Chapter 20: Cont...

After lunch Nurse Patton came in and told me it was time for me to start walking.
“What?”
“Walking.” She said, “You know that thing where you put one foot in front of another!” Everybody’s a comedian.
“What about the catheter?" I ask "it is supposed to be taken out, and my drains, how can I walk with my drains?
“I can’t take out the catheters out with out a doctor’s say-so, I’ll check. Meanwhile,” She asked. “Did you bring a robe? I will hook it up everything on your belt.” Before I knew what was happening I had on my robe, and all my appendages were somehow hooked on them. Nurse Patton pointed to the hall and told Mark and I to walk for fifteen minutes.
“I can’t go out in to the hall in my robe and catheter.” I whine.
“Why not?” Mark responded “Every other person in the hall is walking in their robe carrying a catheter.” Funny thing, he was right. The hall was filled with people wearing bath robes carrying catheters or rolling their IV’s shuffling along with a companion, going up and down the hall. We all looked like the old man character that Artie Johnson played on the TV show Laugh-in.
It hurt to walk and I resented the fact that they were making me; every step was torture, at least at first. The strange thing was, the longer I walked the better I felt. Walking with Mark was an activity that we did together a lot. I started thinking about our family walks. Living right next to a High School has its perks, and one of them is access to the school track. On any given summer night the track is filled with runners, joggers and walkers.
So when the weather is nice Mark and I take the girls to the track and we walk two miles. Well, ok, Mark and I walk two miles, the girls play around on the field that is in the middle of the track. They also like playing in the spectator stands. We find the walking a nice family activity. My thoughts were interrupted when Mark asked me,
“How do you do that?
“Do what? I asked
“Small talk.” He stated. I didn't understand his question. “The conversation you had with Henry about the fake flavors. You always seem to know just what question to ask someone to get a conversation going.” I shrug my shoulders (as much as that is possible) and said,
“I’m naturally curious; I like to know about people I guess. Anyway, you are also good at small talk; you do it all the time.”
“I know, small talk is part of my job, but I fine it work, you look like you were having fun.”
“I was.” I say smiling, we continued to walk.
The hall was a great place to people watch. First you had the nurses and doctors running back and forth from room to room. Then there were the other members of the hospital staff, food service, cleaning staff and orderlies. Next there were the other patients, hobbling up and down the halls alone or with a visitor. I thought that these were the only people that I would see, so I was quite surprised when Mark and I turned a corner and saw a policeman guarding a room. I mean it was just like the movies. This group of rooms was where the single occupancy rooms (the kind of room I wanted so desperately) were. And there was a cop leaning in the doorway, chatting with a cute nurse and drinking a cup of coffee. All that was missing from this picture was a doughnut. We turn around and headed back to my room.
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After Mark left I took a nap. Later two nurses came by and removed my cathedra. At first I was thrilled because it was starting to annoy me, then I realized that I now had to get up and walk to the bathroom every time I need to pee. Not only that, but I was given instructions on how to measure my urine amount and tell the nurse on duty how much I peed, how humiliating.
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Mark’s supervisor the Rev Katharine showed up to see how I was doing, this surprised me because I didn’t expect her to come by and see me. Between coming to my house before my surgery and the flowers that she sent I figured that she had fulfilled any pastor obligation to me. Obviously in her mind she didn't, we talked a bit then we prayed. Funny but after her visit I felt better.
I really did not want any visitors; I had set up a system to dispense information about my health to anyone that wanted to be kept informed. After Mark came to see me he would make a few phone calls and give the latest "Traci health up-date.” First he called his mother and she in turn would call his sisters, and then he will call Diane or Alice (who is the head of the PPRC pastor, parish, relations, committee) they in turn would call the interested church members. Francis who was both a church member and a co-worker, up-dated my co-workers. My sister Valerie called me every day and she up-dated the rest of our family. It is nice that people cared about me and everything, but I really wanted to be alone, so most of the time when someone showed up or called I found the interruption annoying. The next unexpected interruption came as a phone call from Erin.
Erin and I had met two years ago while doing lunch duty at the Elementary School. What is lunch duty? You ask, it is when mothers go to their kid’s lunch room once a week and wander up and down the aisles both helping kids open various items from their lunchboxes and keeping the kids in line. Then we help clean the tables, after that we go outside and hang out with our kids while trying to keep the other little kids from killing each other. Erin and I just happened to sign up for the same day, so every Thursday there we were helping the kids and trying to get through the hour. Having each other made the time go by faster.
When the kids were little they needed a lot of help opening up milk and stuff and they wanted a lot of attention. By the time Erin and I met, our kids were in third grade, and they rarely needed help opening anything. While on the playground our kids wanted us there so they could show off their cartwheels and their mastering of the monkey bars. So we were able to chat and watch at the same time, we kept each other company and became friends.
We only occasionally saw each other outside of the school. We would sit together sometimes if we saw each other at the community pool, other times we have run into each other at the library or supermarket, and once and a while we would have coffee together at Café Josephine.
I never had many friends, I remember as a child complaining to my mother saying that it was not fair that I spent so much time by myself while my siblings seemed to always have friends at the house. She listened to me whine then asked,
"Are you alone because no one wants to play with you, or because you don't want to play with them?" Man, I hated it when she was right, which was most of the time. I do enjoy the company of other people, but I want that company on my terms. Given a preference I would rather be by myself, a person like Helen who seem to need people with her all of the time baffles me.
So when Erin called at first I was annoyed, I felt that she is interrupting my personal time. But as we talk I found myself enjoying our conversation, and I started to realize just how important her friendship was to me. Remember she was there at the library on the day that I found out that I had cancer. I didn’t tell her right away, but just having her there was helpful. We only talk for a few minutes, I told her that I was very tired and that I would call her when I was ready to have visitors. After I hang-up I forget that she called.
Mark came by a dinnertime, only this time he didn’t come alone, he brought his sister with him (with all those calls and visitors I was afraid that I was going to have to turn in my hermit club membership card). The two were not in the room for ten minutes when their banter had me laughing, very, very hard.
The problem was that laughing made my body hurt, it hurt as much or even more than the coughing did, my whole torso was in pain every time I laughed. I beg them to stop the jokes but my sister-in-law (a civil engineer by trade) is as goofy as Mark, so when they get together it is quite the comedic act. Finally I had to ask them to leave because they had me laughing too much. I have to admit their visit put me in a wonderful mood.
After they left Max stopped by to take my vitals and to empty and measure the fluid in my drains, he told me that I had to sit in a chair for a while and helped me get out of bed and in to the chair. I was getting to the point where I could get in and out of bed with a little help.
I was sitting in my chair reading when a good looking blond young man came into my room, his id badge identified him as Derek; a nurse (I was really starting to wonder if every person who worked at the hospital was required to be attractive to work there.) He introduced himself as one of the nurses who worked on the surgical floor. I thought that because he was in my room that he was another nurse assigned to look after Helen and me, you see, although there was the main shift nurse assigned to each person, there were many other nurses wondering in and out of the rooms looking after the patients. Sometimes I would see the same nurse over and over, and sometimes I would see someone only once.
So since Derek was there in my room I asked him to help me get back into bed, and he did. That was when he told me that he was not my nurse. The reason that he stepped in to my room is that he was just coming off of his break, and on his way down the hall (remember my door is always open) he noticed that I was reading a Dean Koonz book. Derek loves Koonz and rarely sees people on this floor reading that author, so he wanted to stop by and chat. He stayed for another few minutes talking about the book and its author. Hey, talking about books is one of my favorite things, so a good evening got even better. The rest of the evening is uneventful, which considering that I was in a hospital was a positive thing.