Part 3

He was a youngish man and went about his task in a clumsy way. He shaved--or rather scraped--my back from the waist down to the hips, talking volubly the while. Then having turned me over, as he was working industriously on the most ticklish part of my midsection he confided to me that he was new at the barber business. He said he had tried his hand on three or four ex-patients in an “undertaker’s shop,” but I was the second “live one” he had ever “worked on.”

“But then I’ve got to learn sometime,” he remarked carelessly, while he tested the edge of the razor on his thumbnail. “There’s one good thing about shaving a ‘deader,’--if you cut him he can’t holler.... There ain’t much to shave right here,” he observed, rubbing his cold, rough hand over the pit of my stomach, “but I’m supposed to run over it just the same.” He hoped I would excuse him if he accidentally “cut” or “pulled” a little. “But then I guess even if I’d nip you a bit it wouldn’t be a thing to what they’ll do to you when they get you on the table tomorrow morning,” he added with a snicker.

From that on to the end of the shaving operation my feelings can better be imagined than described. My only grain of comfort was that his razor was so dull that if it slipped it wouldn’t cut very deep. When he had finished he sat down on the edge of the bed and proceeded to regale me with anecdotes and personal experiences. He had recently been a cab driver, but business in that line was dull in winter, and the old barber at the hospital having suddenly died he applied for the position and the Sisters had accepted him without questioning his qualifications.

“I guess the old girls here think a barber’s a barber,” he laughed. “Maybe you’ll think I’ve got a hell of a nerve, but you know when a fellow’s up against it he can’t be choosey about a job.”

“My friend,” said I, “you have nothing on me. A hospital patient has no choice between a barber and a blacksmith.”

He looked at me anxiously. “You wouldn’t squeal on me, would you?”

“Squeal? No--I’m glad you didn’t apply for the job of house surgeon.”

He drew a deep breath of relief. “Thanks. I hope I can get by for a few days till I sort of get the hang o’ things.”

At length he got up, stretched his arms and yawned. “Well, I’ll be going. Good luck to you, old scout,” he said; “I hope by the next time you’re operated on I’ll have the barber business down pat.”

Next morning I was awakened at seven o’clock by my day nurse, who set about decorating me for the operation. Those who have been through these dismal preliminaries will need no rehearsal of the sensations; and those who have not, had best be left in ignorance, with the hope that they may never know.

I wondered if I were going to meet the famous Doctor Will, or if, like a cold-blooded executioner, he would appear and after performing his work, disappear like a phantom at daybreak. I had heard that operating was such an impersonal affair with him that he paid no attention whatever to the identity of the individual he operated on, either before or after the act; that he simply came to the operating room at the appointed time, and with his several assistants and all the facts in the case before him he proceeded with his work as one would carve a roast of beef without knowing or caring anything about the critter to which it had belonged.

But I discovered that the Mayo brothers are not mere mechanical butchers. On the contrary they are genial, sentimental, and tenderhearted, to the last degree. My nurse declared that Doctor Will was “all business”; but that “Doctor Charles makes more fun than a circus clown.” They make the rounds at the hospital early in the morning, meet the new patients and spend a few moments of cheerful conversation with each one, which goes a long way toward counteracting the dread of the trip to the operating room.

These calls are attended with a considerable amount of impressive ceremony. About eight o’clock the first morning I heard a tramping of many feet in the hall outside, then suddenly, without any warning, the door was opened, my overhead light was flashed on and the nurse in suppressed excitement whispered, “Doctor Will!” She immediately took her position at the head of my bed. Two men--Doctor Will’s first assistant and the house physician--came in and took their positions across the room, facing the entrance. Then appeared Doctor Will, followed by two other assistants. As he approached my bed with outstretched hand he smiled and called me by name. After a few good-natured remarks he said, “Don’t be alarmed, we’ll have you out in a few days.” At this he left the room, with the other four, none of whom had spoken a word. He had a firm, quick step, strong handsome features, and a most engaging personality. After meeting and talking with him you feel that you have entrusted yourself to competent hands.

An hour or so later the nurse came hurrying in with the news that we’d been “called.” After being assured that I had no false teeth or portable bridgework to leave behind, she hastily gave me a hypodermic of morphine, bustled me into a wheel chair and hurried me up to the operating room on the top floor. There under a great dome thickly studded with electric lights, in the presence of Doctor Will and a dozen or more gowned and masked assistants and attendants I climbed up on the operating table, my arms were quickly folded across my chest, and while my legs were being strapped into position the cone was placed over my face and an angel-voiced creature murmured softly in my ear, “Now take long deep breaths, please; it will only be a few seconds.” I wondered if she were as beautiful as her voice. At any rate I would gladly have postponed the operation and breathed an hour or more for her, just to hear her talk. Her soft, musical voice seemed to move farther away, and in the distance she was saying how nicely I was getting on. I was about to call to her, not to go off and leave me, but--

The next I knew I was back in my room looking drowsily up into the anxious faces of my family who assured me that it was “all over.”

