My Left Foot
Ok, here I am, ten days
into a hospital stay after smashing my left foot into a door frame in
a drunken stupor at home. My darling neighbour Trish brought me to
the hospital after her hubby Rob found me at home, sitting round
denying anything was really wrong. “That's broken!” she insisted.
So here I am in a bed with a weird vinyl structure in my bed called a
'James Pillow' designed to keep my left foot raised. It's like a ramp
you might see kids run up and launch themselves in the air, it's
about a metre long, half a meter wide and it's in my bed! Sleep
is sporadic and broken by the usual noises of an orthopaedic ward:
loud beeps, bells, chatting doctors and nurses waking me for 'obs'.
My
room mate in this public ward is a lovely policeman called Terry
who's hurt his back by falling backwards off a balcony. He can hardly
move, he's a big guy, and when he does it's with help as the nurses
do the old “One two three roll” and Terry cries with pain. But
he's improving now. We talk a lot, and for a few days all we knew
were each other's voices. It's a strangely comforting intimacy to
chat into the night and hear each other piss in bottles, fart and
groan with every movement.
My
prognosis is rotten: three smashed bones in my foot that have to be
operated on, followed by many weeks on crutches, then another
operation to remove the metal pins, followed by months on crutches.
This is a big blow as the next four months are my big earning time,
as I work as an actor, clown, comedian, stilt walker, uni-cycle
rider, MC and casual bus driver. At this stage it's looking like all
that work's going down the gurgler and I'll be on sickness benefits
of $490 a fortnight! Last time I was that frugal was at a meditation
camp in Sri Lanka. Here in boomtown Perth it'll be a friggin
pittance. How do unemployed folk do it! Lucky I like minestrone soup.
It's what a mate of mine calls dolefood: soups, spaghetti sauces and
stews that last a week.
The
latest on the operation is that my foot still has red marks and
swelling, so they're reluctant to cut in case of infection. Fair
enough but the way they've gone about it today has been bizarre:
prepped last night for an operation today, starved all night then
given a pre-wash, then a surgeon called Dr Lim came in, looked at the
foot and said 'No, too swollen', so it was all off. An hour later the
orthopaedic registrar said 'No, that's fine”, so it was back on.
Then they all got together another hour later, with me lying there in
the surgical stockings, texta arrow on my knee pointing to the
correct foot, ready to go under, and they decided to call it off!
Doctor Lim casually said, “That's OK, give it a few more days”
and they swanned off to the next room. A few more days! Shit.
I
attempt to console myself by thinking about folk who spend months in
bed (and in the old days a whole year in things like kidney machines)
or men wounded in wars or disasters. And I do the old 'it could've
been worse, might have fallen and smashed my head' routine, but that
kind of thinking simply brings up frightening and demented imagery
that consoles nothing.
Suggestions
by relatives and dear friends on Facebook all seem to follow the line
of “Now this is your chance to write and create something
interesting....new material for comedy etc”, and maybe they're
right, it's just at he moment all I feel is despondent, depressed and
furious at myself for causing the accident in the first place.
But
the cricket's on the TV, I have two Murikami novels, many editions of
the New Yorker, games on the computer, a free local phone, and my
friend Ross has loaded a pile of TV on the laptop. And tomorrow I
look forward to many hours of Mozart or Brahms while I wait on the
Centrelink sickness benefits line.
Okay,
it's now three weeks in hospital! That's right. The operation 'went
very well' – what else is the a surgeon to going say? (and I'm
surprised I didn't pick up the irony of my orthopaedic surgeon being
called Dr Lim!!) But the wound (wounds) haven't healed properly. They
are actually three cuts, two of them about 10 centimetres long, like
two large caterpillars going up and down my foot, the other a smaller
cut at the base of the foot. The doctors and nurses keep changing the
bandage, looking at the wound and saying 'No, he can't go home with
that'. Now, ten days after the operation, and the wound just isn't
healing. Two days ago they put on what's called a PICO bandage. This
is a large square bandage with a suction tube in the middle and a
pump about half he size of a mobile phone that sits in my pocket. So
far the PICO bandage hasn't worked, in that it hasn't really formed a
proper seal. This evidenced by the orange light on the pump which
means 'not sealing' or leaking. Various nurses have come by, looked
at it and attempted to seal it by putting more and more tape on
different parts of the foot which now looks like it's ready to post
in the mail!
So,
after three weeks in one bed and movement limited to going to the
shower and toilet with crutches, I lie here, foot still in the air on
the James pillow (if ever I meet you James...!!). It's become a
strange sensation, a little like a really really really long aeroplane
flight but the hostesses give you drugs and prod and poke you with
needles. Yesterday my pulse was down to 55. That's lower than I've
ever recorded it. The nurse who took it decided to do it again
manually because even she was shocked. Sleeping isn't so bad because
I'm on some fairly heavy pain killers, but these are being reduced so
I'm withdrawing a little.
I've
found that I've developed a kind of mental hibernation; time goes by
quickly even though I'm NOT having fun. Breaks between meals seem to
race along as I read, play bridge online, watch movies, check my
emails and Facebook, eat, sleep and take long showers involving
plastic bags for the foot and a chair for me. My sister suggested
that perhaps I should call this my long service leave – long
service for a self employed clown, comedian, actor. And yeah, I
suppose it will be that, but the $490 a fortnight sickness benefits
is a little less than half pay, and the resort I'm in is pretty
boring, although the workers are good people.
So,
tomorrow being Monday, the doctors will decide once again if I stay
or not. I've had moments when I've thought 'bugger this' but what can
you do? Run out of here and end up with a mangled, unusable foot? No,
this is a big lesson in patience and time-killing. Strange, the idea
of killing time like it's the enemy, it's more a case of just sitting
in a big bath of time and letting it just move around me and down a
drain made of mindfulness, meditation and meandering thoughts.
