Part 2

Thou art a stolen quadrate, I know full well, From the tessellated pavement of deepest Hell.

I have since used these words to cheer up suffering humans who rebel at fate and the unnecessary crimes of brutal attendants, which are the results of doctors’ orders.

Mr. Harper has written of his remarkable experiences in a calm, humorous and analytical spirit. I recommend his story to professional and lay readers alike.

MERELY THE PATIENT

MERELY THE PATIENT

A PAIN DISCOVERS ME

THERE is said to be no subject on earth more entertaining (to the narrator) than a major operation; and two operations, especially if they fall close together, ought to be--for purposes of self-entertainment--twice as good as one. Thus reckoning, it will presently be seen that I have a decided advantage over those who have to content themselves with only one, or none at all.

And it occurs to me that to write a book is the most considerate as well as the most expeditious means of acquainting your friends with the details of an operation or other painful experience; for in this way you can expatiate at large on the most harrowing aspects of the case, and everybody is at liberty to read as much or as little as he can stand, and skip the rest; whereas if you get the listener’s ear he is almost obliged to suffer attentively through to the end of your story. Furthermore, in a book you can advertise your troubles far more widely and effectively, and with less effort. Another advantage in writing a book on some pet theme is that, like a filibusterer in the senate chamber, you have the floor all to yourself: the difference being that while his verbosity is wholly without interest or sense, either to himself or his sleeping audience, your story is at least self-absorbing.

To go back to the origin of this story, it began with a pain--intermittent at first, but soon becoming violent and continuous. When it reached this stage I called in a physician, who pronounced it a bad attack of something with a strange name, which being reduced to simple English meant there was something wrong with my left kidney. He gave me a hypodermic of morphine and two days later I developed a bad case of septic pneumonia which, with resultant complications, laid me low for eight weeks. While convalescing from this I wrote a book on stock market speculation. I don’t know what prompted me to write such a book at such a time, unless it was that something in the nearness of my approach to the realms of the unknown reminded me of how near I came to leaving the world unprotected against the pitfalls of Wall Street.

In due time I recovered from both the pneumonia and the book, but the kidney was still belligerent, and about every six weeks, to quell its savage attacks I had to take morphine and spend a few days in bed with it. In the fall of that year while on a visit to my mother-in-law in Minneapolis I was persuaded to take this refractory organ to the Mayo Clinic at Rochester, Minnesota; and that sequestered little town, which in the domain of operations, sickness and suffering occupies about the same position as New York City does in the world of finance, provided the setting for the semi-tragic episode herein related, in which for many weeks I played the leading rôle before a mixed assemblage of doctors, nurses and anxious relatives.

Fielding tells us that to prolong scenes of distress to an unwonted degree is a task for which the reader feels but little indebted to the author. Therefore since we have here to deal chiefly with grim-faced facts such as are usually productive of more awe than amusement I shall treat the whole catastrophe as lightly as the circumstances will permit. But after all, a serious illness or an operation--like lion hunting, stock market ventures and suchlike hazards--has its varied and interesting phases; and many of its gloomy aspects are susceptible of humorous interpretation when viewed in retrospect by those who survive to tell the story.

In the present undertaking I was encouraged by the statement of both Doctor “Will” Mayo and Doctor W. F. Braasch, that one of the most difficult problems of the physician is to get the accurate viewpoint of the patient. Not that the patient’s viewpoint seems to make any difference, but they like to have it, possibly for the same reason that the little boy liked to hear the stuttering man talk--because it amused him. In order to get the reactions of a patient, Doctor Samuel W. Lambert goes so far as to say: “I have often told my students that every physician should have a severe illness, and every surgeon an abdominal operation.” Possibly those who read this account will feel themselves relieved from the need of trying out Doctor Lambert’s recommendation--which might also have included nurses, though he may have figured that they have other ways of kindling their sympathetic emotions.

RUNNING THE GANTLET

On arriving at the Mayo Clinic I found that, if unaccompanied by a physician, you are required to register and procure a numbered registration envelope, which serves as a sort of passport throughout the whole institution and entitles you to be examined, at their discretionary rates, for everything they can think of, including your income and your sanity. This formality disposed of, I was directed to a certain lettered and numbered desk (there are several floors of tremendous length and breadth, with a great number of such desks on each floor). This particular desk was presided over by a young lady who gave me a numbered slip and automatically directed me to “take a chair.” After waiting nearly three hours I was ushered into the presence of a diagnostician in the department of urology, to whom I briefly stated my case, and said I wanted to find out what sort of treatment they would recommend. Without appearing to have heard anything I said he took out a long questionnaire and began cross-examining me about my habits, my mode of living and other personal matters. He could think of more prying questions than a prosecuting attorney. He was particularly curious about my antecedents--how long they had lived, what they died of, and other long-forgotten data about the fallen branches of my family tree. Having no idea that kidney-stones were hereditary I wondered what all this long catechism had to do with my complaint, in which, by the way, he didn’t seem the least bit concerned.

Then having me strip to the waist he stretched me on a long table and thumped me over pretty much as one would test a watermelon to see if it were ripe. For some reason best known to himself he studiously avoided the kidney corner of my anatomy; which reminded me of a man I once played golf with, who when his ball landed in the bushes or tall grass always looked for it in some adjacent quarter for fear of finding it in an unplayable lie. Needless to say, we had mutually agreed that there should be no penalty for lost balls.

When the doctor had completed his record of all I knew, and also had pommeled me until his solemn visage betokened some momentous conclusion--which he guarded with profound secrecy--his air of mute sobriety was in nowise reassuring. He put the stethoscope to my heart, then shifted it to the left kidney and asked me to breathe deeply--perhaps to see if the two organs were beating in unison. But he shook his head negatively, which I took to mean that something was wrong with one or the other.

