“I hope you like Henry Winkler,” Stacy said, “Because I have tickets to see him.” She often buys us tickets for things she’s enthusiastic about. I hadn’t known she was such a Fonz fan; she was driving down from Seattle just to see him. My own feelings about Winkler were benign. At the last minute she said couldn’t make it and that I could have both tickets. While my interest in the whole thing was mild, it was something to do, and wouldn’t cost me anything, and I hoped I could get an anecdote out of it.
I couldn’t find anyone to go with me –to be honest, I didn’t try very hard- so I made my way across town alone. I wore my new diabetic shoes, which I was still breaking in. They seemed fine so far but the infectious disease doctors had driven it into my skull to be watchful for blisters or other issues.
The talk was entertaining enough –Winkler was charming and funny- but it all felt as scripted as a sit-com, which of course it was. He was promoting his new memoir, the lazily-titled Being Henry. His stories were amusing but he had obviously told them countless times, and he peppered his talk with banal self-help speak. “I just want to say one thing,” he said, after saying many things, “You can do anything you put your mind to.”
Afterwards, there was the option to have your picture taken with him, but I didn’t see the point aside from the novelty; besides, the line was extremely long. The books came pre-signed –worse, they came with a little notecard he had scribbled on- so there wasn’t any chance of having them personalized.
As I was walking back to the bus, my feet started hurting. When I got home I pulled off my shoes. The right foot had a huge blister on the bottom, and the toes were angry and swollen. I was terrified –this is what my left foot had looked like right before I lost my toes- and that night I was up for hours with the chills. The next day I left work early to go to Urgent Care.
The doctor at Urgent Care sat me down and removed my shoe and sock and asked, “So you know you have a piece of glass in your foot?” I had not been aware of this, but my neuropathy in my feet is so bad I don’t feel anything down there. With tweezers he plucked out a clear shard the size and shape of a cat’s claw. “Looks like it went straight in,” he said. “Could have been there for weeks.”
They didn’t have the capacity for doing x-rays or much of anything at Urgent Care, so he gave me a prescription for antibiotics and suggested I see an actual doctor. I called my podiatrist, who surprisingly had an opening in an hour. I rushed across town to see her. She said I should go to the ER, which was right down the road. Once there, I waited for a long time before being seen, and once they did, they wanted to admit me. I stretched out on a gurney, waiting for them to free up a bed. The whole time people rushed past me with various issues. I could hear two women taking turns moaning in the distance. Security guards were everywhere, striding up and down between the stations. I could hear bursts of chatter from their walkie talkies, mostly talk of fentanol overdoses. Occasionally the loudspeakers would blast “Code Gray” and the guards would all rush in the same direction. I told myself to lie like a sand bag and accept whatever was going to happen.
As I drifted in and out of a sort of sleepy stupor, I heard my name being mentioned from the nurse’s station. Eventually a young man came over and said, “I have to show you something.” He held up his ID card. His first name was spelled exactly the same as mine. “I’ve never met another one,” he said in awe.
They took blood and did x-rays. “It looks like you have a piece of glass in your foot,” they said. I was confused and told them I’d just had a piece of glass removed from my foot. They shrugged and didn’t mention it again.
It was six hours before they wheeled me into a room, hooking me up immediately to IV antibiotics. My nurse that night had a soft, gentle voice with a laugh that burbled out of her. She was pretty and her ass was massive; as she fiddled with the computer I couldn’t stop staring at it, imagined it was expanding and would eventually fill the room and swallow me up.
The next morning the floor doctor checked in with me briefly. I asked him what the plan was and he said I should ask the podiatrist. An hour later the podiatrist arrived -I was surprised and a little disappointed to see that it was my podiatrist from down the street. She said the hospital didn’t have a regular podiatrist. I asked her what the plan was and she said the floor doctor, whom I had just seen, would explain it all. He never returned, and all day I felt myself withdrawing further into myself like a hermit crab to try to escape the mounting dread.
