Gitmo Medical Center.
Posted by John on May 2nd, 2008 at 1:29 pm · 9 Comments
We just received the happy news that Jana is free to go after her little encounter with her friends the drug-resistant bacteria and modern medicine’s to beat them back. While I could kiss Jana’s doctors and Sir Alexander Fleming on his mouldering lips (if I got infected, there’s always anti-biotics!), there are certainly happier places to spend three days and two nights away from it all.
Jana, at the beginning of her confinement.
In the hospital, every attempt is made to disorient you. You are encouraged to strip yourself of all possessions. You give up your watch for safekeeping. No clocks are in sight. Fortunately, you have a window, and you can tell by the light growing in the faintly orange sky that the long night is about over.
A room with a view.
Also, you are surrounded by (or worse yet, all but strapped to) strange contraptions covered with cryptic symbols. The kids and I passed the time trying to understand the following:
- In the middle: “Place body through rollers until head pops off.”
- Upper right: Different rack options?
- Bottom far left: “Break kneecaps with heavy weight.” Not sure what the saw is for.
- Bottom middle left: “Knock head off with heavy weight.” And there’s that saw again.
- Bottom middle right: “Flatten body with heavy weight.” I guess they want to save the head.
- I don’t even want to know what the “foot extend” and “foot retract” mechanisms are for.
- Apparently they call in a muppet with one glowing eye to “relieve pressure.”
- If the rollers, the heavy weight, and the saw aren’t sufficient to decapitate the victim, a mini-UFO with a tractor beam can be called in to finish the job.
- They even try to throw off your moral and cultural anchors.
- No opportunity to disorient you is lost, however tiny and subliminal. Also: Jana, at the end of her confinement.
While my descriptions here are written with tongue pressed against cheek, there is a serious side to all this: hospitals can be destabilizing and dehumanizing places. Jana was stripped of all but a handful of her possessions. Jana refused to wear hers, but typically you are given a flimsy gown that makes you feel naked in front of the uniformed authority figures. I listened to people describe their bowel movements in detail. One person was told that they had a stone in their bladder that was over two and half inches across. Another was handed a clinical death sentence of advanced, metastasized cancer of their internal organs.
You’re stripped of all sense of time. If your neighbor’s loud TVs, visitors, or screams don’t deprive you of sleep, the practice of checking your vitals every two hours does the job. Or it’s the needle stuck in your arm.
So, thank you, you lovely doctors and nurses and aides and custodians and cafeteria workers of the UCI Medical Center. But don’t be offended if we say that we don’t intend to stop by again for as long as we can help it.
Tags: Humor · Personal · Photos
