There is no more important institution than a big city hospital. If it can keep its humanity under the complexities it faces every day, there is hope for all of our institutions.
Nothing I said was making much sense as they wheeled me back into the ER. The joints in my shoulder and knee were on fire. Doctors asked me easy questions I found I could not answer. I was like the guy in "The Treasure of Sierra Madre," raving about his lost gold.
Coherence did not come easy. The antibiotics gained some sort of foothold. I remember being wheeled off to the OR (I wound up making three such trips). It was late evening. Or was it? It seemed that way. The hospital corridors flashed dark, gray and deadly quiet.
There was an explosion of sound when we hit the OR. Surgeons and their assistants came up to me and introduced themselves. Amidst all the noise, I disappeared for awhile and they went to work.
When I came out of it, I thought I was in an old hotel full of ghosts on New Year’s Eve. I tried to tell the hospital people it was a helluva thing to be operated on while the ghosts drank and celebrated.
I said crazier things while I was there.
The hospital has its pecking order. The nurses and their assistants are the foot soldiers. It knocks me out how much they care. They are the beautiful angels of the night, always there to offer encouragement, to save you from your own insecurity.
The teams of doctors at Jeff are the finest, but that strength can be a flaw when they disagree. It can affect communication with the rest of the specialists and ultimately the patient. I saw it happen firsthand. I also saw how, in the end, the interests of the patient won out because there was an extra effort to communicate.
Orthopedic surgeons are the medical equivalent of Top Guns — young, brash and confident. They make their decisions and then are difficult to reach because they are often in surgery. They easily can gain the resentment of other medical teams who are just as capable and bright, but without the swagger.
I was being wheeled through the night again at yet another attempt to clean out the persistent infection in my knee joint. Bruce Springsteen was humming crazily in my ear, not that "Rosalita" stuff, just the bleak harmonies of "Tom Joad." I felt strangely comforted by his searing voice and the sound of the lonely train whistle as it split the dark night. And then he switched abruptly to snarl "I’m on Fire." And I was on fire heading into another place where my real world bore little resemblance. "Oooh, babe, I’m on fire," I sung quietly.
My surgeon met me and he seemed pensive. With his short haircut, he could have been played by Steve McQueen. Somehow he was different tonight. His face was silhouetted by the shafts of light as they came through the OR. The origins of my fever continued to baffle him. "I hate to say this," he said, "but you are experiencing the limitations of modern medicine."
For just a moment, this proud, talented man was feeling the burden of too many expectations. I knew when it got right down to it, I was looking at the luck of the draw. That if Top Gun could not save me or the talented docs from infectious disease or the medicine team, which guarded my progress as if I were a loved one, then I was just living in the wrong century.
The introspective surgeon looked at me and said, "My colleagues don’t like hearing me saying it, but sometimes we don’t know why."
I flew away as they worked on me again, hoping this time to find an answer only God knew.
I am home now. There is a "pic" tunneled into my chest that helps the antibiotics flow through my body and guard against the return of infectious demons. I am healing and looking forward to getting my life back. And, yet, in the late afternoon, despite everything done for me, a flush will come over me and I know the fever is back. With all of the technology of modern medicine, a little fever has exposed its limitations.
I intend to handle that limitation.
