Hospital Diaries IV: The Gurney Hall

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Version française

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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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Hospital Diaries III: Incubation

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Version française

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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.

Parked in a wheelchair at the hospital’s emergency ward, I soon understood why sick people are called “patients.” Patience is the ability to wait in silence while surrendering to calamity.

Unfortunately, the young lady sitting in front of me did not grasp that concept. With her cell phone glued to her ear, she was ranting over the senselessness of the health care system.

“I’ve been waiting for five hours! I’ve had a splitting headache ever since I got vaccinated last week and I’m leaving for Thailand in two days! Why is nobody taking care of me? Don’t they realize this is an emergency?”

Many people think that all emergencies require immediate action. This is not so. There are different levels. Some emergencies need to be addressed without delay, others can wait a little while. Few are a priority.

While driving me to the hospital, my friend Lucide tried to reassure me about my stay at the hospital by telling me the difference between private and public healthcare systems.

“A private healthcare system sees patients as a source of revenues whereas a public system – such as the one we have in Canada – views them as expenditures. A public system aims at getting you well enough to send you home as quickly as possible in order to minimize costs. You’ll see: in a snap you‘ll be back in your apartment, happily cleaning it up.”

I was not as optimistic as my friend. I believed that the waiting time at the emergency ward could be long. That’s why I asked Lucide to prepare some supplies for me before leaving my place.

In a shoulder bag I had a sandwich, some apples, an orange, a few biscuits, a water bottle, two packs of cigarettes and a small jar of Ibuprofen, the muscle relaxant I was using as a pain reliever.

Ibuprofen is an anti-inflammatory drug used to alleviate fever, pain and swelling. One can say it is basically a “super Aspirin.” Ibuprofen is included in the core model list of essential medicines published by the World Health Organization and should be part of everyone’s medicine cabinet.

The enraged Thailand traveller was furiously pacing when I was called on the intercom.

Clumsily I wheeled my chair to an office where a nurse was waiting for me to check my “vital signs.” It took me a minute to understand she wanted to take my blood pressure and my temperature.

The nurse tightened an armband on my upper arm and stuck a thermometer in my mouth under my tongue.

Fever is measured by inserting a thermometer into the mouth, the rectum, the ear or under the armpit of a patient. It was only in the 19th century that doctors realized that fever was a symptom, not an ailment. Besides their taste, there is no difference between an oral and rectal thermometer.

While she was writing down the results I asked the nurse if she knew how soon I would see a doctor.

“Not right away. We’re very busy now. We will call you to let you know which cube you should go to.”

“A cube? What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.

“That’s what we call our consultation rooms. Now if you could please return to the waiting room, I have other patients to see.”

I was not thrilled by the idea of being “incubated” at the hospital. I was also less than elated to wait for ten long hours until I was called to Cube 67. During this waiting time, several patients – including the traveller to Thailand – grew tired of waiting and left the ward without seeing a doctor.

I had been looking at the walls of Cube 67 for twenty minutes or so when a young doctor showed up. I told her why I had come to the hospital. I explained my gout attack, the torn ligaments in my twisted knee, the weeks spent in bed at home and my paralysis.

She wanted to examine me. To do so she had to call two orderlies to lift me up from the wheelchair and sit me down on a bed. I painfully took off my jacket and my shirt and put on an open-back smock that one of the orderlies tied at my neck with a lace.

After the doctor checked my knees, my hands, my wrists and my arms, she left the cube without a word.

I could hear her talking with a man on the other side of the door:

— “He’s well over 50, he can’t walk and he has trouble moving. I wonder if...” she said.

— “He’s got all the symptoms, said the man, it could very well be spinal stenosis.”

— “That’s exactly what I thought,” she concluded.

Those were the last word I heard from her and I was never to see her again.

After 30 minutes, a nurse came into the cube carrying a plastic basket filled with small glass bottles and stickers.

“I need to take some blood samples, she said. Please roll up your sleeve, sir.”

I obliged half-heartedly. The nurse filled 31 vials with my blood then left.

There I was, alone in my cube, sitting on a slippery leatherette and foam mattress. I was cold. My arms, my shoulders and my legs were sore. What would become of me? I did not know what “spinal stenosis” meant and I was afraid.

