The certified nursing assistant (CNA) named Ashley pulls me out of my chair and leads me to the walker so I can get to the handicapped accessible bathroom. It's 4 a.m. on an August Friday and she and the nurse make their rounds. The staff has pumped fluids into me all day and dosed me with diuretics. I fell asleep in the chair so I could be close to the john. The joke was on me. I pissed into my Depends and my gown and into the chair. I had spinal surgery and have trouble walking. I am as helpless as the baby I hear crying over on the pediatric side of this surgical floor.
"Sorry," I mumble.
"It's OK," the CNA says. "It happens."
Not to me it doesn't. That's what I wanted to say. I am a 20-year-old CNA -- we were called orderlies then -- working in a Florida hospital. I peel 67-year-old old men out of chairs they have peed in. I clean them up, help them dress, sop up the mess, and get them back into bed.
"Sorry " they say.
"It's OK," I say. "It happens."
I am a 20-year-old college dropout. I'm not old enough to drink or vote. As I do my chores, I think of the cute blond 20-year-old CNA named Sharon whom I helped earlier in the day. We laughed as we made the bed in an elderly woman's room. The woman sat slumped in the corner as we talked about movies we liked. I wished that this co-worker was not dating my good friend Jim. I sure would like to take her out to one of the movies we talked about. Maybe a drive on the beach. Maybe the surf would be jazzed after work. Maybe I would take some time to think about what to do with the rest of my life.
I'm 67 again. The hospital staff has put me back in my chair, turned off the lights and left. The young CNA is thinking about Friday night, just 12 hours away. The nurse with the braids could be contemplating a weekend with her family camped by a mountain stream. You can see the jagged outline of the Rockies from my fifth floor room.
I am a 20-year-old in a 67-year-old body that is failing. My wife sleeps in the pull-out bed near the window. Some of us suffer in silence. Some of us like company. I wonder what the other young people who keep this hospital working are thinking about tonight. I wonder who other old men are remembering tonight.
I remember this. That cute nurse's aide from that hospital long ago broke up with my friend and I took her to a movie. We spent the next 18 months together. In the summer of 1972, we hitchhiked 10,000 miles around the U.S. we ended up living in Boston where we both found hospital jobs we liked and decided to become nurses together. She became a nurse and I decided to pursue my love of writing. End of our story.
Thursday morning, about 3 a.m., I found myself awake and still a little buzzed from Wednesday evening's surgery. A nurse named Dusty asked if I was ready to pee.
"Need to urinate eight hours after surgery or..."
"Or what?"
"You know what a catheter is, right?"
Dusty accompanied me and my walker around the quiet halls, thinking that might shake up my system. She took me by the veranda that looked over the sleeping town. We chatted. When we got back to the room, she ran water in the sink and I voided. Dusty took a look at my bladder through a scope and found I had urine in there just looking for an excuse to come out. I eventually squeezed out enough to keep the catheters away.
The next night, I turn into Niagara Falls.
At one point, I thought about spending my working life in hospitals. Not peeing in chairs but taking care of those peeing in chairs. In an alternate universe, that is Mike's life. There are many alternate universes. My reality is now.
This won't finish me off. I will be older and incontinent somewhere else. My wife of many years will be gone. My friends will be gone. My grown kids will live far away. I once asked a hospice nurse if people died with their loved ones around them. "Most people die alone," she said.
I leave stories.
4 comments:
Mike,
glad to see you have not lost your sense of humor-or your ability to pee without a catheter. Lots of new material there for you. Your body may be a bit older, but you still have not grown up-be glad for that. That has been a key for me-don't ever grow up. To quote the great one, may you stay forever young.
Bob
Okay, you are being melodramatic. But you're a writer, so it comes with the territory.
On the plus side, it's time to tell your body what you want from life. My dad stayed in his home until he was 92 and came down with dementia. Until then, he paid someone to mow his lawn, shovel his walkways, trim his trees, fix his roof. He still drove until he forgot how to. He told me that every morning he woke up and would initially think he was 21, but then he would creak out of bed and put on a fresh Depends. He swore his mind was still 21, but his body seemed to have other ideas. Yet he kept going, kept fighting his body and always kept riding his exercise bike no matter what. Until he forgot what his exercise bike was used for.
My mom will be 90 this year, a longtime student of Silva Mind Control that teaches the mind is the builder and the body responds. She's been celebrating her 40th birthday every year and is fiercely independent and determined not to let anything limit her. She refuses to use canes or crutches because that's what old people use and she insists she's not old, so I got her a walking stick last week for stability for when she goes walking around the block. She accepted it, especially after seeing the young hikers on a TV ad using it.
So hang in there, Mike. Give yourself time to rest, recuperate, and exercise the dickens off your joints. Keep moving. Enjoy life. Stretch to see how much more you're capable of doing. And talk to your body every day, tell it how much you love it, how well it is healing, thank it for the adventures yet to be experienced, thank it for how well it's taken care of you all these years and for years to come.
Looking forward to seeing you at our next group meeting. The 15th.
Mike:
Can't tell you how to feel about this challenging period, or how to get healthy or stay positive or make peace with your intransigent bladder. I can only tell you to keep writing. Do that and maybe everything else will fall into place. In reality, I'm just being selfish, wanting your words to keep flowing for my own benefit.
Say "hey" to Chris for me. I recently slept on one of those pull-out beds in my 90-year-old mother's hospital room and can sympathize.
Thanks for the encouraging comments. A stint in the hospital is like a trip to another dimension. You are either doped up, sleep-deprived, or scared, or all of those and more. You are conked out at lunch and wide awake at 3 a.m., that weird time at home when you wake up with dark thoughts. Also a quiet time to write.
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