turned into a sprained knee degenerating into overall paralysis. While I was talking, the practitioner was feeling my knees, my wrists and my hands, taking notes in the process and asking me to flex my limbs.

“I see, I see,” said the doctor. “But I could see better with a CAT-scan, an MRI, an EMG, some X-Rays... I’ll make the necessary arrangements.”

He then left as I was struggling to make sense of what he had just said.

One hour later, an orderly came to wheel my gurney to the nuclear medicine department to be irradiated with a scanner.

CAT-scans are 3-D images of the inside of a human body produced with an X-ray machine that looks like a giant bagel. In the last 25 years, medical imagery has become so common that the number of people exposed to radiation has been on the rise. This could explain the colour of the skin of the patient in the above photograph.

Several times in the next few hours I was to be rolled in and out of the gurney hall for tests.

Finally, I was taken to a room where Doctor Ogham hooked me up to an electromyograph, or EMG, that sent electric shocks to my nerves to see if my muscles would react.

Laying down as the neurologist was poking me with needles, I felt like a voodoo doll being subjected to some arcane ritual.

Voodoo is a complex religion which origins can be traced to the African slave trade. The voodoo doll, an amulet used to cast spells, became well known following the release of the 1932 Hollywood movie White Zombie. Fortunately, modern neurologists have little in common with voodoo witch doctors.

“This is strange, very strange,” said the good doctor, “Your muscles are reacting perfectly well. This does not look like a neurological problem, everything is working normally.”

Back to the gurney hall, I became acquainted with my neighbour who told me she was waiting for a brace to be made in order to stabilize her spine so she could sit up and move without risking any further injuries.

“Anyway, she said, they can’t keep me more than 48 hours in the emergency ward.”

“Why is that?” I enquired.

“That’s the maximum time allowed by the Ministry of Health. The hospital will be heavily fined if it goes over it. They better find me a bed quickly.”

Night had come. Lying shivering on my stretcher, I could feel the pain creeping back to my joints. How I wished the nurse had not stolen my ibuprofen!

I achingly reached for the alarm tied to my gurney’s railing. Bells were ringing and patients were crying in the gurney hall. Exhausted, I fell into a restless sleep waiting for a nurse to bring me drugs to ease away my pain.

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To be continued in Hospital Diaries V: The Seagull

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Vision Quest

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In my head there is an English garden in which wander all the people I loved in my past but who are no longer alive.

You see, I do not believe people ever die and neither will I. I will simply waste time and space in the head of somebody unfortunate enough to have loved me and will probably bring with me all the people who are currently walking around aimlessly in my brain.

This is how a robust collective unconscious is built.

I woke up in the middle of the night last Sunday, got up and saw the moon peeking through the window as my maternal grandfather was idly strolling between my brain cells.

My grandfather did everything according to the moon. By looking at the moon, he knew when it was time to get a haircut, to start haying the fields, to slaughter the pig. The moon also told him when the snow would fall, when the cow would calve, and when the maple tree sap would start to flow in the spring.

For my part, I notice that a full moon or a new moon bring with them colder or warmer temperatures.

The Moon is Earth’s only natural satellite. Anaxagoras (c. 500-428 BC) reasoned that the Moon was a gigantic rock that reflected the light from the sun. All who believed the Moon was made of green cheese were bitterly disappointed by this discovery.

Several years ago, I was attending a rave that the son of a friend organized in a secluded valley in the countryside. Hundreds of people came from all over North America to dance to the grooves of legendary DJs from Europe, Australia, the United States and Japan.

Sparks from a huge bonfire rose upward into the night sky while people walked around carrying torches. Gregorian chants that the DJ played on a background of “drum and bass” added a mystical feeling.

I started talking to an old Inuit from Nunavut. I told him that my grandfather lived according to what the Moon was telling him.

“The Moon has nothing to say,” the old man replied. “The stars hold all wisdom.”

Then, Natalie, the old man’s granddaughter – 30 years old and sweet as could be – offered me some of those dried mushrooms that take you to another level.