One of the most widespread myths of modern times is that medical officers specializing in nerves and the spinal cord are called “spin doctors.” Because of that belief, people think that spinal stenosis means these doctors write down their observations using shorthand. However, spinal stenosis is really about an abnormal narrowing of the spinal canal running through the backbone.

Shivering, I managed to stretch and pick up my jacket that the orderly had left on the wheelchair. Despite the pain, I put my coat on, lay down on the bed and dozed off.

When I woke up, a man dressed in tan scrubs was putting my clothes, my shoulder bag and my shoes under a gurney. He then proceeded to skillfully slide my body over to the stretcher.

The attendant opened the cube’s door and wheeled me out to the corridor. I asked him where he was taking me and he replied:

“Where am I taking you? Why, to the gurney hall, of course!”

A gurney is a wheeled stretcher used to take patients on a journey. It is often equipped with a hydraulic system for raising and lowering patients so the attendant does not injure his or her back and develop spinal stenosis.

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To be continued in Hospital Diaries IV: The Gurney Hall

The Deer Hunter

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For Yves. Many thanks to Lucy.

Version française

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One summer evening as I was on my way to my haunted house in the country. I was negotiating a long curve on the highway around a steep hill in my 1983 Renault Alliance. To my left, the sun was setting. As I was pulling down the sun visor I saw a shadow in the corner of my right eye.

BANG! I hit the jumping deer at 60 miles per hour. The windshield exploded and instantly the inside of the car was filled with flying hair and the musky smell of the wild animal. I slowed down to a stop on the shoulder of the highway.

I got out of the car as other motorists whizzed by and the unfortunate doe was quivering on the median strip of the highway, gasping out her last breath. Massaging the back of my neck, I slowly walked around to see the damage.

The windshield had completely shattered and tufts of hair were caught in the cracks of the glass. The right fender was torn and one of the headlights was dangling. There were deep dents in the hood and on the top of the car as well as nasty scratches on the trunk hatch.

“This is what happens when Mother Nature takes on Motor Trends’ Car of the Year,” I thought.

The Renault Alliance was actually a Renault 9 re-packaged for North American markets following a partnership agreement between Renault and American Motors. Sold from 1983-1987, the hastily-designated "Car of the year" proved to be a nightmare for many owners because of chronic head gasket, clutch, transmission, suspension and exhaust problems. Very few are still on the road nowadays.

One car stopped and the driver asked if I needed assistance. I said I was fine, but I asked him to call the police so I could make a report for the insurance company.

I waited for over an hour before the police cruiser arrived. The sun had set, the sky was clouding over and it was obvious that it would rain soon. I answered the officer’s questions while he filled in his report. Then we walked to the median to look at the beast that had wrecked my car.

The white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) was lying on its side, flies buzzing around its open eyes and foamy mouth. I thought it would be a shame to let 100 lbs. of good venison go to waste so I asked the young police officer to give me a hand carrying the carcass to my car.

The white-tailed deer is found in abundant quantities in America from Canada to Peru. It is a least-concern species in terms of conservation status since its principal predator is probably the automobile.

– Erm, I’m not sure about that sir. Hunting season is not yet open and you should report this killing to the Wildlife Service.

– But I was not hunting, it was an accident...

– Yeah, well, in any case, I think the Wildlife Service has to offer roadkill to public institutions first, you know, prisons, hospitals, orphanages...

Not wanting to be responsible for Oliver Twist starving to death and knowing better than to argue with the Law, I did not insist and asked the officer for a ride to a garage where I could get a tow truck.

– No need for a tow truck if you can start the engine, he said.

– But there’s no windshield on the car and only one headlight...

– You’ll be all right, good evening sir.

He left me on the side of the road while the rain started falling. I got into the car, turned on the ignition and drove 15 miles under the rain with no windscreen. I smelled like a wet dog when I arrived home.

The next day, after calling the insurance company to report the accident, I asked a friend to pick me up so I could rent a car to keep me mobile while waiting for the insurers’ damage assessment. My friend was glad I was unharmed and invited me to come for dinner later that night.

