Watch any cartoon that involves a bit of gratuitous violence – blunt force trauma to the head; someone getting knocked out; an explosion; the dazed look on the protagonist’s face after falling from a great height – and you’re bound to see the oft used tv trope of stars or birds circling around the victim’s head (or some variation thereof).
As a kid I never realized it, but there is some remarkable level of accuracy and truth in this trope… it’s not just a device used by the animator to convey a “sense” of what’s happened – it actually takes place. At least it did for me.
It took place during one of my early stays in hospital – not that there was gratuitous violence involved or any actual blunt force trauma; no explosions; no medical staff punching me in the head; and I didn’t fall from a great height (I didn’t even fall from the hospital bed).
This was the public health system. And they seemed to have taken the use of the term “public” very seriously. Privacy was not a consideration. I found myself in a ward the size of a small school hall with at least a dozen, if not more, hospital beds lining the walls. There were the requisite pull around curtains for each bed, but I certainly don’t recall them being put to any use.
So, here I was, the youngest in a room full of farting, coughing, moaning, snoring, pissing, shitting, bed-ridden, very sick men. The noise was horrendous and sleep was elusive at the best of times. Now, when driving past some hospitals, I note, with a sense of irony and amusement, the signs saying, “Quiet! – Hospital”. I don’t think I’ve ever had a hospital stay that has involved any measured dosage of “quiet” in the administration of the treatment plan.
During this first stay I spent most of my days watching with amazement the colour of the various liquids and discharges that were seeping into assorted bags and containers via the tubes embedded in the guy in the bed opposite mine. When we think of colour in relation to the human body, our initial tendency is to think in terms of skin, hair or eyes. All surface. All superficial. There is so much more, and I was witness to it each day – the bright greens and saturated yellows of bile; the range of ochres through to rich burnt sienna tones of blood filled urine; the brown panoply of shit and diarrhoea; the pastel greys and soft, creamy greens of sputum; the rich, sanguine red of blood.
It seemed as though his body was desperately hoping to find healing by purging a cesspool rainbow of filth, ooze and slime.
My body, on the other hand, was simply commencing its lifelong education in the specifics and particulars of a declining kidney function. Part of this education involved becoming familiarised with a range of biopsies, blood tests and procedures. The initial goal of these was to determine the probable nature and cause of my nephritis as well as to determine its likely trajectory. This prognosis of chronicity is something that evolves and changes over time. Each new set of biopsy results is compared with the previous to help create, one benchmark against the next, the rate and inclination of decline.
For example, take a “snip” of the kidney and look at it microscopically to ascertain the level of damage. Six months later, take another “snip”, and compare the changes to get a picture of how things are going.
I was undergoing my first “snip” procedure, or “Renal Biopsy” – a short process where a spring loaded needle was being skilfully manoeuvred into place, ready to take a biopsy sized bight out of one of my kidneys – when the TV trope suddenly came true for me. It was the result of a nerve being severed. I literally saw a twinkling of sparkling stars and heard a distinctly audible zinging of tinkling bells.
“What’s that?”, the doctor asked with such conviction that I initially thought he must have heard the bells and seen the stars, too, not realising that I’d probably twitched and grunted with surprise.
I explained to him what I had experienced. He didn’t look too pleased and noted quietly to himself that he must have severed a nerve.
“Not to worry,” I quipped, “It shouldn’t take too long to heal, should it?”
He paused for a few seconds and started to reply, “Oh… maybe two or three…” before he had time to complete his response, at the speed that can only occur in thought, my mind had flicked through the range of likely possibilities: days? (probably longer)… weeks? (potentially)… months? (maybe, but unlikely). “…years.”, he concluded.
“Two or three years‽”, I interrobanged to myself.
But he was wrong. It took much longer – at least another ten years – for the numbness to dissipate and any sense of “normal” feeling to return to my hip.
To tell the truth, an overall sense of feeling “normal” was something that this initial hospital stint seemed to preclude.
Sharing an open room with a dozen or so other debilitated men did not promote “normal”. Being confined to bed 24 hours a day did not promote “normal”. Wearing a hospital gown, pissing into a bottle, taking a semi-public dump in a pan – all without any pretense of modesty or dignity – did not promote “normal”.
This hospitalised “not normal” form of “normal” became so “normal” that when I finally experienced “true normal” again it seemed, decidedly, “hyper-normal”.
I don’t think I’ll ever feel such a sense of wonder in the way the world appeared when I was first checked out of hospital after this initial week. Every tree, every branch, every leaf was singularly unique and glorious in its colour, its texture, its existence. The sky was drenched in an inconceivable saturation of blue-ness. The sonic ambiance was a symphony. The atmosphere was crystalline, invigorating, rejuvenating, and delightfully lacking in the miasma of hospital odours.
I felt well. I felt strong. I felt super-alive. I felt “hyper-normal”.
To this day, it is a feeling I hope for… long for… desire… pursue after each new hospital stay.