I do not approach psychedelic drugs casually. As a teenager I viewed drugs, rightly or wrongly, as the key that opened the door to the gods when one needed a special revelation. Since the gods are very powerful and very busy, I always thought they should not be disturbed unnecessarily.

Hallucinogenic mushrooms are found everywhere in the world in more than 200 species. The psychoactive element of this fungus is called psilocybin, an alkaloid with pharmacodynamic properties. As you can see from what I just wrote, to truly understand what they are doing, drug users should hold a degree in pharmacology or chemistry. Many thanks to WPClipart for making this public domain image available

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That night, I felt the time was right for revelations. I accepted Natalie’s offer and she poured a few grams of dried mushrooms in the palm of my hand. It seemed to me like a lot but Natalie took my arm and said:

– It’s only residue. Nunavut mushrooms are very mild, don’t worry.

I chewed conscientiously and then swallowed the mushroom crumbs. Natalie and I sat on a downed tree trunk looking at the bonfire and people dancing, and waited for the mushrooms to work their magic.

We talked a little and I was feeling good. Natalie’s grandfather was standing nearby. He slowly raised his head and hands to the sky. He was different: he was now dressed in deerskins and was quietly singing in his language, shuffling his feet on the ground.

He was talking to the stars.

I watched him intently. I was no longer hearing the DJs’ music: only the soft song of the old Inuit was filling my ears.

My nose was itchy. Maybe it had been stung by a mosquito and now it was wet, probably because I scratched it until it bled. It was beginning to swell.

Actually, it was not swelling: it was GROWING.

I thought this was peculiar but interesting. I did not know where I was anymore. Everything started to waver rapidly and I fell on all fours. My face was turning into a snout and I was shivering as my skin was being covered with some kind of grey fur. I did not feel uncomfortable at all and strangely I was not afraid: this metamorphosis seemed to me absolutely in order. I began to howl gently.

The old Inuit was chanting and dancing by my side, beating on a drum as an accompaniment. For my part, I had turned completely into a coyote and my howling harmonized with the old man’s chanting.

Coyotes (canis latrans) can be found everywhere in North America. They are related more to the jackal than to the wolf. Coyotes are not an endangered species and sometimes mate with housedogs. In Germany, I’m told, coyotes have been crossbred with poodle dogs, probably to annoy the French. Many thanks to WPClipart for making this public domain image available.

I don’t know how long our performance lasted. All I know is that everything turned dark and when I gained consciousness, I was lying naked in a haystack in Natalie’s arms, still high from the magic mushrooms from Nunavut.

A few days later, back in town, I told my story to my friend Aaron who told me:

– Obviously you saw your totem...

– My totem? No, no, It was not a carved pole of scowling beasts with protruding eyes. I really turned into a coyote!

– A totem, you simpleton, is a protective spirit in North American Indian folklore. In your case, it seems your totem is the coyote. Unfortunate. You could have chosen better...

– I don’t understand...

– My poor friend, you never learned anything. The coyote is a deceiver, a trickster, a bit like Papa Legba in voodoo. The coyote stole fire from the Gods to give to mankind...

– Like Prometheus in Greek mythology, I wondered aloud to show that I had some cultural knowledge after all.

– If you say so, but the coyote keeps breaking rules, playing tricks even if his tricks have sometimes positive effects.

On my own after Aaron left, I thought about his last words and about the unorthodox path I had followed in life. To free myself from the constraint of rules, I often downgraded them to simple guidelines or mere suggestions, never hesitating to ignore them to achieve a goal I felt was more desirable.

“A wild dog as a protective spirit: I could have done worse,” I thought.

Totem poles carved by Pacific Northwest American Indians are monuments sculpted from large cedar trees representing the protective spirit of their tribe but also to serve as witnesses to major historical events or even as tombs for their ancestors. Totem pole carved by Mr. Henry Hunt (1923-1985) of the Kwawkewith Indian Band, British Columbia, Canada.

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Electronic Smoking

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Back in 1980, a friend of mine went to France for three weeks to pick grapes. She returned a year and a half later after having travelled throughout Europe and the Mediterranean.

On Friday nights she would come over to visit me and we would play Scrabble and cribbage for hours on end while drinking wine and coffee.

Those are good memories.

