My first experience in having the wound dressed was one of the
high-lights of the whole occasion--one that requires no straining of
the memory to recall. It was indeed a masterpiece of brutality that
well deserves to be recorded in medical history; and I remember it as
the outstanding instance where my rights and feelings as a patient were
asserted with loud spontaneity, in language more forceful than polite.
“I have a happy surprise for you,” the nurse greeted me that morning,
with a roguish twinkle in her eye; and presently one of the house
doctors came in, followed by a nurse pushing a “tea-cart” loaded
with bandages, bottles and a wicked looking assortment of probing
instruments. He set immediately to work removing my swathings, and when
he got down to the criscross network of adhesive tape he carefully
peeled up one of the corners, then without the slightest warning he
suddenly _ripped the whole thing off_, carrying with it, as I
supposed, all the skin, with the kidney and half of my insides adhering
to it.
“You * * * damned brute!” I exploded. I added much more to the same
purpose; but that, for the moment, was all the satisfaction I got.
His calloused soul had probably been excoriated many times before. He
merely smiled and inquired if it hurt! Ever since then the mere thought
of adhesive tape makes me shudder.
From five to eight different physicians, including both the Mayo
brothers, visited me daily. Though I was not a patient of Doctor
Charles Mayo, he called on me regularly, chatted pleasantly for a few
moments, and always left with a word of cheer.
While my progress was constantly reported to be normal, on the ninth
day I began to realize that some strange thing had “got” me--something
was certainly going wrong. The drainage tubes had been removed, my
incision was almost healed, both kidneys were said to be functioning
regularly, my temperature was reported normal (though I knew it was
not), and I was told that all blood tests and examinations indicated
that I was on the highway to recovery. Still I protested that something
had me in its deadly grip, and I began to be alarmed. I complained to
the nurse, who said I was only tired and needed sleep. I complained
to every doctor that came in, and each in turn, as if they had all
rehearsed together, said it was “only natural”; and every time I
expostulated with Doctor Will he good-naturedly turned the matter aside
with some joke. Once he said that if the fire alarm were to ring, I’d
be the first patient to jump out the window.
While they all seemed disposed to listen to me with that kindly
forbearance usually shown to a talkative old lady in a high class
private sanitarium for feeble-minded, nobody was seriously impressed.
There was no use trying to argue with anyone; they simply listened
tolerantly as long as it amused me to talk. Indeed the harassment of my
body and mind was such that I sometimes wondered if I had become an
inmate instead of a patient.
They said the records showed I was getting well, and that’s all there
was to it. Whatever I said or however I felt seemed not to alter the
purely scientific fact that my condition was normal.
There are certain reactions that customarily follow certain operations;
and in common practice the patient is not supposed to develop any
complications not on the regular calendar. The signposts were all set
indicating my lines of recovery, and all I had to do was to keep within
bounds and follow directions. But some deadly microbe having intervened
to upset their calculations, I was unable to eat a mouthful of food,
or to adjust my mental and physical reactions to the prescribed order
of things. In other words, theoretically I was getting well, but
practically I was becoming a physical wreck.
About this time I received a call one afternoon from the pastor of a
church in the town, who having read in the local newspaper that I was
from Boston probably jumped to the conclusion that I must be in need of
spiritual aid. He was a soft-spoken, amiable, benevolent appearing man,
and regretted to find me laid so low. Seeing that I was too sick to
indulge in much general conversation he very considerately came at once
to the point and asked if I were a believer. When I assured him that I
was, he inquired if I felt prepared for any eventuality.
“My friend,” said I, “no one has a more profound veneration for your
cloth than I have, and you show the true Christian spirit in coming
to see me; but I am decidedly dubious about death-bed repentance.
Religion, it seems to me, is something that should be acquired and
practiced in health, not in sickness. A soldier who has been a
worthless slacker in health can be of little service to his general
when he lies at the point of death. This last moment contrition makes
salvation too easy to be genuine.”
His answer was that those who came late to the vineyard received the
same pay as the ones who came earlier; but my mind was too muddled to
comprehend how this applied to those who remained away till they were
too ill or decrepit to be of any service at all; and having delivered
my little sermon I was not disposed to argue the matter any further.
