chapter 14: part 7

continued from chapter 14: part 6

The next morning I arrived at the hospital to find Hal sitting up in bed looking alert. He announced he had drawn up a chart of his major health problems and had confronted the resident with them that morning. They had gone over each item and Hal said indignantly the doctor's chief response was,

"Well, I don't know that we can do anything."

As it turned out, the man compassionately listened and acted on each item.

On the list were weak muscles, ragged breathing, bed sore, morale (he added this one twice), the need to eat solids, pain in upper and lower abdomen.

In the OBJECTIVE column he had written beside "weak muscles," " get out of bed more to relieve leg cramps," and he acted on this by walking to the bathroom and getting up and moving to the chair at the foot of his bed for meals.

The doctor responded to the "Breathing" column by sending in a chest physiotherapist that afternoon; she introduced herself and gave Hal a couple of simple breathing exercises to do.
When he breathed there was a crackling sound from his chest, like the sound of crumpling cellophane.
She tried gently tapping his chest but he found that too painful for her to continue. She was kind and sensitive and did wonders for his morale.

For "Bed Sores", he had one at his tailbone. The bone was literally pushing through the skin because all his muscle tissue was wasted. The doctors had already sealed off the area with bandage and tape and he was never completely comfortable because of the tightness of the bandage. The nurses brought him a sheepskin pad to lie on, to relieve the pressure and later, an egg-crate mattress.

He ate more solids, continued with morphine for the pain, now in capsule form and he took a sleeping pill at night.

Beside "Morale", he wrote "Adopt strict program with structure." And he did.

That hand-written chart is one of my most cherished possessions.

When I helped him into the bathroom he slowly pushed his intravenous pole in front of him and his flapping hospital gown revealed a body completely wasted, his once adorable tush hanging in loose skin folds.

continued in chapter 14: part 8