That night I felt something akin to a panic attack. It was Friday night and most of the staff had scattered for the weekend, while I remained, paying thousands of dollars to be ignored. I fantasized about tearing out my IV ports and signing myself out AMA (Against Medical Advice) and checking in to a different hospital. I couldn’t believe my doctors had so little interest in seeing me, and now it was the weekend so I most likely wouldn’t see anyone until Monday. Plus the foot was getting worse. The swelling was increasing and my second and third toes had turned purple. They took another x-ray and once again noted a foreign object lodged in there, but all they did was change my antibiotics so that I was now hooked up to the machine nearly all the time. It awoke me with its screeching in the middle of the night. People came in constantly to take my blood or check my vitals. They kept having to change my IV port –by the end of my stay they’d put in five total, with one in each arm for a time.
I tried to write and draw and read but couldn’t concentrate. I began to disappear into my surroundings. The other side of the building had expansive views looking out over the valley but my window faced a drab courtyard with a small patch of sky. The pillows were black with white pillowcases stamped with the name of a different hospital around town. I joked with the nurses that the place was so broke they had to steal pillowcases but none of them laughed.
Most of the nurses looked like they were in high school. They were friendly but all seemed distracted. The exception was Holly, my day nurse for much of my stay. She was rail-thin and looked like a startled tropical bird. One half of her hair was dyed chartreuse and the other dull orange. Her lashes were painted sky blue. She was a lot sharper than her coworkers, and attentive and caring. A few other nurses were like this, and they had all been trained by the same person. I could see how they clung to one another, huddling on an island of caring and competence in a raging river of dysfunction.
Brahms’ lullaby played over the PA system every time a baby was born. I told Holly I thought they should play something every time someone died. “Not to be morbid,” I said, “But in celebration. Maybe Bach or something.” To my surprise, she agreed; she said she was thinking about leaving nursing to work in hospice care.
I got used to the rhythms and routine. Up half the night, waking up bathed in sweat, vitals taken, take your anti-coagulants and cholesterol medicine, have your blood taken, have your blood sugar checked, have the IV changed out, possibly get a visit from the useless floor doctor. Almost every night a friend or two would visit, and I did my best to be entertaining, despite my desperation. Time in hospital is so strange, both crawling and hurtling forward. I was allowed to walk the hall but couldn’t go outside and sit in the sunshine for a few minutes.
I found myself fixated on things like my hospital gown. Though I knew it was designed to be easily torn off in event of catastrophe, it was nearly impossible to tie and constantly leaving me exposed. I soon got over whatever shame I had left though, and when a pretty nurse offered to help me shower, I didn’t balk at being naked in front of her. She had no doubt seen much worse. She told me she was diabetic too, had been diagnosed on her thirtieth birthday. On her forearm was a tattoo that read Love is Pain.
The pattern on the gown was a black crest or mandala on a green background. I wondered about the person who had designed the crest, picked the colors, no doubt meant to be unnoticeable. I found it hideous. I was always cold. Holly finally brought me a pair of pants and that changed everything.
I had fever dreams every night. Strange, scary abstract things. One in particular seemed to be composed of thoughts –but thoughts made physical, tangled in a great knot that I kept trying to unravel. I kept struggling to wake up and I couldn’t. One thought would always remain entangled, and though I couldn’t tell what it was I felt my survival depended on my freeing it.
The weekend dragged by and by Monday my second toe had gone from purple to black. My nurse that morning was very concerned and she took a bunch of photos and sent them to my doctors, who did not respond. I sat there for hours, trying to accept the fact that, due to my own stupidity and the negligence of these assholes, I was probably going to lose another toe. All because of a piece of fucking glass. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. It was all too terrifying and preposterous.
Late Monday afternoon a new floor doctor came in. He was bald and looked about sixty, but I’d gotten so accustomed to everyone being so young, it’s possible he was only my age. He and I had the same first and middle name, though his last name was Czech rather than Irish. He looked very concerned about my toes, and when I told him I hadn’t seen anyone all day and that the nurses had been trying to contact my podiatrists, he looked at me a moment then left the room.
An hour later my podiatrist came in, with another man who turned out to be one of her colleagues. He removed the sock from my foot and started prodding and pressing, even cutting into the blisters. “I don’t feel anything,” he said, as my podiatrist stood there meekly. He looked at me. “I’m going to need to cut you open.” I told him I was worried about losing the toes. He looked at them. “We’ll do our best,” he said, and breezed out, followed by my podiatrist.
A few hours went by and one of the nurses came in to tell me they had scheduled surgery for 8PM that night. I was frightened but also relieved; I had assumed it would be a day or two before they could fit me in.
