I decided I wasn't satisfied with my post on Akamatsu-san, it was incomplete. So I completed it, somewhat.
Since he is leaving now I better write about him while I have the chance. This morning I chanced to see him through the curtain Akamatsu-san for the first time. His face reminded me of a turtle’s head: bald, all smoothed down to his basic features. Quick hitting impression, but somehow it seems apt. Akamatsu-san is the “old man” next to me. For a long time, hell beginning with my first stay here, I have learned to admire the old men here. I've almost always been unable to walk these corridors without strain or help while they look like the picture of vitality to me, traipsing the halls with a jaunt in their step, going to the shower or the observation room at will, these spry old guys putting me to shame at every step. I’m a hobbling on my walker while they careen by in cruel inversion of some Simpsons montage on the old folks home Grandpa Simpson lives in. By the way, I’m pretty sure old people here are much healthier than they are in America though my immediate family’s got some pretty spry gents and gals themselves. It’s just I don’t see or remember so many old people out and about in America, certainly not bicycling on the roads like you find here (of course you don't have to worry about street crime here). Hell, you could get a traffic jam of old people bicycling on the streets. So to sum up: old people here, genki, spry. And usually so positive: when the nurses ask them about their meals, meaning how much did they eat, zenbun, is almost always the reply or hyaku-wari. Meaning 100 percent. Actually I’m not sure about the second one. But eat up all their meals they do while I usually struggle in the 10s and 20s percentage wise. I often say to myself, only if I had the power of an old man.
Akamatsu-san is different. As negative as they are positive. When asked about his meals, a couple times maybe because he’s hard of hearing, he busts out with nothing, like he’s proud of it. It’s a bit shocking to hear that from one of the old gents here, but there he goes, every time. All Akamatsu-san does is sleep, I hear the gentle sound of his sleep breathing more than anything else out of him. Whenever the nurses draw those curtains back he’s asleep and they have to wake him. At first I thought it was cruelty. Sometimes they seemed to wake him for the most minor things.
Akamatsu-san! Akamatsu-san! It’s 11:30! And they leave.
But of course they have to wake him, no matter what they have to do because he’s always asleep. He seems to have no other interest. For example today’s the big fireworks day. I mean it’s a big deal, especially for us patients trapped in here. He’s gone now, but that wasn’t on the docket when his wife asked him about it a couple days ago and he displayed no interest. Sounded a bit miffed she would even ask.
I don’t know what’s wrong with him. The nurses talk about the insulin he has to take, but I don’t think he’s there for that. This seems to be the cancer ward, we're affected by it one way or another. Perhaps he’ll soon slip into a state like Mr. Ishikawwa. Here I’ll post what I wrote about him now from earlier in the Diaries.
Mr. Ishikawa is someone who sounds worse off than me. Like the old man earlier, he speaks in little more than groans, though with Ishikawa some words are made out. Is this my level now? At least I can ape him in some bad hiccup stuff sometimes and you never know when I’m going to organ out again so there’s that for our minimal solidarity of pain. Tomorrow, chemo.
The reason I say something so absurd "as is this my level" is I think they slide our beds in and out of our rooms depending on our condition. I think the worse off you are the closer they set you up to the staff station. Now I’m near the end of the hall, then they wheeled my bed a couple doors off. That’s when I got all the nurse shouting at old men who were so sunk into themselves, their affliction and age. I saw faces with pointed features, it seemed like the room where you are just waiting to die. Poor guys, I mean I was impressed with Mr. Ishikawa because he could put articulation in his groans back at the nurses. I think he made the effort every time. It inspired me to want to find solidarity with him, recalling my horror with my colostomy bag over flowing with my stomach’s acid as my merit badge of suffering. So I wonder if Akamatsu-san is in the early stages of that waiting-to-die stage of his disease. Or is it that Akamatsu-san only wants to slink back into his shell of sleep and stay there?
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