“My dear brother,” he said at length, “nothing is more uncertain than
life. You are making a brave fight, but if by some hard decree of fate
you should be called to your final accounting, do you feel that you are
prepared to meet your--”
“Yes, I feel quite prepared,” said I, and without stopping to realize
how it might shock his religious sensibilities I added--“But if you saw
a man in a pasture running for a fence with a raging bull close at his
heels there wouldn’t be much use stopping him to inquire if he were
prepared for the consequences in case he stumbled.”
A few days later, though my head still reeled and I felt the slowly
increasing ravages of some sort of poisoning, I became restless for
a change of environment. The hospital rooms were equipped with an
electrical signaling instrument that clicked busily night and day, and
nearly drove me mad. Then came Christmas Eve, with a group of noisy
merry-makers parading up and down the corridors, singing Christmas
carols and hallelujah songs. It was after visitors’ hours, and my night
nurse having gone out, perhaps to join in the festivities, I lay there
conjuring up melancholy thoughts, and contrasting the wretchedness
of that night with the happiness of former times. Whether it was the
peculiar nature of my illness or what, I cannot say, but Christmas
music seemed utterly out of tune with my situation, and I can recall
nothing that ever made me so blue, either before or after.
At length Doctor Will submitted to my entreaties, and so they bundled
me up, put me onto a stretcher and took me in an ambulance down to
the Kahler hospital, where I was placed on the convalescent floor.
This brought me more conveniently near my family, who were living at
the Kahler hotel, in the same building with the hospital. For the
first two days I was reduced to one nurse, who did twenty-hour duty;
that is, she was off from two till six P. M., and during this
interval various members of my family took turns at entertaining me
by trying to convince me that the doctors, nurses and everybody else
knew more than I did. Now that I was listed among the convalescents,
they couldn’t understand what made me persist in being so stubborn
about getting well. Indeed doctors, nurses, friends and relatives all
boosted me along and although I had lost nearly thirty pounds--mostly
from my face, it seemed--they all insisted that I was improving rapidly
and “looking fine.” Several letters and telegrams came from friends
congratulating me on my rapid recovery, and everybody seemed jubilant,
except me.
“Where do they all get their glad news?” I asked. “It’s the only
information I have of any improvement. Don’t try to fool yourselves or
me--I’m _sick_! Call it stubbornness or whatever you will, but I
tell you, something has _got_ me!”
Every blood test and every examination in the regular technical
routine showed me to be perfectly normal; and yet, though I strained
every nerve and muscle to justify these cheerful views, I was still
conscious of the gradually tightening coils of some deadly venom. But
the physicians still refused to take my complaints seriously; and for
the life of me I couldn’t explain just how I felt. I simply knew that
something had gone wrong, and that I was steadily losing ground in an
unequal fight. About the only sensation I could describe was that I
felt a constant whirling in my head; and the skin on my head and face
felt like a tight-fitting leather mask. I ate nothing and slept very
little, except under morphine. Whenever anyone spoke to me or looked
at me I felt an impulse to burst out crying. I was assured, however,
that all this was a perfectly natural result of the operation.
About this time I developed an excruciating pain in my right hip,
which admitted of no comfort, day or night; and when the orthopedic
specialist had probed deep into the hip joint and drawn off whatever
he could find--which wasn’t much--I discovered that this, also, was
a natural consequence of the operation. I learned (indirectly) that
I might perhaps have a stiff hip joint the remainder of my life, but
they advised me it were better not to worry about it, seeing that it
was not an uncommon result of a kidney operation. Unable to figure
out what communication a lacerated kidney on the left side could have
with a stiff hip on the opposite side, I asked the nurse; but for all
I learned I might as well have asked the orderly. So I gave it up--as
you have to do with all hospital problems that you attempt to solve by
questioning those in attendance.
To draw me off the subject my new nurse declared that my worst trouble
was a bad case of the “grunts”; and when I reported this to Doctor
Will, with the suggestion that he add it to my list of symptoms, he
passed it over with the usual remark that it was “only natural.”
Whatever I did, or said, or felt, or thought, seemed not to concern
anyone, because it was always perfectly natural; indeed it seemed as
if I were the most perfectly normal and natural patient in the whole
institution.