I feel like I could easily be the main character in some musty, psychological Gogol nightmare, minus all the squalor and filth. In this story, the patient visits the doctor for an ailment small and unassuming--a sore throat, a cough, headaches in the afternoons, the choice is left to author. The important bit is only that the patient be largely unconcerned. But the doctor listens to the patient's lungs and heartbeat, peers into her ears, takes her temperature, then steps back with hands folded and pronounces--well, something big, something far more serious than the patient expected. Surely, doctor, you can't be serious! No, it really is ----, and we can't let you leave until we've got this sorted out. You'll just have to stay the night. Don't be alarmed.
So she's taken to her room by closed-mouthed nurses (Would the story be better if they gave instructions in a different language? They did.) who buzz around her hospital bed. They draw blood, start an IV of a fluorescent yellow liquid with no explanation, thrust a medicinally-sweet smelling drink into her hand and tell her to drink it. Tablets are given. She is made to inhale an astringent gas that dries out her mouth and tastes like pennies.
And the way the story would go, over the next few days she is poked, prodded, and x-rayed repeatedly, and all the while the nurses empty bottles of liquid the color of lemon gatorade into her veins. Every morning they take her blood pressure and temperature, pursing their lips at the results and whisking them away before the patient can see. The doctor tells her her condition is getting worse, they need to do more tests, take more x-rays, up the medication, keep her longer. The patient begins to get anxious, pent up in her room. And throughout the story--it would only be a few pages, the length of a Pushkin tale--the better she feels the darker the doctor's pronouncements become: her lung has collapsed, or her liver is ill, or--what have you, but they must do a surgery, she absolutely cannot leave just yet. And of course, because it's a work of fiction, the patient acquiesces to everything, grateful that the doctor is preempting these ailments before they cause her body pain. She goes for days, for weeks without leaving the hospital, without seeing the sun, and begins to view her room as a prison, the silent nurses as guards, the doctor as a foreman. Her muscle wastes away. A year passes and she has begun to feel sick, more frail and fatigued with every procedure they perform, though other than the side effects of the surgeries she feels no ill health. And because it's Gogol, after a year she is finally let go, a gaunt and hollow bent stick of a woman, pronounced cured by the doctor. Maybe in the end she'll discover that she was healthy all along and go insane, true to the author's body of work.
Clearly, Based on a True Story (tm).
The only truth in that is that I don't feel ill other than a slight wheezing and a strong but intermittent cough. Certainly I don't feel ill enough to STILL be in the hospital. And the doctor does keep telling me I have to stay longer. After my X-rays on Wednesday morning the doctors informed me that I have "A Big, Serious Pneumonia" in my right lung and they couldn't possibly let me leave until Saturday at the earliest. Just three days of intensive care (daily IV antibiotics, pills, and inhalations) and monitoring, then I'm home free with a week's supply of oral antibiotics. So I resigned myself to the rest of the week in this hospital room, made cheerier by the arrival of friends (Thanks friends!!) with essential supplies in hand--books, fruit, chapstick, and cookies--and later our program coordinator with my guitar, a bag of clothing, more fruit and cookies...Now I've got more persimmons than I could eat in a week piled on the corner of my desk, a bunch of bananas, and even STRAWBERRIES, which I hadn't seen since early September. I was concerned I would still have too much fruit to carry by the time they let me out of this place...but this morning they took another x-ray and did indeed see that a part of my lung has essentially glued itself to, um, itself (there's a verb for that in Russian, and that's why I love this language). So they did a bronchioscopy and changed their position once again--turns out I can't leave until Sunday night or Monday morning.
Bronchioscopy, by the way, is disgusting and painful and I don't know why anyone would ever want to become a bronchiosurgeon. Ew.
I'm restless, though. I hate not moving around, seeing the same neutral-colored walls incessantly. I hate being sedentary. Especially when I'm only here for so long! I hate to spend my time here, HERE! being cooped up. And the food is awful...Yeah, for me, hell would be a hospital.
I guess this place isn't all bad, but I am a little sad I'm spending my weekend in the hospital. They let me take a walk today, but it was the first time I'd been outside since Tuesday and probably the only time all weekend. I'm mostly bored, but I have been learning a few songs on the guitar and reading a lot. I finished Heart of Darkness and started Oblomov, and next...well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. We'll take it as it comes.
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