Everything is healed except the nerve damage—and honestly, how important is it, really, to be able to make fists with your toes?
But that’s not what I actually want to reflect on: I thought I’d spend a serious moment or two sharing what I learned from being a helpless, bedridden patient, and how it’s changed my outlook on both health and sickness. It has occurred to me that very few people my age are fortunate enough (and I mean fortunate) to have a brush with serious health threats and then recover to the point that they can truly appreciate their wellbeing and comfort. Maybe my reflections won’t mean anything to someone who hasn’t experienced being an invalid, but on the off-chance that it might, here goes.
I learned that nurses have a very difficult job and deserve every ounce of respect we can give them. The doctors (bless them too, of course) see a patient for five minutes, prescribe an IV or a test, and disappear down the hallway. The nurses check the IVs, prepare you for the tests, help you get to the bathroom, clean up when the meds make you sick, keep you company for as long as they can when you crumble into a ball of nerves and fear in the middle of the night. Their hours are awful and they spend more time with bodily fluids than most people would even care to imagine.
I learned that when people hear you’re in the hospital and say, “Well, at least you’ll get a chance to catch up on your sleep,” they have never been in a hospital. Coumadin shots at 2 in the morning, doctors’ rounds with sleep-deprived residents at 4, the constant beeping of monitors and the snoring of your heavily-drugged suitemate…not to mention the fact that you’re broken!
Also, when folks say, “I guess you have plenty of time to do your reading,” they have never been on strong pain medication. I tried to read Chaucer’s “Parliament of Fowles” while on morphine. This was a bad idea. I STILL don’t understand that poem, and I blame it at least in part on the fact that I first encountered it while under the influence of controlled substances. And besides that, if you’ve never felt it you simply cannot understand the entirely debilitating enervation that comes from being unwell. The meds make you hazy, the lack of sleep makes you incoherent, and you just can’t muster the energy or the enthusiasm to apply your vacant mind to anything. I couldn’t even check emails while I was in the hospital, I was so incapacitated by the whole experience.
I learned that people are not themselves when they are unwell. You get cranky, petulant, waspish, and impatient, and God bless the people who put up with invalids, and God bless the invalids who manage to keep smiling. My first suitemate in the hospital was like that—a gentle soul in for some kind of joint replacement and patient as an ox through all the tests and the surgeries. People like her are a blessing to those around them.
I learned, too, that we are bodily creatures, as much as intellectuals wish to live in their minds. Never before was I so acutely aware of how entangled my own being is with the physical body that houses it. The hospital strips you of your dignity in so many ways—through no fault of its own, but simply because it doesn’t (can’t) care about your intelligence, your soul, your individuality: you are there because your flesh and nothing else matters. You are pierced, palpated, scanned, and transported like a piece of meat—the hospital ward is the great equalizer, and it is a humbling equality. I will never again take for granted the dignity of being able to shower by myself, walk down the hall without pulling an IV along like a lame pet, put on my own socks, sleep without a monitor, wear underwear.
More importantly, though, I learned a great deal AFTER I got out of the hospital. I also learned—and this is the most profound lesson of my experience—what it might be like to live with chronic pain. The nerve damage to my leg extended, at first, to my lower back (I did, after all, break my pelvis right next to where it connects to the spine), and though they swore up and down (after their barbaric tests) that my sciatic nerve was undamaged, I had the constant, unrelenting symptoms of sciatica for almost three months. The six weeks on crutches was nothing compared to the jolts of electric pain shocking through my back and leg every few moments, day and night. Neuropathic pain is cruel without being a properly treatable injury. I don’t want to harp on the discomfort, because obviously I was able to work through it, and so many, many people suffer infinitely more every single day, but, just for a short time, when the doctors shrugged and said, “It might get better. It might not,” I did realize what it would be like to look into the years and years of future and think, “I might always be like this. I might never be comfortable again.” It is a cold, bleak feeling. It has given me a much more profound respect and sympathy for those who actually DO live in constant pain, and have no hope of ever being free of it.
