Monday, July 12:

In Hospital Pulau Pinang, I asked a nurse at the nurses’ desk if someone would raise my bed like a few others that I pointed to. I wished that I had known last night that the beds could articulate. My back hurt all night and morning, seemingly from the weight of my body on my spine. If I had my bed jacked-up to a 45° angle, it might’ve alleviated some suffering. I ambled back toward bed two, and while I waited for a nurse or orderly or anyone I looked out the south windows of C-block to the playground and the street beyond. Though several windows were tilted open and the ceiling fan above beds 1 and 2 was whirring at top speed, I began to feel very hot, as if I’d just hiked up Bukit Bendera.

I couldn’t understand why I  felt so flush as I stepped to the sink and mirror right of the windows to look at my face and splash some cool water on it. I went to a plastic chair then gingerly lower myself onto it. I was sweating in my brown, cotton pajamas, yet I couldn’t believe that the room was hot. So it must be me. I was already faint from lack of sleep, nutrition and caffeine and dizzy from a concussion and an unnamed pain reliever …

Then I remembered that hours ago a woman in the CT scanning room had told me that the two bottles of contrast medium that I drank would probably make me feel warm later. Wow. I had forgotten about that because the side effect hadn’t happened any time soon after the scans. I was somewhat amazed at the sudden onset of the sensation of heat and profuse perspiration. Soon a nurse came to lift up the head of my bed, and she didn’t notice that I was flush and perspiring. She tried to crank with a handle that I hadn’t seen under the foot of the bed. It seemed to have seized with disuse and rust. So she suggested that I use bed 5, which was bent to a 45° angle, because it had recently been vacated.

I asked if I’m supposed to go there or if someone would switch beds 5 and 2 (and I stay in position 2). She said, “wait” and left to get another nurse. They came and switched my bed and bed 5 then put fresh linens on both. While they were busy I strained to move from the hard plastic chair to stand, then I toddled to the men’s room. I returned to recline in comfort on the bed, and I felt so relieved and supported. I was quite ready to relax, as I was still dizzy and weak and I didn’t need to stand and walk any more.

I placed a pillow under my left elbow to support it, because I’d felt for the past half-hour that the weight of my arm was pulling painfully downward against my shoulder. Then I put-on my nasal cannula and opened the oxygen flow. In the U.S., nurses would have helped me to get onto the bed, would’ve hung the silicone tubes over my ears and put the cannula in my nose, reopened the oxygen valve on the wall fixture then hang another saline drip.

I closed my eyes and relaxed. I thanked God and smiled, happy to be comfortable in that position and with a pain-reliever. This is a first for me, I think: with eyes closed I had a very short, one- or two-minute daydream until I heard a noise. Then I’d semi-doze again for a minute or two until I heard another noise or voice. This went on for more than an hour in late afternoon, and I had dozens of different micro-dreams. It was interesting.

Anyone else would’ve just fallen-asleep in comfort on the bed. But in somewhat bright sunlight and overhead fluorescent lights, under several ceiling fans blowing, surrounded by the noises of people talking and walking, rolling janitorial carts, medicine carts, wheelchairs, beds, supply cabinet, IV stands and electronic monitors, I couldn’t sleep though I hadn’t slept overnight.

That’s just my peculiarity: when I’m sitting/lying somewhat upright in a lit room with various sounds I can’t sleep amid stimuli. But I did slip into shallow sleep for a couple minutes at a time as I awaited the physicians’ evening rounds and the reading of my CT scans.

The three orthopedic docs never returned, but an older physician whom I’d seen once before, who’d never told me his name or position, came through the ward. I thought of him as Doctor Yellowshirt. I waved him over and asked him if  I was eligible to eat dinner. He got my treatment record, a brown envelope full of X-ray films and a brown envelope loaded with CT-scan films. He spent a while looking at the CT sheets backlit by the wall of windows on my left. He said that aside from the cracked rib and chipped vertebrae, my injuries were only a concussion, strains of my back and shoulder muscles and tendons in my neck, right knee and right hand. The CT scans of my abdomen and chest showed that my G.I. tract and internal organs were intact although my abdomen ached terribly early in the morning. So he said that I can certainly resume eating.

I asked if my brain is okay, and he said that the CT scans showed nothing wrong. He said that being awake, alert and talkative was indicative of health. I said that I felt absolutely miserable: persistent headache, grogginess, dizziness, sleepiness, but admitted that I likely just need nutrition and sleep.

