The Last Word On Nothing

1. The Abscess

Probably, when I first heard the doctor say to the patient, “The operating rooms are all booked until late tonight so we can just lance it right here, bedside,” that would have been the right time for me to make a little noise. That would have been an appropriate moment to peel back the curtain that separated my hospital bed from the other patient’s and waggle my fingers at the lady in scrubs, to suggest I be relocated. Before the lancing began. Because they would be, I knew, lancing an abscess near the lady’s, er, delicate lady part—not an event for public consumption.

But I didn’t make a peep. I cringed and curled my toes against the hospital blanket, silent in my little cave. I can’t explain why. I thought about saying something to reveal myself. But then, as their conversation became more personal, the window to speak up slammed shut.

Silly. A mistake not to yell out immediately, Hey, I’m right here! I’d been reading quietly all morning, no calls or visitors, so I guess they’d forgotten there was a roommate at all. (I had been admitted a few days earlier with an out-of-control flare of ulcerative colitis, a hellish gut disease.) But there I was, fully present. Our beds, minus the curtain, were like your grandparents’ Craftmatics, not touching but side by side. So close.

It wasn’t long before the mini surgical team—a white-sneakered bunch, based on what I could see—was shuffling around her bed, prepping the infected area. The thin curtain fluttered against me as they moved. Metal instruments clanged against a tray; the smell of antiseptic wafted over. Someone flipped on all the lights.

The poor woman had been moaning for hours about her terrible pain and swelling. Now, she moaned again—as the doc spoke, in detail, about the needle he would use to numb her up, the blade he’d wield to slice into the inflamed tissue. There would be pressure. There would be pus. There would be blood.

No one asks to have the contents of their infection outed to a stranger. (In this case, the doc suggested the culprit might be the bacteria methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA—the nasty funk people often pick up after hospital procedures that can, if left unchecked, burrow down deep, causing a potentially fatal infection.)

I’m sure it didn’t occur to this patient, with her mind on the pending operation, that there was a witness. I doubt she wanted me to hear her brief cry at the blade, her clipped inhales as the doc pushed against her skin, her pitiful whines as a nurse packed sterile material into the wound. I was a captive audience throughout. I couldn’t really block the sounds, and my brain filled in the visuals.

So this surgery thing, with the needle and the blade and the oozing and the packing, went down right there. It wasn’t mine, but it was close enough.

That would have been enough genuine experience for one hospital stay. But there was more to come. With me and medical drama, it seems, there’s always an encore. Or, in this case, two.

2. The Clot

The clot came on little cat feet and lodged itself in my lower calf. Who knows how long it had been slinking around down south before I finally felt it circle once, twice, three times, and settle into place. And then it took a while before I decided to mention to the nurse that I had a little ache there, a sore spot like a bruise, because I figured hey, I have little aches all over my body so why worry about this one? Yet, I’d been pretty immobile for quite some time, doing little more than rushing to the bathroom multiple times a day, wobbly IV pole in tow.

No one offered me compression socks, no one massaged my legs, no one really mentioned anything about potential clotting. Perhaps someone should have been doing all of those things. Perhaps I should have asked why they weren’t. I knew clots happened to immobile people. But no one else seemed concerned, and they were the experts.

But once I pointed out the little spot of pain, the doctor decided we should get the leg scanned. And there it was, a little clump of blood cells curled up in the vein, that little cat taking its afternoon nap.

Once I was on the blood thinners, I figured I should start moving around, getting my fluids flowing. But then I second-guessed myself…maybe that would make things worse. What if the clot became unstuck and went to my brain or heart or lung? One nurse confirmed my fears. She was adamant that I not walk around or do anything active, for that very reason. She scared me into lying still with my leg elevated. Later, a doctor came in. He asked why I was lying there like a corpse. He said not to listen to the nurse, that she had provided misinformation. I should get up and walk around, absolutely.

Unhappy with the conflicting instructions, I decided to trust the doctor. I walked around those last days in the hospital, up and down the halls, and nothing bad happened. Later, I guess, it broke up and washed away. But I continued to have little aches in the backs of my legs for months, with no further scanning or explanation. As far as gifts from the hospital go, I much prefer the socks with the rubber bottoms and the one-size-fits-all throw-away underwear. (I stole a pack of the latter on my way out. Great for travel.)

But the hospital still had one more gift to give, this one a bit of surprise. It came to me like a piece of warm-weather clothing bought at the end of summer (on sale) and forgotten until the following spring. Except that kind of gift, when I discover it later, gives me a little happy thrill. This one, not so much.

3. The Gut Buster

I’d been home a week or so when it showed up, the bacterial infection in the gut that causes all kinds of upset. You see, at the hospital they often put you on antibiotics as a prophylactic, to protect you from funk during your stay. In my case, I was on them, then I was off them, kind of quickly. Which probably wiped out just enough of the bacteria that keeps me healthy (relatively speaking) to let the stuff that makes one sick take over. And that stuff reared its ugly, stinking head unexpectedly, when I thought I was on the mend.

My GI doc had ordered the test one more time, just to be safe. I was infected. Clostridium difficile, or C. diff. It’s a spore-forming bacterium that often shows up in people with colitis, people who have been on antibiotics recently, people who are laid up in hospitals, and people on acid suppressors. That was me on all fronts. I was a breeding ground for the spores. Just to confuse things, the main symptom (diarrhea from an inflamed colon, if you must know) is also the main symptom of colitis, so in my case it was hard to know which affliction was at work at any time. But there was one tidbit of info about C. diff that set it apart from your average gut affliction: Sometimes it kills people.

Not me. Fourteen days of strong antibiotics later, I was free and clear. For the time being. C. diff is persistent and likes to make comebacks, I read. And the next course of action against it? Get ready for it, or close this page now. Fecal transplant. That’s right. Putting someone else’s poop into my gut. It sounds 100 percent gross, but the treatment is something like 90 percent effective. And it isn’t as if you take the stuff with a spoon…there are pills and, well, enemas. Fortunately for me, several friends have already offered to donate. I have very good friends.

Regardless, let’s call the procedure microbiome replacement. That sounds better, doesn’t it?

In the end, my time under doctors’ care threw all it had at me but I managed to shake it all off. I got away with no-slip socks and lots of paper underwear, and I set myself a bright-and-shiny new goal: Stay the hell out of hospitals.

Image Credits

Top: Colour lithograph after L. Ibels, 1916. [CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Bottom: Wellcome Images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom.