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Laying on my side in a hospital bed in the hils. I’d been
here since Friday 19th when I came in with what turned out to be a perforated
appendix. Operation was to be a simple keyhole entry and procedure but it
eventually had to be done in the old school right lower abdomen sliced open cut
style due to difficult position on the organ in my case or it’s deteriorated
state.
I had planned to do an instore set on the 26th at
Basement Discs but it wasn’t going to happen. I am going to play a show a week
after that with the Coral Snakes at Memo Music Hall. (June 3rd)
ON anti-biotics and Oxycontin for first day or so through an
IV drip in my arm. Also had a “drain” tube coming out from my right side.
Visits to the toilet involved shuffling about in a blue gown with exposed back,
wheeling “tree” on wheels upon which
hung the meds and liquids tubes and machines for measuring body temperature and
blood pressure. Otherwise this tree sat next to the bed and I had to sleep on
my back . All through the night I’d get woken to get vital signs measured and
noted.
I was on a “nil by mouth” diet and was eventually given some
cubes of ice to suck for a couple of days. Took a day or two to pass urine,
narrowly avoiding a catheter being inserted. Took three days to pass wind.
It was important to pass the water, air and earth tests.
Mostly sleeping on my back due to drips and drain and the
wound on my right side. A television was flown high above my feet on a bar
overlooking the bed. You had to rent it. The curtains and the bed cover were beige.
Your mind begins to kind of seize up, gripping itself tighter. In my case this
meant musical motifs getting stuck on high internal looping rotation for hours.
Trying to sleep then suddenly waking myself up with a loud snore.
I was taken from emergency to the operating theatre after
doctors had deliberated for four or five hours. My bed was pushed by a young
woman who looked a bit like a character from Neighbours called Piper. I was
wheeled into the theatre at 8:15 and woke up at about 10:30 with a doctor
explaining to me that the operation had been longer and more complex than had
been expected.
I had a nurse called J---, a Ghanian born woman with great
warmth and authority. Another called ---sha who took over during the dayshift.
Egyptian looking and was equally great at getting things done, explaining
situations and making decisions. Another was an Indian woman who was also great
at her job. Another nurse came around in full bhurka. Hey the Doctors were
Chinese and Lebanese and Vietnamese and Phillipine. Outside , the Australians
were being yelled at about foreigners ruining the country. In reality they’re
making it all a lot better!
Andrew Bolt, Ray Hadley, Pauline Hanson, Peter Dutton go off
and fuck yourselves- we’re doing really well despite you.
Some nurses just have “it”. A tone and some signalling of
empathy and care. Others are all caught up in the procedures and the protocols and paperwork. I
appreciate, there’s a lot of that.
I was also amazed at the way doctors and nurses have to talk through things and test ideas out. I'm used to a world where people just yell so much. Especially in the digital world. One night at 3am I heard a doctor asking patient all kinds of intimate , rote questions about their general health. They can only go by what the other person tells them.
After a few days I got unhooked from the drain and the
drips. I had no solid food from Friday to Tuesday. I was given salty broth,
green jelly, apple juice and an icy pole. Previous to that it had been ice
cubes only.
Perhaps I’ll shield your eyes from the next few scenes as I
struggled to touch EARTH. (Euphemism). Could not STRAIN. Words fail. Time
stretched out. Dank, dark, clay, mud. Walking corridor with a wonky tree. “You
fucking piece of shit!” Literally this time.
Potions, manoeuvres, over a half a day. Measured from
somewhere before dawn and after midnight. Dank night of the ….. Pebbles, clay.
Stank. Putridity.
Clear air after that. Hard to pass solids when you haven’t
ingested any. Hey, I’ve processed it all now. Forgotten it, brushed under the
carpet of my wig.
The room I was in had two beds. On the first few nights I
shared it with a man who’d had a hernia operation. Then came a 31 year old
woman who had come in with appendix problems but the surgeon came in and told
her he’d taken out either the tube to her right ovary or the her ovary itself.