The meals deliveryman brought into the ward his large, clattering cabinet full of dinners, opened a door and began dishing-out the goods. But he didn’t bring a meal to me, so I was nonplussed. He couldn’t answer my questions, so I hauled my butt off the bed and shuffled to the nurses’ station, to ask whether I can have dinner. But no one would pay attention to me. I returned to bed 2 and considered getting money out of my muddy pants pocket then try to find a cafeteria.

As I sat on the edge of my bed, deliberating whether to go out in my oversize brown pajamas to find a cafeteria then spend money on hospital food or to take a taxi to home, the middle-age doc wearing a blue shirt, who’d seemed to be charged with this ward, came in for his evening round. I was on bed 2, so as usual I was the second patient whom he would check. He flipped open my record book and read the notes from a radiologist and the older doc who’d come in an hour earlier.

As he looked at some CT-scan films I said that I feel like passing out and that I need to eat. I reported that I didn’t get dinner and said that I wanted to get a prescription for pain medicine then go home to eat and sleep. The doc said that I really should stay overnight so that they can continue to observe me. I replied that no one observes me, no one had brought food, a basic human need, to me after my CT scan session, that I was starving, sleepy and miserable. ‘Why should I stay here where the nurses ignore me, I can’t eat and I can’t sleep?’

The doc asked why I can’t sleep, so I told him that the nurses, janitors and patients make so much noise day and night that I can’t sleep amid the stimuli. I couldn’t get pain medicine until 3 a.m. Someone should have given pain-reliever and a sedative several hours earlier, but i was ignored.  I asserted that if I go home, I can enjoy a shower, a shave, clean clothes that fit me, a meal and sleep in darkness and quietude on my own bed. He reiterated his opinion that I should stay-put where they can keep an eye on me.

I replied that no one will pay attention to me overnight, nor care for me. Will someone adjust my bed, help me leave the bed to go to restroom, administer pain medicine or a sedative, help me don another set of pajamas, give to me a cup of water, place another pillow under my legs, switch off the overhead lights, give to me ear plugs, etcetera? No; the nurses chatter and giggle and enjoy the radio for hours while ignoring patients. The 5″x7″ card on the wall behind my head bears the Chinese name and details of the previous occupant of bed 2, not my name, though I’d been there for 22 hours.

The doctor asked where I reside, how I will go home, whether I have a spouse or roommate who can help me, then he said that he’d ask his supervisor if it’s okay to discharge me. I wondered if his supervisor was the older man wearing a yellow shirt who’d seen me earlier. Neither man wore a name tag or ID card or a white lab coat embroidered with his name …

After about half an hour, ‘Doctor Yellowshirt’ came and said that he’d heard that I want to leave the hospital. He asked why I want to go home rather than simply relax where I am, where I live, who would take me home, whether anyone can look after me at home, etcetera. He paged through my record, reading notes about diagnosis and treatment. I told him that at home I can have a shower, a meal then sleep in a quiet, dark bedroom.

He said that he’d call the orthopedic docs to get their opinion(s), but it’d probably be okay for me to leave, because I didn’t have any threatening injuries. Doctor Yellowshirt said that he’d give to me some (instructions about) “breathing exercises and some pain medication to take home.” He closed my record book, left, and I never saw him again.

I removed my oversize, brown gauze pajamas in which I felt like a P.O.W. and donned the muddy, bloody clothes that I’d worn yesterday. From 6:00 to 9:30 I waited and waited and waited for an orthopedist to check my body and/or my record and films then give the green light for discharge. Three-and-a-half hours wasted. No ortho doc ever came, though a nurse and the blue-shirt doc phoned the orthopedic department repeatedly over the hours. Eventually Dr. Blueshirt phoned “Eric,” whom I thought was probably Dr. Yellowshirt, and asked if he could discharge. He got approval, and he told a nurse to prepare paperwork.

I asked about the aforementioned breathing exercises and a prescription for pain medicine. Doc told a nurse give to me another injection. Ah, that’s not what I expected. A while later, when a nurse brought to me a yellow sheet bearing my misspelled name, social security number and treatment codes/billing codes to take to the billing department, I asked for a prescription for pain medicine to take for the next five days. She was taken aback, and she asked what medicine I want. I replied, “tramadol or something.” Several minutes later she handed to me a prescription for only fifteen 50mg doses of tramadol.

I was glad to shuffle out of that ward and try to navigate down to the pharmacy and get a taxi to home. The huge pharmacy was still open at 1o p.m., and the pharmacist filled my prescription in about half a minute at no charge. He said that medicines are free-of-charge in the government-owned hospital. Then he asked me,  as many people do, “Where are you from?” I replied, “Florida, U.S.A.” He said, “Ah, I see.” I thanked him and tried to get a ride home to Jelutong so that I could eat, take a shower and go to sleep.  †