Attention whore

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Way back in the 1990s, my mother had her own adventure with cancer. Along the way, she managed to get herself dehydrated, and ended up in the hospital. To my surprise and that of my siblings, she seemed to love the experience. "I call the nurses 'the girls,'"she told me over the phone. "They are so sweet to me. They know I'm not supposed to have coffee, but oh, I wanted it so much, and one of them brought me a little cup of coffee, and - oh, Loren! - it was so good! And I asked her for one more little cup, and she brought it for me, and - oh, Loren! - it was so good!"

I listened to this story with a thin-lipped expression. Later I repeated it to my sister Susan, who grimaced. "I know," she said. "The nurses fell for it. Mom can be so damned cute when she wants to be. But you just wait: once the nurses catch on, it won't be so much fun for Mom any longer."

Which, in fact, happened a day or two later. "I don't know what happened all of a sudden," my mother groused on the phone. "The nurses don't seem to pay attention anymore. Sometimes I press the call switch and it's a couple of minutes before anyone shows up. It's like a whole new staff. I can't wait to go home."

This whole thing seemed very strange to me. Mom was normally the soul of staunch individualism; she lived all by herself at the end of a dead-end road, and most days she didn't see a living soul. Why should it be so much fun for her to be the center of attention all of a sudden -

  

Aha.

She finally had center stage with a whole retinue dancing around her, and she was loving it.

She had become an attention whore.

Flash forward to the other day. I'm in recovery, which means I spend days at home alone watching TCM and waiting for the mail. So then I have a doctor's appointment, and the doctor says, "You could use some fluids. We can give them to you today, in the chemo ward - "

I nearly knocked her down, I was so eager to get to that chemo ward.

"Chemo ward" doesn't sound appealing, but it’s nicer and more comfortable than you think. The chairs are all recliners. There's a TV in every little nook. There are chairs for visitors. The nurses are funny and make light conversation as they poke and prod you and stick needles into you. Snacks and beverages and warm blankets are available upon demand. In short, the staff waits on you hand and foot.

Does this sound familiar?

Ah, but I learned from my mother's experience. Her mistake was that she overdid it.

I will not overdo it.

I have another fluids day soon, back in the chemo ward with those nice kind attentive nurses. I hope I can maintain my composure.

I don't want the girls to know what an attention whore I am.

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Doctors and nurses

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I have not since my birth overnighted in a hospital, until this last November. Then my white-cell count crashed and I became neutropenic (no dirty jokes, thank you), and I had to spend seven nights in a nice local hospital.

It really wasn't so bad. I was often sedated, naturally. The noises at night can be a little unearthly, all kinds of hoots and hollers and cries, but if you think of it as an indoor camping trip, you won't be too far from the mark.

I learned a lot. I learned that morphine makes me see handwriting on the wall where there is none, and faces where there are none. I learned that only a qualified medical professional can tie and untie a hospital johnny from the back.

Most interestingly, I learned a lot about the difference between doctors and nurses.

If you want to continue the camping metaphor, you might think of the nurses as the flowers on the forest floor, and the doctors as the trees. Nurses are far more colorful; they can and do wear whatever colors they like. Doctors are monochrome - usually white. Nurses are everywhere; doctors sprout up only here and there. Nurses tend to be bright and cheerful (with a few exceptions); doctors are a little on the stiff-and-somber side.

Nurses fall silent when doctors enter the room. We all of us, patients and nurses and guests, wait for the eighty-five-dollar-a-word advice to fall, pearl by limpid pearl, from those doctors' lips. Nurses try their best not to impede the grave to-and-fro passage of the doctors from ward to ward, floor to floor, room to room. (Questions are met by: "I know they've begun rounds. I'm sure they'll be here shortly." The nurses try very hard not to get your hopes up; they can do just about everything, but they can't say the magic words that will pronounce you cured and get you into a speeding wheelchair headed for the exit.)

I was lucky, in that about every single one of my nurses and doctors was wonderful (with a few tiny aberrations, which you generally have to chalk up to being human). I did see one doctor come close to telling off a nurse for something - I think for using an alternate drug protocol; to be fair, I knew the nurse and know that she would never do anything to endanger the life of a patient, and the doctor looked young and sniffy and full of inferiority complex, so we will leave it at that. I know who I was rooting for.

At any rate, during my week in the hospital, I learned enough about medicine to pass some kind of premed exam.

Too bad I can't stand the sight of blood 'n guts. Otherwise I'd be a whiz of a doctor.

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Why I could never be a medical professional

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A few days ago, I was lying on a gurney, lightly anesthetized, waiting to be taken into an operating room to have a feeding tube implanted. They’d parked me in a hallway; I was like a plane idling waiting to take off at an airport. (To be honest, I wasn’t so much idling as eavesdropping on doctors’ telephone conversations and studying the pattern of the ceiling panels.)

The receiving nurse, Rose, introduced herself and patted me on the shoulder (to reassure me, I think, and also to reassure herself that I wasn’t going to be difficult.) Then she busied herself with the ten thousand other things that seem to be going on in her department.

Then two new characters appeared: a fortyish woman, very pert and charming, and a tall younger woman, trying very hard to look bright and eager. They presented themselves to Nurse Rose. “Hi,” the older woman said. “I’m Professor Dunbar from the nursing school, and this is Katie, our nurse trainee.” She giggled briefly. “We want Katie to have an endoscopy day.”

“That’s fine,” Rose said. “The nursing staff is okay with it, and you don’t even have to ask the docs, because they’re okay with it too. All you have to do is ask the patients if it’s okay.”

She and Professor Dunbar slowly turned to face me, with sweet smiles. Katie didn’t know right away what to do, but caught on quickly. “Hi,” she said to me brightly. “Is it okay if I observe - ?”

“Of course,” I said.

As they wheeled me into the operating area, I heard Rose tell Katie: “This isn’t the usual thing – not an endoscopy or a colonoscopy. This is the implanting of a feeding tube. You won’t be seeing many of these.”

I lay in the operating area for about fifteen minutes, listening to the nurses chatting around me. They’d faced me toward the clock, and all of them were behind me, so I had a hard time connecting names and faces; there were at least four of them, I think, including Trainee Katie. Rose showed Katie the various kinds of equipment they’d be using, and now and then a new nurse would introduce herself to me and ask my name and birthdate. My blood pressure was through the roof, and I kept having to reassure them that, yes, I’d taken my medication that morning, and that my through-the-roof reading (190/90) was unusual for me; before my diagnosis, I was usually more like 135/85.

Then my gastroenterologist came into the room. I find him cute: he’s short and stocky and has a sharp expressive face. He kept leaning with one elbow on my gurney as he talked to me. I could tell that this was just a routine procedure to him, and I was very comforted by that, and by his casualness, and by the way he insisted on shaking my hand, even though I was draped with all kinds of tubes and sensors.

It was over in an hour or less. A little after that, I was revived in the post-op area and given cranberry juice.

Also, I had a huge plastic tube sticking out of my midsection.

I keep thinking about Katie, the nurse trainee. No doubt she learned something that morning, watching my feeding tube being implanted (it’s a quick process, but a very involved one). How did she feel about it? Did she wince when they made the incision into my belly?

I’m fascinated by medicine, but I know I could never be a practicing doctor or nurse.

The things they see! The things they have to do!

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