She had waited for the operation for a few hours on the
Saturday until she was wheeled out that evening. Until then she’d been on a
“nil by mouth” diet. She continued on that diet through the next ay as another
procedure had been mooted. Her boyfriend/husband came in. Overweight, dressed
in black street wear and sound like he had a strong dose of the flu. He brought
in a Chinese take away meal and proceeded to eat it all up quite loudly. A
young pregnant female came in with “ a big bag of chippies” and the boyfriend
helped to devour those as well. The female patient just lay there I guess. The boyfriend then
carried on with successive voluble phone conversations with an associate who
had some product that another person had
arranged to buy but was now talking of a different (lower than agreed) price or
just a down payment and the rest to be settled at a later date. Our man in the
hospital room seemed to be the supplier to the retailer and knew the buyer too
and carried on an artfully vague drug deal at high volume for an hour or two,
talking with the two bickering players, assuring them in easy gab that he
wasn’t making any profit anywhere, sweet talking the world. And sniffing and
coughing otherwise, when briefly off the phone. After one particularly
“Ba-Da_Bing” style confab with a male associate his girlfriend in the hospital
bed tremulously asked who a woman was that he’d mentioned by name in his pool
room flow of oiled words. He had clicked the phone off and asked her why she
was looking at him as if he’d done something wrong. He swatted this annoying
fly of intimate life away by assuring her it was all business related.
She suffered in the bed. At some point, late in the Saturday
night there was a disturbance in the corridors. My sense of distance and idea
of where I was in the building was all out of whack. It sounded like a meth
head going off at the world. An old voice, though. Nothing really violent, just
loud words. None of the nurses or doctors were concerned, no security was
involved. Someone walked out of the ward, happily yelling. I had presumed it
was our dealer friend but he had been asleep, slumped in a chair by the bed in
the corner. His driver eventually came and was off to settle the score down.
I would hear the girl/woman reach for her bag of crisps
first thing in the morning, also cracking
can of soft drink. Before breakfast came. She spoke to the nurses and doctors,
anxious to get her tubes tied.
We exchanged no conversation or pleasantries t all. The day
she left I had the room to myself in the afternoon. For half a day I sat in a
chair by the window and let the sun shine in on me.
I don’t mean to paint a picture or roughness and dystopia.
When I spent those first few hours in Emergency I had engaged that particular
entry level nurse in conversation, asking if there were wilder nights or times
than there was just then. I was thinking of bleeding brainless wild ice zombies
and drunks. She replied casually that weekends were bad due to so many sports
injuries. That had seemed so cute. A junkie couple had been wandering the
corridor, feeling very much at home.
An older woman took the other half of the room. The first
evening, her blood pressure was so low it triggered an event where all the
doctors and nurses had to gather around and deliberate on what was happening
and what was to be done.
Another night, she had two transfusions. It seemed she was
anaemic and they were looking for internal bleeding. She had a catheter
inserted and moaned through most nights.
Yes, I was feeling the mortality.
Trapped in my bed, I got equally ensnared by the television.
Two reality shows were on from Sunday to Wednesday.
“The 7 Year Switch” on Channel 7 about four revolting
couples who are having relationship troubles and are sent away to hang about
with different partners and talk about each others problems.
The other show was “House Rules” which was about four
different but equally revolting couples who fix up each others houses. There
are judges involved, who are crass and disgusting as well. It was amusing for
the sheer, choreographed bitchiness involved . Masterful manipulations of weak, thin and
dry caricatures.
TV ads I hope to never see again included Ford, Toyota and
Trivago. All featuring “brand female faces”, like a throwback to the early days
of cinema with the “Biograph girl”. There’s also a Panadol ad with an annoying
Barista barrow boy who yells. “do I look like I’ve got time for a headache?”. Far too
aggressive, and I was on the stuff.
Nurse talk at different times….
“Oh when he was pushing that swab in – I couldn’t look!”
I said – “hey – I don’t wanna hear any weakness from you!
I’m depending on you to be squeam free…”
Another “OOOH, you’ve got great veins- I don’t know which
one to choose…..”
We have an amazing health system in Australia. We must do
everything to stop the LNP selling us the American version.
