I spent Thursday morning in the hospital having a nuclear stress test performed. It’s a painless, time-consuming procedure made pleasant by the nurses and techs who worked on me. By my count they represented five countries of origin, not including my cardiologist, who is from India. My blood pressure has been distressingly low and the doctor urged me to use more salt after I’ve spent a lifetime hearing the opposite advice. He also fetched a can of Coke, the high-test stuff, something I haven’t drunk since I was a kid. He thought the caffeine would help, considering I had been fasting and didn’t consume my usual two cups of coffee first thing in the morning.
To pass the time and fortify
my heart (the purpose of the test was to clear me for multiple surgeries) I
brought along the pocket-size Oxford World’s Classic edition of The Poems of
George Herbert, Such a companionable poet. See “Gratefulnesse,” which
begins:
“Thou that hast giv’n so
much to me,
Give one thing more, a
gratefull heart.
See how thy beggar works
on thee
By art.”
5 comments:
I hereby command that all of your surgeries will be completely successful and that you'll be restored to good health. (I'm your age, which gives me all the more reason to be rooting for you.)
Amen
Best wishes to you, old man.
Godspeed, Mr. Kurp!
Anyone who has to spend any time in hospitals or in any way interacting with the American medical system has my profound sympathy. Your situation brings to mind this, from Raymond Chandler's last novel, Playback:
"I have spent many many years in lobbies, in lounges and bars, on porches, terraces and ornate gardens in hotels all over the world. I have outlived everyone in my family. I shall go on being useless and inquisitive until the day comes when the stretcher carries me off to some nice airy corner room in a hospital. The starched white dragons will minister to me. The bed will be wound up, wound down. Trays will come with that awful loveless hospital food. My pulse and temperature will be taken at frequent intervals and invariably when I am dropping off to sleep. I shall lie there and listen to the rustle of the starched skirts, the slurring sound of the rubber shoe soles on the aseptic floor, and see the silent horror of the doctor's smile. After a while they will put the oxygen tent over me and draw the screens around the little white bed and I shall, without even knowing it, do the one thing in the world no man ever has to do twice."
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