“No,” I said--“they’ve just sent for me; I have to go and be operated on.” At that I closed my eyes and slept again. I afterwards learned that the kidney required a great deal of excavating and curetting, and that I had been on the operating table nearly two hours.

MY ENCOUNTER WITH ADHESIVE TAPE

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.

THE ATMOSPHERE OF DISSIMULATION

I sometimes wondered what there is about the atmosphere of a hospital that makes everybody prevaricate. If you ask what your temperature is you get an evasive or dishonest answer; if you ask a civil question about yourself, or anybody, or anything whatsoever, they all--including your own people--seem leagued together in a solemn compact to deceive you. And they justify their deceit on the ground that truthful answers are “bad for the morale of the patient,” who is supposed to submit to everything without question, obey all orders without objection, and interfere with no local procedure. You hire the doctor, suffer all the torments, and pay all the bills; yet you are given but little occasion to feel that you are in any other respect regarded as a human entity. You are merely a patient--known in hospital parlance by the number on the door of your room. If you ask an intelligent question about your own condition, the answer makes you feel as if you were prying into their affairs. If you are feverish and irritable, and feel anxiety and suspicion because you are being obviously deceived, you must content yourself with believing that your attendants think they know better than you about your condition and what is good for you.

The first night at the Kahler hospital, my nurse on retiring said she was a light sleeper, and to call her when I wanted anything in the night. She would get up at seven and go to breakfast. Under a strong opiate I slept fairly well through the latter part of the night, and waking a little before seven, with a throbbing hip, and parched mouth and throat, I attempted to wake her for a glass of water (her bed was behind a screen across the room).

“Miss Page!” I called in a loud whisper. No answer. Then louder--“Miss _Page_!” Still no answer.... “Miss Page, did you say you were a light sleeper?” About that time I felt like sneezing; and, I thought, “if I can put this over strong it will surely bring her to.” So I drew in a tremendous inhalation and let out a blast that seemed to shake the room. When the reverberations had died away I listened, and the death-like silence gave me a quaky feeling.

Becoming alarmed, I reached for the telephone on the stand beside my bed and asked the operator to ring my bell vigorously, as I couldn’t wake my nurse. The ensuing clatter sounded like a fire alarm.

“My God, the woman’s dead!” I thought. When I could stand the noise and suspense no longer I cut in and called to the operator--“Send someone up quick; there’s a dead nurse in my room!”

In a short time there was a rush of feet coming along the corridor, then the door was opened, the lights flashed on and several excited people ran in.

“Behind the screen!” I said. They all scurried across to the scene of the supposed fatality. But the bed was empty! Half an hour later the nurse came in smiling. “I got up early,” she said, “and slipped out while you were asleep. Did you miss me?”

We now approach the scenes that bordered narrowly on tragedy. Strangely enough I had had much to do with tragedies the past year. I read twenty-one of them by Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, but little did I dream how near I was to becoming the central figure in a tragic drama with a modern hospital setting.

A couple of days or so after the nurse episode Dr. Braasch came to see me. He said he was making a special study of my case, and for some time he listened attentively while I endeavored to explain how I felt. For the first time I was encouraged to find that I had finally impressed someone with the idea that all was not going well. With the parting remark that he would call again in a few hours, he went out, leaving me in a state of wonderment as to what the next move would be. A little later, when Doctor Will made his customary morning call, he talked at unusual length about the operation. He said his first impression on seeing the infected kidney was to remove it; but on second thought, and acting on the advice of his assistants, he decided to try to save it. Therefore after spending nearly two hours cleaning out and repairing it he stitched it up, put it back and sewed up the incision. He still felt that his second judgment was correct. I disagreed with him, for I continued to grow steadily worse.

“Doctor, that kidney must have _died_ of the operation. I wish to God you had taken it out and thrown it into the sewer; then I should have been well rid of it,” I said in despair. “I’m poisoned, I tell you, I’m _poisoned_!”

But in his calm dialectical way he went on to explain several reasons justifying his action, and others accounting for my condition. Finally he convinced me that he was right; that my condition was only a natural outcome of such an operation, and all I had to do was set my mind on getting well. After he left I called in the family and said we’d play auction bridge; that what I needed was action and diversion. They were thunderstruck at seeing me climb out of bed and call for my dressing gown and slippers. Though my head was in a constant whirl we played for an hour, when Doctor Braasch came in and dropped into a chair, looking rather troubled.

THE CALAMITOUS VERDICT