Let me tell you about my privileged body. Please note the word “privileged.” I did not say “perfect.” Far from it.
It took me decades to realize that I possessed a privileged body– that indeed I was one of the chosen, one of the elite.
At age four I had my first grand mal seizure. That made me a gold-plated, certified epileptic for life, someone who employers would later look upon with a jaundiced eye. Still, in a less enlightened age I might have been labeled “insane” or better yet “possessed of the devil.”
Luckily I had been born into an upper-middle class family, hence my parents made sure I had the best of care. And when I say “the best” I mean just that– the best! My first neurologist was the legendary Dr. Cesare Lombroso of the hallowed Lennox Clinic at Boston Children’s Hospital, then as now the top seizure center in the world.
My parents did everything in their power to ensure that Dr. Lombroso remain my doctor. Ten years later, with our residence now in Jacksonville, Florida, my folks held tight to the Great Lombroso. Every six months or so they would put me on an Eastern Airlines night flight to Boston to be checked and re-evaluated.
During those night flights north I made it a practice to read Edgar Allan Poe and only Edgar Allan Poe. Think about it. What better place in the world is there for reading “The Pit and the Pendulum” or “The Tell-tale Heart” or “The Black Cat” or “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” than 30,000 feet in the air with a single beam of light illuminating the printed page?
Ah, poor Poe! Despite his creative genius, despite his erudition and flawless linguistic aptitude, despite his anticipation of Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in “Eureka: A Prose Poem” some fifty-five years prior to 1905, he would die a young, mysterious, and sordid death in a Baltimore hospital. Clearly his was not a privileged body.
In 1954 my brother Bill’s tonsils became mildly infected. Back then taking out American children’s tonsils was literally a cottage industry. Indeed it was considered parental neglect if children failed to have their tonsils snipped off.
I made the mistake of accompanying Bill and my parents to the hospital. Eyeing me the surgeon turned to my father and said: “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Christmas. How about two for the price of one?”
“You’re joking,” my father said.
“Not at all,” said the doctor. “I’d rather take out a healthy set of tonsils now than inflamed set later. What do you say?”
“Done,” said Dad.
After the operation the Brothers Christmas spent a couple of nights at the hospital recuperating. Bill, suffering from the granddaddy of sore throats, could only manage a feeble whisper. He would therefore ask me at the most ungodly hour to holler for water. One burly nurse in particular lost it at two a.m. the second night there.
“Young man,” she said sharply to my brother, “you have no right making your little brother scream like that. His throat, like yours, has been cauterized and could start bleeding again.”
Little did this nurse know that she was speaking to a future physician– one whose body was almost as privileged as mine.
The next assault on my privileged body came in the form of appendicitis at the age of sixteen in Jacksonville. At first I thought it was just stomach cramps but soon the abdominal pains became so acute that my dad decided to call our family physician, Dr. Chris.
“Have Gerry drink a bottle of soda water and tell me what happens,” the good doctor said.
The fizz came up faster than it went down.
“Did you hear that?” my father asked.
“I would’ve been stone-deaf not to,” said Dr. Chris. “Bundle Gerry up immediately and drive him to my office. I’ll get in touch with Dr. Pope, a surgeon friend of mine over at St. John’s Memorial Hospital. Something tells me that I will need his good counsel.”
How right he was! By the time we reached Dr. Chris’ office, my condition had worsened. Putting me flat on my back in the examination room, the two doctors began to depress various parts of my lower abdomen trying to pinpoint the source of the problem. It hurt like hell. They then retired to Dr. Chris’ office for a consultation. There, they decided to transport me to the hospital for an appendectomy. The dangers of a ruptured appendix were just too great.
Within hours I was sans appendix. Regaining consciousness I found myself, as expected, in a private room. Gingerly I lifted the sheet to examine the damage. To my delight I had not been stitched up with the pedestrian catgut. Instead they had used stainless steel wire! I had now arrived. Now I knew for certain that I was a cut above, that my organs – whether inside or outside my physical being – had a value greater than those of the common herd.
More than a decade passed and I decided to answer JFK’s clarion call to join the United States Peace Corps. My first assignment was Bangkok, Thailand where I taught English at Thonburi Teachers’ Training College. One Friday night a group of PCVs and I were offered free beer at one of our favorite watering holes, Lucy’s Tiger Den. From the first flagon we all agreed that something was not quite right with the brew, that it was “green” at best. My companions abruptly ceased swilling the stuff. Not me. And why should I? After all hadn’t I been blessed with a privileged body?