I arrived at his home around 6:00 PM with a bottle of wine but something was not right. His 5 year old daughter Mary-Ann who considered me as her uncle did not greet me as usual; in fact she avoided me, sulking.

As my friend’s wife was opening the bottle of wine and I was telling her that it might take weeks before I knew exactly what the actual damage to the car was, Mary-Ann came to me in tears, holding her teddy bear and asked:

– Is it true that you killed Bambi?

I was shocked as I looked at my friend who was suppressing a laugh. What a terrible thing to say to his own daughter! I then explained to Mary-Ann that it was not actually Bambi I killed but a distant, very old and very sick cousin and that I did not do it on purpose, that it was an accident and that I made sure the deer received a proper and dignified burial. Giving my friend a dirty look I then assured the little girl that I was really, really sorry and that I would have much preferred that the whole thing had not happened and would she please forgive me?

I guess she sensed my alleged contrition because she gave me a hug and we were able to move on to the dinner table.

A week later the insurance company informed me the car was a total loss and that they would cover for the rental car until I found a replacement.

I bought a used 1986 Pontiac Acadian, a sub-compact built like a tank.

The Pontiac Acadian is the Canadian equivalent of the Chevrolet Chevette. A sturdy car with lots of steel and very little plastic, it was built until 1986. It was characterized by a very roomy engine compartment. In fact the person I sold it to replaced the original 1.6 litre 4-cylinder engine with a more powerful V6 engine without further modifications.

A few days after I got that car, I was coming back from driving a friend to the other side of town at around 10:00 PM. There was a group of young people playfully wrestling at a bus stop on my right and a car waiting for me to pass at a cross street ahead.

BANG! I hit a german shepherd that came running out of a dark alley to my left. I had never had a car accident in my life and now in the space of two weeks I had hit two animals in a row! I parked my car by the curb and went to inspect the damage. The left headlight was broken and that was all. Then I walked over to the dead dog.

The youths had hopped onto a bus that was now driving by and there was nobody around. No cops, no Wildlife Officers and Oliver Twist was nowhere in sight.

For a moment I toyed with the idea of taking the carcass home, having it for supper and asking a taxidermist to stuff the head for mounting on the wall.

The Adventures of Oliver Twist, published in 1838, was Charles Dickens' second novel. It related the story of a young orphan in the shady 19th century London.

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The mutt

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Version française

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The Government of Canada had undertaken a major review of its economic policy and was trying to decide whether it should return to the Gold Standard, adopt the controversial Porcelain Standard advocated by China and British economists, or endeavour to have the law of diminishing returns repealed.

Economics is a social science and, as such, is sometimes viewed with scorn by partisans of fundamental science (i.e. biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics). While there is a Nobel Prize in Economics, it was not one of the prizes established in the will of Alfred Nobel. Paul Samuelson was the first American to be awarded this prize in 1970.

Whenever serious people meet to discuss serious matters over a long period of time, there’s bound to be a serious report to be published that will require serious proofreading.

I received a call from someone who knew someone I knew. They needed a crack team of proofreaders to work around the clock ensuring that the 21-volume report was ready for publication in only 30 short days.

That’s when I met Joan.

Joan had been the chief editor at a major legal publishing house in Toronto and was called in to work on the project because she knew how to make things move. I liked her the moment I saw her.

She was 29, just like me, and she was smart, thorough, professional and focused. She exuded confidence and had a knack of finding a quick solution to any problem that was presented to her. She dressed with a quintessential elegance and could have given lessons to Dior, Cartier and Chanel. I sincerely believe all women are beautiful but Joan seemed to be the embodiment of this beauty.

I made an impression on her the first day when I noticed in a sentence that straight quotation marks had been used instead of curved ones. Back then, my eyesight was much keener than it is today.

We started taking smoke breaks together and became acquainted. With all the class Joan showed, I was surprised that she had a common upbringing. She came from a little town a few hours’ drive away. Her parents were uneducated and, being a good Catholic family, had seven children, five girls and two boys. Her father owned a small cartage company and Joan learned to drive a ten-wheeler truck before she could drive a car. Double-clutching held no secrets for her.

Ten-wheeler trucks are often called "tractors" in the United Stated because one of their common use is to pull a trailer, turning it into an eighteen-wheeler. Ten-wheelers can also be equipped with a bin to carry rocks, sand and topsoil. They are more practical than trains because they can deliver their load right at the site where it is needed.

We worked long days on this proofreading project, 12 to 16 hours were the norm because we had a firm deadline to meet. One night after work, I walked Joan home since she lived just a few blocks away and, young men and young women being what they are, I ended up staying overnight.

Despite the hectic pace at which we were working in the office, people noticed that something was going on between Joan and me. Catherine, the general manager of the project, had hired Joan on the recommendation of the chairman of the economic review board but disliked her from the start: she was just too perfect.

When Catherine realized that Joan, a manager, and I, a staff member, were romantically involved, Joan became in her mind nothing more than the office skank and Catherine started to be overtly contemptuous towards her.

One weekend, as we were working on a difficult section of the report, we realized that there was a problem. Parts or whole sentences were missing, so much so that it was difficult to make sense of the text. Joan relentlessly searched previous drafts to find the missing content and we ended up spending much more time than planned to proof the section. The general manager was called in, quickly assessed the situation, blamed Joan for the foul-up and fired her.

When I heard the news, I impulsively resigned. To this day, I am still debating whether it was out of love, lust or loyalty. Maybe it was just that I knew that the proofreading project could not end well without Joan at the helm. I hate to be involved in projects that are doomed to fail.

That night, Joan called home for some comfort and her mother suggested that Joan come for a visit and spend a few days relaxing and reflecting on her options. Since I was now unemployed, Joan asked me if I would join her and two days later we left for her parents’ place.

They lived in the country in a large farmhouse on a gigantic lot. There were two hangars surrounded by farm equipment and several enormous trucks.

After the usual welcoming embraces and introductions, I realized we had arrived in the middle of a commotion.

Joan’s two younger brothers, Alan, 15, and Gerald, 12, had found and brought home a dog, a scraggly mid-sized mutt about one year old. Their parents had agreed to keep it but now the boys were arguing over who would be the master of the dog, Alan or Gerald?

Joan’s father intervened, saying:

– Since I will be paying to feed that mongrel, I should be its rightful owner!

There was an outcry from the boys who claimed that it would not be fair since they found the dog and brought it home.

The father then said:

– All right. Who is going to feed the dog?

The two boys looked at each other, and then Gerald, the youngest one, said:

– This is not fair! You know that I find dog food gross and it makes me puke!

Alan loudly cheered as he considered he had won the competition. But then Gerald added:

– Wait a minute! Not so fast! What goes in must come out. I will clean up after the dog if he ever has an accident. Cleaning up after a dog is as important as feeding him!

The father looked at his sons, sat on the porch and called the dog. He then picked up a piece of chalk and traced a line on the dog’s coat, around the waist, dividing it in two parts.

– All right, that’s how it will be: Alan, you will be the master of the front end and Gerald will be the master of the back end or otherwise the dog goes back to where it came from. Is that a deal?

The two boys looked at each other again, displeased at the proposal but understanding that this compromise was the only way they could keep the dog. So they agreed.

I was stunned at the wisdom of Joan’s father, an uneducated man who had managed to solve a jealousy and rivalry issue in such a simple way.

Maybe a good supply of chalk in offices and boardrooms would help those in power to make better decisions in this world.

Dividing a dog in half with a chalk line is not as drastic as King Solomon's method of splitting a newborn in two with a sword, but just as efficient.

Joan’s mother took us inside the house and served some food and drinks and I met the rest of the family. While we were sitting at the table talking, we suddenly heard a loud disturbance on the porch followed by the sound of objects crashing and the yelp of the dog.

The boys ran outside as we followed them to find the dog lying on the ground whimpering and rubbing its front paws against its snout.

It happened that the mutt had found a can of worms that the boys used for fishing and in which they had left some hooks and lures. They got caught in the dog’s jowls and now the animal was writhing in pain trying to remove them.

Gerald smartly exclaimed:

– Alan, it’s your end crying, you deal with it!

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