“Nothing serious, I hope,” said I, studying his inscrutable face for some hopeful token. For a few moments he seemed lost in meditation, which set me to wondering if he had found something he didn’t dare tell me about. Then without answering, he wrote out and handed me the following prescription: “Four ounces of castor oil and loganberry juice, no supper, to bed at seven o’clock, up at seven A. M., no breakfast, report at desk XY-4 at 7:30 tomorrow.” I suggested that four ounces was rather a generous dose, but he said the conditions warranted it, so I didn’t argue the matter with him. He also gave me several envelopes of assorted colors, directing me to various appointment desks, and informed me with great impressiveness that they contained orders for examinations. Incidentally he told me that when I had finished with these I might go to breakfast, then report back to him.

My first appointment next morning was for an X-ray of the offending kidney, and having finished with this I set out to dispose of the other four envelopes, curiously anxious to learn what the examinations would disclose--heart disease, kidney-stones, gall-stones, cancer or what. It must be something terrible, I thought; otherwise the doctor would not have shown such deep and mystified concern. It is remarkable how one’s imagination can run wild when the physical machinery is upset by some puzzling ailment. One fear begets another and, like bacteria, they multiply, until it becomes possible to alarm one’s self into almost any sort of malady. For example, while at the outset I was satisfied that my only trouble was seated in the left kidney, during the course of the next few days, owing to the variety and severity of the examinations, and the utter lack of information concerning the results of any of them, I fancied myself the victim of no less than half a dozen diseases, most of them fatal.

At the next desk, there being at least fifty people ahead of me, I told the young lady I’d call later. At this point I began to feel a little encouraged, because whatever I had, it seemed to be very prevalent, and the afflicted ones didn’t appear to be much disturbed, except one poor old fellow, who was badly doubled up with what I suspected to be a case of “gravel” pains such as I had often experienced. I asked him if he had kidney trouble.

“No,” he said; “it’s just a nasty hang-over from a castor oil jag last night.”

After waiting an hour at the third desk they sent me into a nearby room to have all my teeth X-rayed. This completed, I plucked up more courage, and taking my fourth envelope I wandered about among the crowd, looking for the specified desk, which I finally located two floors below. The attendant there, like all the others, asked me to “take a chair”--a phrase that one hears repeated everywhere, until eventually it gets on your nerves. After a couple of hours or so I got up and asked the desk girl how much longer she thought I’d have to wait.

“The doctor will see you in your turn. Take a chair, please.”

After a few days you get so that, like a trained monkey, you instinctively look for a chair the moment you approach a desk. You sit and sit--anywhere from an hour to all day. Your chief amusement consists of looking about, wondering what’s the matter with this or that one. The majority of the patients wore a look of calm but determined resignation, and naturally I supposed that most of them had kidney-stones.

Unless someone stumbles over your feet, you are rarely disturbed, whether awake or asleep, therefore it is necessary to exercise due caution that you are at the right desk; otherwise you may sit all day till closing time before discovering your error. When your turn comes, if you happen to be asleep from exhaustion you automatically revert to the foot of the line, which is apt to mean the loss of a whole day. But time means absolutely nothing here--to anyone but the patients. If you ask the diagnostician when you’ll be through he answers evasively, “As soon as we have completed your examinations.” There is something contagious about clinical examinations: the first one calls for at least two more, the next two show that you need five or six others, and so on ad infinitum, until you feel like a fellow in the dark, hunting for the last link in an endless chain.

Another stereotyped phrase that one hears on entering most of the examination rooms is, “Strip to the waist.” You are sent to a little undressing booth and furnished with a sort of loose flowing Chinese robe to take the place of your upper garments. On being directed to one of these booths, and finding it already occupied, I sauntered along the hallway and presently found another similar looking room, with the door slightly ajar. Without observing the “For Women” sign overhead, I opened the door and switched on the light, supposing the room to be unoccupied. But a loud shriek from a back corner disclosed my error; and frightened almost out of my senses, I turned about to find myself face to face with a squatty, florid-featured Amazon, whose dishabille indicated that she had rather exceeded the examiner’s customary directions to strip only to the waist. With an impromptu word of apology, I was making a hasty exit, when she snarled, “Can you beat it!”

At the fourth desk I was called at the end of two hours, and they undertook a thorough examination of my eyes, ears, nose, and possibly my throat--I don’t remember. I do remember wondering again what all this wearisome routine had to do with my kidney; also that I was absolutely empty and exhausted. I recollect, too, that it was 2:30 P. M. and I hadn’t had a bite to eat since the morning before; so I pocketed the other envelopes till the following day and went to my hotel next door, where I found the dining room “closed from 2:30 until six o’clock.”

Next morning when I went to dispose of my two remaining envelopes I discovered that the first one called for what is known as the blood urea test--where they jab a needle-pointed syringe into a vein in the arm and draw off quantities of blood. Then, as if they suspect you of holding back on them, they send you into another room where they puncture the lobe of the ear, drain off more blood--if you have any left--and store it away in glass tubes labeled with your name and number.

The young lady at the desk gave me a numbered card--number 6, I recall, for I was early. “Take a chair,” she said as she wrote number 7 on a slip for the man behind me. I sat there an hour or so, studying the faces of the crowd and listening to the monotonous “Take a chair,” when a nurse opened a nearby door and called out numbers one to six. The first six of us filed into a small anteroom where we were requested to remove our coats and roll up the left sleeve. Through the door leading into an adjoining room we could see a number of nurses in uniform, and on a table near the door were several strange looking instruments, glass containers, etc. Extending past the left side of the entrance we could see about eighteen inches of what seemed to be an operating table, and altogether the interior did not look inviting.