I learned that when people hear you’re in the hospital and say, “Well, at least you’ll get a chance to catch up on your sleep,” they have never been in a hospital. Coumadin shots at 2 in the morning, doctors’ rounds with sleep-deprived residents at 4, the constant beeping of monitors and the snoring of your heavily-drugged suitemate…not to mention the fact that you’re broken!
Also, when folks say, “I guess you have plenty of time to do your reading,” they have never been on strong pain medication. I tried to read Chaucer’s “Parliament of Fowles” while on morphine. This was a bad idea. I STILL don’t understand that poem, and I blame it at least in part on the fact that I first encountered it while under the influence of controlled substances. And besides that, if you’ve never felt it you simply cannot understand the entirely debilitating enervation that comes from being unwell. The meds make you hazy, the lack of sleep makes you incoherent, and you just can’t muster the energy or the enthusiasm to apply your vacant mind to anything. I couldn’t even check emails while I was in the hospital, I was so incapacitated by the whole experience.
I learned that people are not themselves when they are unwell. You get cranky, petulant, waspish, and impatient, and God bless the people who put up with invalids, and God bless the invalids who manage to keep smiling. My first suitemate in the hospital was like that—a gentle soul in for some kind of joint replacement and patient as an ox through all the tests and the surgeries. People like her are a blessing to those around them.
I learned, too, that we are bodily creatures, as much as intellectuals wish to live in their minds. Never before was I so acutely aware of how entangled my own being is with the physical body that houses it. The hospital strips you of your dignity in so many ways—through no fault of its own, but simply because it doesn’t (can’t) care about your intelligence, your soul, your individuality: you are there because your flesh and nothing else matters. You are pierced, palpated, scanned, and transported like a piece of meat—the hospital ward is the great equalizer, and it is a humbling equality. I will never again take for granted the dignity of being able to shower by myself, walk down the hall without pulling an IV along like a lame pet, put on my own socks, sleep without a monitor, wear underwear.
More importantly, though, I learned a great deal AFTER I got out of the hospital. I also learned—and this is the most profound lesson of my experience—what it might be like to live with chronic pain. The nerve damage to my leg extended, at first, to my lower back (I did, after all, break my pelvis right next to where it connects to the spine), and though they swore up and down (after their barbaric tests) that my sciatic nerve was undamaged, I had the constant, unrelenting symptoms of sciatica for almost three months. The six weeks on crutches was nothing compared to the jolts of electric pain shocking through my back and leg every few moments, day and night. Neuropathic pain is cruel without being a properly treatable injury. I don’t want to harp on the discomfort, because obviously I was able to work through it, and so many, many people suffer infinitely more every single day, but, just for a short time, when the doctors shrugged and said, “It might get better. It might not,” I did realize what it would be like to look into the years and years of future and think, “I might always be like this. I might never be comfortable again.” It is a cold, bleak feeling. It has given me a much more profound respect and sympathy for those who actually DO live in constant pain, and have no hope of ever being free of it.
Last but not least, I learned how incredibly blessed I am to have a wonderful family who dropped everything to come and be with me, and, once I’d been released from the hospital, to take care of me at home. Funnily enough, it never occurred to me right after the accident that my parents would drive down from DC to the hospital; I was quite surprised to see them in the doorway of the holding area where I was put until a room could be found for me. I blame the concussion for my surprise. My poor sister, after being so distracted by the news of my accident that she put her cell phone through the laundry, took the long bus ride from New York to Charlottesville to surprise me with a visit. My father used up all his vacation time to be with me, and my mother put her entire life on hold to be my live-in nurse from October through Thanksgiving. I am, indeed, blessed.
I am changed—more emotionally than physically—by my brief stint as an invalid; if my experience can mean something to others, I would consider it doubly worth its inconvenience. I learned what it was like to be helpless, to need others for absolutely everything, and I learned how to appreciate feeling well.
And always to have health insurance.
And not to jay walk.
I am changed—more emotionally than physically—by my brief stint as an invalid; if my experience can mean something to others, I would consider it doubly worth its inconvenience. I learned what it was like to be helpless, to need others for absolutely everything, and I learned how to appreciate feeling well.
And always to have health insurance.
And not to jay walk.
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