The next morning I started having the “dry heaves,” coupled with petite mals. In my case, this did not bode well for petite mals could trigger grand mal seizures. Being the monsoon season, the city was inundated with a good foot of fetid water from the Chao Phraya River. Still I could not risk having a grand mal so I telephoned the Peace Corps physician, Dr. Prem, at his house.
“Can you make it to the Peace Corps office?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said with a wavering voice. “But how are you going to get there? The city is flooded.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I will be there along with a neurologist from the other side of town. This ought to be great fun.”
He then hung up.
Not surprisingly I beat Dr. Prem and his colleague to the Peace Corps office. But not by much. Once there, they went right to work and within minutes had me strapped flat on my back to a medical bed with an IV hooked to each arm.
“The IV on your left, Gerry, has fluids and anticonvulsant medication,” Dr. Prem said gleefully. “The one on our right is glucose to hydrate you. Now don’t say a word. Close your eyes and get some sleep.”
And that is precisely what my privileged body did.
My second Peace Corps assignment was at Faleata Junior High School in Western Samoa– now just Samoa. One day, right in the middle of math class, I doubled over due to acute abdominal pain. At first I thought it was my stomach but then I realized that I had not had a bowel movement in days. The pain was therefore nothing but my intestines screaming for relief.
Did I say nothing? Nothing could be farther from the truth! Immediately I canceled classes, notified my headmaster and good friend, Lafi Tuitui, and set out to catch the hospital bus that stopped at the head of the school grounds.
Samoan buses in the late 1970s were not exactly known for their punctuality. So, when one failed to show up after ten minutes or so, I stuck out to walk to the hospital, admittedly an insane idea as the place was a good three miles away. Fortunately a Samoan in a pickup truck discerned my plight and volunteered to drive me there. Knowing that Samoan doctors back then had minimal formal training, I asked for Dr. Watson, the board certified physician from socialist New Zealand.
“What ails you?” she asked.
“I’m terribly plugged up, doctor,” I gasped. “Give me an enema and fast.”
“Now, now,” she said. “Take it easy. Don’t you know that I don’t believe in enemas?”
“Don’t believe in enemas! For god’s sake I’m dying!”
“Let’s not be overly dramatic,” she said unctuously. “If you are dissatisfied with me, I can readily turn you over to one of them.” And she motioned with her head to the long row of Samoan “doctors” to my right.
“No, no, no. Not that. Anything but that!”
A wry smile creased her lips.
“Now drop your drawers like the fine lad you are,” she said, “and I will give you a muscle relaxer. It won’t work with the rapidity of an enema but it will do the trick without any habit-forming side-effects.”
And work it did. Within an hour I was a new man– my privileged body up and humming again.
Nothing much of consequence happened to me in Samoa after that. Oh, yes, I passed a couple of kidney stones and - thanks to a vicious strain of E. coli - my poop went from chestnut brown to verdant green in four days. But all this was transitory. For the most part my privileged body stabilized. I married late, sired two stunning daughters, and became a public school teacher in North Carolina.
Then at the age of sixty-one it happened. Late one evening I could not catch my breath. I thought at first that it was an allergic reaction since I had done yard work for most of the day. But that was denial, pure and simple. Allergies were not my thing.
The next morning I found myself sprawled on the living room floor gasping for air. My wife Chihiro called 911 and the medics were at our house inside of five minutes. After asking a few stock questions, a medic said, “You have had a heart attack, Mr. Christmas. We have no time to lose. We need to get you to a hospital pronto. It’s your call. Which one?”
“UNC at Chapel Hill.”
According to my brother the doctor, what transpired from my house to the operating table was “textbook.” The medics not only performed all the proper procedures in the ambulance but the nurses at the hospital didn’t miss a beat either. Then, to put the cherry on the sundae, Dr. Stouffer, a sterling cardiologist, inserted the stent that saved my life.
As I was being wheeled from the surgical theatre, Dr. Stouffer said, “You are a very, very lucky man. You just got here in time. A little longer and there would have been serious cardiac damage. As it is, we have bought you another twenty years.”
Another twenty years? That will make my privileged body a ripe and wizen eighty-odd! By then my mind will have clouded, the spring to my step will be less spongy, and my bodily fluids will be leaking all over the place.
But rest assured.
Be not afraid.
At that august hour, despite dimming faculties, it will be privileged bodies such as mine that will man the death panels.
No comments:
Post a Comment