One night as we were opening a third bottle of wine, my friend, whom I had never seen smoking, took out of her purse a pack of Egyptian cigarettes which she had brought back from her travels, and lit up a cigarette. I was not a smoker, however for fun I asked her to give me one. I was 25 years old and this was my first smoking experience. I enjoyed it so much that a month later I was smoking a pack a day.

I like the smell and the taste of tobacco. It reminds me of my grandfather who smoked Canadian tobacco that he purchased from farmers. It reminds me of my father, who before my parents’ divorce, when I was a child, would send me to the store to buy Sportsman cigarettes for him.

I like the gestures that come with smoking: opening a pack, taking a cigarette out, lighting it up while protecting the flame of the lighter or the match from the wind, holding a cigarette between my fingers, feeling the cigarette dangling from my lips, deeply breathing in the smoke and enjoying the taste of tobacco.

These feelings are irreplaceable.

At university, I had a non-smoking girlfriend who, when she woke up before me in the morning, would light one of my cigarettes and place it between my lips to awaken me. This is one of the most sensual memories of my youth.

Everybody smoked back then; it was the quintessential social activity. We shared cigarettes to get acquainted, to make a conversation last, to prolong an evening, to muster up courage at work. And drinking coffee or alcohol without smoking is just not the same thing.

In Jim Jarmusch’s excellent movie, Coffee and Cigarettes, Tom Waits manages to convince Iggy Pop that the beauty of quitting is that then you can have a cigarette, because you quit...

Everything is different now. First, governments implemented regulations to make cigarette packages less attractive. Then, they raised the price of tobacco products by applying whopping regressive taxes that sparked contraband and created a new underground cigarette manufacturing industry.

At work, employees were first relegated to smoking in badly ventilated rooms, then forced to smoke outside 30 feet away from the doors. The most basic principles of hospitality and health were ignored. Patrons of bars and restaurants would be subjected to the same predicament a few years later.

Which is the biggest threat? Catching cancer after decades of smoking or catching pneumonia after a few days or weeks of smoking outside in -30 temperatures?

To spare myself from having to smoke outside during the harsh Canadian winter, I decided to try switching to electronic cigarettes.

Electronic cigarettes, or e-cigs, were patented in the United States in the early 1960’s. At that time, the negative effects of smoking were not generally recognized so the product was a marketing failure.

An e-cig is about the same size and the same weight as a pen. Its components are an LED light to indicate when it is activated, a battery with the relevant electronic circuitry, a vaporizer and a cartridge containing a liquid that produces the taste and mist.

E-cigs are activated by inhaling from a hole at the end of the cartridge containing a liquid after it is screwed to the rest of the contraption.

This liquid contains propylene glycol or glycerin. These chemicals are often found in atomizers used to produce relief from asthma. It also contains food additives or nicotine although the importing of nicotine-based e-cigs is not authorized in Canada. Otherwise, it is fairly easy to find non-nicotine e-cigs.

I spent 10 dollars for a food additive-based e-cig that was supposed to provide me with the same enjoyment I would get from smoking two packs of regular cigarettes.

Unfortunately it was not to be.

While this e-cig gave me the impression that I was smoking “for real”, I was disappointed by the taste and smell of the cigarette. The device produces a sweet, herbal odour and taste that reminded me somewhat of the mixture hookah pipe smokers use: you know, the herbal stuff that tastes like apples or jasmine. I was never fond of flavoured tobacco; I prefer a strong bitter taste.

I also found the weight and size of the e-cig uncomfortable. It is impossible to let the cigarette hang from your lips because it is too heavy. Its length makes it awkward to handle.

Finally, the electronic cigarette produces a “smoke” that is really only a mist. It results from the evaporation of the liquid from the heated cartridge. In public, that mist is conspicuous and it might annoy oversensitive non-smokers or former smokers.

Since we are constantly bombarded with anti-smoking messages, it is hard not to be aware of the negative effects of this habit on the heart and the lungs. However, I am of those who believe that there are two sides to every coin. To every Romulus there is a Remus; to each Cain there is an Abel. If smoking is still popular despite the huge deployment of efforts to eradicate it, tobacco must have some benefits, benefits strong enough to resist advertising campaigns heavily subsidized by governments, the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry.

