Little things now

Like my neighbor. I’m not sure what his deal is, but he definitely gets the preferential treatment. The nurses are always in his tent, asking questions, chatting amiably, sometimes they take his temperature... so early on I stuck my thermometer in the crook of my armpit waiting to tell my result to the nurses who never came (as patients we usually take our temperature readings before the nurse comes as a courtesy to her). Now I figure anything for him is for him alone. What’s the deal really? At first I thought it because he was really ill and they couldn’t get a room closer to the Staff Station, but just this morning Mr. Ishioka was transferred to a closer room. So what gives?

Seriously?

A week or so ago Clumsy Sensei and a nurse were cleaning out the hole in my side. They had the metal bowl propped against my side, the cold rim always a shock to my skin, but a welcome one as I am sore there. They are threading a tube through the little tube I have in there, more like two stubs held from getting slurped up by my hole by a safety pin. I’m always a little nervous about this part, you know, where a tube goes through a tube and deeper into the cavity of me. It usually doesn’t hurt and sometimes I don’t even feel it, I have to wait till the mild murky liquid comes out the other tube to know they hit pay dirt. So while they are doing this and the nurse is squeezing that bag of water on high we hear a fart from the other tent. My neighbor back then farted all the time, it was part of the room. All you’d think was, ah, it’s ten o’clock. Like that. But when he farted, both the doctor and nurse laughed. Despite their work in the field and going through rooms like this, a well timed fart can always draw laughter it seems. 

Hospital food: it’s not a little thing, really. But since I haven’t really gone into this subject before I thought I’d noodle a few thoughts and questions over it. A question, at least: how is hospital food in America now? When I went it was TV dinner level, and they didn’t look much better in the nursing home my grandmother was in ten years later. It’s like they don’t care about nutrition back home, certainly they never went over our diet. Asked us how much we ate. They slapped a tray down, picked it up, sometimes dumped it over my cast. Here it is quite different. Quite? Don’t you mean “opposite?” As in the opposite. The food is quite good, healthy, and comes in separate bowls to keep the hot ones hot and the cold ones, you know, covered. Sometimes it’s really good, like they had a sweet and sour pork thing going, chawan mushi (kind of a dinner pudding thing), and stew or the Japanese version of stew. They often have spinach, healthy, and shiitake, delicious, and lots and lots of pumpkin, also delicious. From 88 I remember eating the bread. Everything else looked horrifying. For breakfast there was Fruit Loops. Let’s hear it for American nutrition, circa 1988.

Another little thing: the sound of footsteps outside my curtain. I am able to recognize those calm slipper flapping footfalls of my neighbor across, as he walks a lot, and then distinguish them between the doctors and nurses. So when I hear him I know it’s not a new test, possible bad news, something I have to do, needles or what not coming my way. Also with the nurses, usually you hear the wheels rolling of the carts they bring along with all their instruments and a computer for recording our results. Now of course, I wait on the sounds of that curtain for footfalls I rarely hear and won’t be able to recognize probably. The sound of Y sensei approaching with the news.

Which will be in the evening of course. Operation. Looks like Clumsy Sensei won’t pinch hit on this one. Well, I want it in English anyway. Fuck after this wait it better be good news.

Oh yeah, and it was, you idiot. Delivered in great form by the pinch hitter Clumsy Sensei. I wish I had a better name for her, but my wife picked it and it's cute. Thank you Clumsy Sensei for being the bearer of good news this time.