A tall, skinny man with a bright red cowboy hat trimmed with white fur wheeled me down to surgery, eliciting comments from everyone we passed. The surgeon was cheery before the procedure, and promised me I would not be losing any toes. An hour later I rose slowly from the depths of anesthetic, to the sounds of people arguing about flying first class. “It’s only $75 more,” one of them was saying. “It’s totally worth it.”
“But it’s 75 dollars,” the other person whined.
“Exactly. It’s 75 dollars.”
I drifted in and out of sleep all night. At one point I realized with a shock that my room had changed dimensions. I vaguely knew it was the same room but it seemed to face a different direction and gotten much smaller. I knew it was an illusion but I couldn’t shake the feeling. I felt like I was going crazy.
I woke up the next morning with my foot attached to a wound vacuum. It must have been there the night before but I had been so out of it I hadn’t noticed. It was the size of a typical vacuum cleaner hooked on the lower bed rail. A clear tube ran from it to within my bandages, and every five seconds or so a tiny dark bead would run along it, looking like a bug. They said I was going to have to take it home with me. The room still didn’t look right to me.
The toe looked worse than ever. I expected the surgeon to show up but he did not. No one did until later that afternoon, when my Czech namesake finally showed up. I told him I hadn’t seen anyone all day and he shook his head. “I’m hearing that they don’t talk to one another,” he said quietly. An hour later my podiatrist showed up, with her coat on, looking frazzled, with the floor doctor marching behind her. She didn’t want to unwrap my foot and told me we’d just have to wait and see.
The next morning the toe had gone from black to purple. For the first time I felt a modicum of relief. And the surgeon surprised me by popping in early. He took me off the wound vac, said it wasn’t doing much anyways. He told me he had removed something from my foot but couldn’t tell if it was glass or something else. He said he hoped to have me out by the weekend. Saturday was going to be my birthday, as everyone who scanned my ID band kept reminding me, and I hadn’t expected to be out by then.
The floor doctor came by and I told him what the surgeon had said and thanked him for his help. “I had to kind of light a fire,” he said. “This is not how I want our hospital to be run.”
I slept on and off all day. I tried not to think about the expense of all this, or how work was going to react. The machine of the hospital kept whirring around me. Women kept taking my orders for my meals, kept bringing them in and placing them before me, and I kept eating them. I wasn’t allowed to check my sugars or give myself my insulin, so I had to wait for a nurse until I began eating.
By Thursday the toe had gone from purple back to dark red, and turned pale when pressed, which was a sign that it wasn’t dead. There was talk of releasing me Friday but I didn’t dare to hope. Holly was gone and replaced by a peevish older woman named Hannah. She showed interest in my writing and said she wrote too, but when I asked her what she wrote she reluctantly said that she copied out bible verses. “They bring me comfort,” she said. She seemed anxious and frightened of the floor doctor.
Friday arrived and everyone seemed to be preparing for my release. I joked with Hannah that I’d finally annoyed everyone enough that they were kicking me out. “You’re one of the least annoying patients I have,” she said, sounding annoyed. The surgeon stopped by and said he thought I could go, that I should make an appointment with him after Christmas.
When he left, my friends Bronwyn and Mike stopped by; they lived in Tacoma but happened to be in town for a few days. They gave me a small bag full of thoughtful gifts. One of them was an oblong stone Mike had found in Ohio. When he had thrown it into his rock tumbler, a piece cracked off one end. Inside, the stone was lined with crystals. “It looks exactly like my toe!” I exclaimed. It was even purple, and the glittering hole was right where the toenail would be. They were less amazed by the coincidence than I was.
They left just as my friend Robyn arrived to help me make my escape. We had to wait for my oral antibiotics to be ready. I was told I could walk as long as I didn’t put pressure on my toes, gave me a temporary shoe with Velcro straps. It felt strange to hobble past the nurse’s station, through the double doors I’d only seen from the gurney. The drive home reminded me of movies where convicts were released from prison. I felt overwhelmed by the simplest things; traffic lights, weed-choked lots, peeing dogs, the rush of cars.
It felt so good to lie in my bed that night, surrounded by my books and tchotchkes, the cat beside me beneath the covers. I picked up the Henry Winkler book on my nightstand but was soon disgusted by its vapid optimism. You can do anything you put your mind to. I passed out and when I awoke I was fifty one and still, unbelievably, more or less intact.