Maybe we could learn some useful insight into the virtues of smoking from the Natives in America if we cared to listen...

In Canada, an often disgusting photo and a threatening warning about the danger of smoking must be displayed on half the surface of a pack of cigarettes. On the side of a package is a list of toxic products it contains. This kind of warning is likely to appear someday on restaurant menus, entrances to public buildings, cars, etc. Because, let’s face it, about everything we ingest, every location we visit, all consumer products we use and all of our activities constitute a health hazard of some kind.

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The mighty bison

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Over half a century has already gone by since I was born... So many things can change in only 50 years.

For example 50 years was all it took to reduce the over 100 million American bison (bison bison) that once roamed North America’s plains to only a handful.

The mighty bison: Manitoba’s provincial emblem, the fierce bovine that adorns Wyoming’s State flag and the livelihood of “Buffalo” Bill Cody and generations of Native Americans was indeed the ruler of American prairies. Having few predators, apart from the grizzly bear and the wolf, they were quite happy grazing, resting, and chewing their cud before moving on to other pastures.

Their sheer size – a male Plains bison (bison bison bison – whoever comes up with Latin names for species obviously lacks imagination from time to time) is typically 2,000 pounds – their bad temper when annoyed, their speed and agility (a bison runs at 40 mph and can jump six feet high) and their tendency to stampede when incommoded by insects make them animals you do not want to cross.

A Plains bison can be recognized from a Wood bison (bison bison athabascae) by its size (the Plains bison is smaller) and the shape of its hump, which is rounded while the Wood bison’s hump is squared. Both are irritable.

For the American bison, gestation is 285 days and a bull is able to mate at three years of age. However, in a herd, the more mature bulls will exercise their authority to prevent the younger ones from mating. Therefore, until he is old and big enough, a male bison will be relegated to lustily watch the cows for his elders while practicing his reproductive technique on dismayed smaller bulls.

The 19th century was not a good time for the American bison. European settlers were moving west, encountering Natives who were reluctant to give up their space to accommodate the newcomers’ hunger for land. Reservations were created to confine the Aboriginals but for those who still insisted on living in their homeland, it was decided to starve them by killing the bison on which they heavily depended for food and trade.

To make matters worse for the emblematic ungulate, the new Americans were laying down hundreds of miles of railroad tracks wherever they went, often taking advantage of bison trails left bare between migrations.

As any migratory animal, the American bison liked their trails and wanted to re-use them, railroad tracks or not. Do you know how hard it is to keep a reliable train schedule when bison herds keep crossing the tracks according to their whim? Thus, there was another excellent reason for hunting them.

Finally, the industrial revolution gave the American bison the coup de grâce.

The new steam and combustion engines needed sturdy drive belts for connecting their spinning gears. The best belts were made with thick bison hides. Also, as the manufacturing sector’s productivity was improved by motorized factories, many new goods that required assembly were put on the market. Submitted to hydrolysis, bison bones produced collagen which made excellent glue to join parts together. Those were the days before duct tape, Velcro and tie-wraps, when securing parts was somewhat troublesome.

Buffalo bones are being loaded in a Canadian Pacific railway car to be shipped to a glue factory. Credit: Library and Archives Canada / PA-066544

For those reasons the hunting continued until the entire American bison population was worn down to a mere few specimen.

Fortunately, as the legend goes, in 1881 a South Dakota farmer purchased the last five remaining bison calves and thus preserved the species. Within 30 years there was a herd of about 1,000 bisons grazing the great American plains again.

However this led to a new controversy. Following DNA testing it was found that some bison genes had been polluted by regular cattle genes. I mean, if you are a 600 pounds Jersey cow grazing and you suddenly realize there is a one-ton lonely bison bull, who is tired of humping his male counterparts in the mud and who is giving you sweet looks from the other side of a fence that he can easily jump over, what are you supposed to do?

The Jersey cow is popular because of the quality of its dairy output, small size and high fertility rate. Offsprings of ordinary cattle and bison are sometimes called beefallo.

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Cannibals

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My text had to be delivered by close of business Friday. Thursday night I was still torturing my laptop’s keyboard to make the deadline on time.

The article had to be original but I could not come up with new ideas. It was my third draft and still the story was not going where it was supposed to go. What is a creator to do when his work will not follow the mind of its maker?

Finally I decided to search countless pages of notes saved on hard disks, diskettes and tapes. Using an old Macintosh SE30, I dug through the innards of diskettes for 20-year old back-ups. Every time I found something reusable I transferred it to the laptop by modem.

And the clock kept ticking...

I butchered away through unpublished stories trying to make mine again the virtues of my past creativity. I chewed ideas that were too raw, making them fit for human consumption. It was messy but it was coming along...

At 3:00 AM, the laptop was overheating. I could feel the CPU boiling under the keyboard.

Then the computer started making strange noises: “Aarrrruuuh! Aarrrruuuh! Aarrrruuuh!”

I knew what it was: the bearings of the internal cooling fan were giving up. I had to turn off the laptop until I could replace the fan assembly.

A computer’s integrated circuits generate heat that would build up quickly without dissipating devices. In this picture, the copper pipe draws heat from the CPU and motherboard for the cooling fan to expel.

I opened the back of the laptop, removed the faulty cooling fan, and went to bed wondering where I would find parts for a five-year-old laptop.

First thing in the morning, I took a cab to a computer store that sold end-of-line equipment. The owner was not selling spare parts but suggested another store that might be able to help.

The fellow in the second store’s service department told me he would order the part but it could take a few weeks for delivery. “No can do, I said, I need it this morning.”

After some thought the young man said: “There’s a shop with which we sometimes do business that locates hard to find parts. It's far but it’s accessible by bus. I have to warn you though: this is a ‘peculiar’ kind of business.” I got the address and the directions, and hopped on a bus.

When I got off the bus, I was in the middle of a field. There was a wooded area behind me. I read the directions: “Go under the bridge and walk for five minutes until you see an unpaved pathway to your right.”

I looked around; there was an overpass to my right. I figured that was the “bridge”. I went under it and soon I saw a trail leading through an overgrown area. I followed it for awhile until I found myself in the middle of an industrial park.

The address was 1245 Industrial Road. I guess the urban designer who came up with that street name felt as creative as I was the previous night, tearing off bits and pieces from old texts.

Twelve-forty-five Industrial Road was a one-story building with grey siding behind an unkempt front yard. I rang the bell and waited.

A lanky young man with a shaved head, a nose ring and gouged earlobes opened the door. His bare arms were tattooed from shoulder to wrist. For some reason I thought of Queequeg, the Polynesian harpooner in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

Moby Dick was a vindictive sperm whale chased by the equally spiteful captain Ahab. Native harpooners were often used in whaling expeditions. Europeans and Americans prejudiced against natives sometimes depicted them as cannibals. However documented evidence indicates that colonialists resorted to cannibalism for survival. The British members of Sir John Franklin’s expedition set to discover the Northwest passage in 1848, or the survivors of the wreck of the French naval frigate Méduse off the coast of Mauritania in 1816 are good examples.

I explained what I was looking for. Without a word he let me in and left me to wait in a large damp room that reeked of mildew. The carpet was dirty and there were gutted out computers piled up all around.

Through a door I could see in another room two black men busy dismembering desktop computers on a conference table. There were electronic parts everywhere.

Then it struck me: these guys made a living cannibalizing old computers.

A soldier is cleaning a part he just cannibalized from a tank during WW II.

Cannibalizing is such a gruesome word to describe an activity that is actually environmentally-friendly: re-using components to prolong the life of dying equipment and delay the moment parts are sent to landfills.

I guess doctors do the same when they take organs from cadavers to extend or improve the life of their patients.

Anyway, since the FBI unreluctantly resorted to a cannibal to solve their problem in Thomas Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs, I figured it was OK if I did the same.

When the tattooed, shaved and pierced metal faced gentleman came back, I showed him the fan assembly. He took me into another room filled with shelving stacked with old laptop computers, dug out one from the middle of a pile and removed its fan.

I was back in business...

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