Part 5

“My friend,” said I, “you have nothing on me. A hospital patient has no choice between a barber and a blacksmith.”

He looked at me anxiously. “You wouldn’t squeal on me, would you?”

“Squeal? No--I’m glad you didn’t apply for the job of house surgeon.”

He drew a deep breath of relief. “Thanks. I hope I can get by for a few days till I sort of get the hang o’ things.”

At length he got up, stretched his arms and yawned. “Well, I’ll be going. Good luck to you, old scout,” he said; “I hope by the next time you’re operated on I’ll have the barber business down pat.”

Next morning I was awakened at seven o’clock by my day nurse, who set about decorating me for the operation. Those who have been through these dismal preliminaries will need no rehearsal of the sensations; and those who have not, had best be left in ignorance, with the hope that they may never know.

I wondered if I were going to meet the famous Doctor Will, or if, like a cold-blooded executioner, he would appear and after performing his work, disappear like a phantom at daybreak. I had heard that operating was such an impersonal affair with him that he paid no attention whatever to the identity of the individual he operated on, either before or after the act; that he simply came to the operating room at the appointed time, and with his several assistants and all the facts in the case before him he proceeded with his work as one would carve a roast of beef without knowing or caring anything about the critter to which it had belonged.

But I discovered that the Mayo brothers are not mere mechanical butchers. On the contrary they are genial, sentimental, and tenderhearted, to the last degree. My nurse declared that Doctor Will was “all business”; but that “Doctor Charles makes more fun than a circus clown.” They make the rounds at the hospital early in the morning, meet the new patients and spend a few moments of cheerful conversation with each one, which goes a long way toward counteracting the dread of the trip to the operating room.

These calls are attended with a considerable amount of impressive ceremony. About eight o’clock the first morning I heard a tramping of many feet in the hall outside, then suddenly, without any warning, the door was opened, my overhead light was flashed on and the nurse in suppressed excitement whispered, “Doctor Will!” She immediately took her position at the head of my bed. Two men--Doctor Will’s first assistant and the house physician--came in and took their positions across the room, facing the entrance. Then appeared Doctor Will, followed by two other assistants. As he approached my bed with outstretched hand he smiled and called me by name. After a few good-natured remarks he said, “Don’t be alarmed, we’ll have you out in a few days.” At this he left the room, with the other four, none of whom had spoken a word. He had a firm, quick step, strong handsome features, and a most engaging personality. After meeting and talking with him you feel that you have entrusted yourself to competent hands.

An hour or so later the nurse came hurrying in with the news that we’d been “called.” After being assured that I had no false teeth or portable bridgework to leave behind, she hastily gave me a hypodermic of morphine, bustled me into a wheel chair and hurried me up to the operating room on the top floor. There under a great dome thickly studded with electric lights, in the presence of Doctor Will and a dozen or more gowned and masked assistants and attendants I climbed up on the operating table, my arms were quickly folded across my chest, and while my legs were being strapped into position the cone was placed over my face and an angel-voiced creature murmured softly in my ear, “Now take long deep breaths, please; it will only be a few seconds.” I wondered if she were as beautiful as her voice. At any rate I would gladly have postponed the operation and breathed an hour or more for her, just to hear her talk. Her soft, musical voice seemed to move farther away, and in the distance she was saying how nicely I was getting on. I was about to call to her, not to go off and leave me, but--

The next I knew I was back in my room looking drowsily up into the anxious faces of my family who assured me that it was “all over.”

“No,” I said--“they’ve just sent for me; I have to go and be operated on.” At that I closed my eyes and slept again. I afterwards learned that the kidney required a great deal of excavating and curetting, and that I had been on the operating table nearly two hours.

MY ENCOUNTER WITH ADHESIVE TAPE

My first experience in having the wound dressed was one of the high-lights of the whole occasion--one that requires no straining of the memory to recall. It was indeed a masterpiece of brutality that well deserves to be recorded in medical history; and I remember it as the outstanding instance where my rights and feelings as a patient were asserted with loud spontaneity, in language more forceful than polite.

“I have a happy surprise for you,” the nurse greeted me that morning, with a roguish twinkle in her eye; and presently one of the house doctors came in, followed by a nurse pushing a “tea-cart” loaded with bandages, bottles and a wicked looking assortment of probing instruments. He set immediately to work removing my swathings, and when he got down to the criscross network of adhesive tape he carefully peeled up one of the corners, then without the slightest warning he suddenly ripped the whole thing off, carrying with it, as I supposed, all the skin, with the kidney and half of my insides adhering to it.

“You * * * damned brute!” I exploded. I added much more to the same purpose; but that, for the moment, was all the satisfaction I got. His calloused soul had probably been excoriated many times before. He merely smiled and inquired if it hurt! Ever since then the mere thought of adhesive tape makes me shudder.

From five to eight different physicians, including both the Mayo brothers, visited me daily. Though I was not a patient of Doctor Charles Mayo, he called on me regularly, chatted pleasantly for a few moments, and always left with a word of cheer.

While my progress was constantly reported to be normal, on the ninth day I began to realize that some strange thing had “got” me--something was certainly going wrong. The drainage tubes had been removed, my incision was almost healed, both kidneys were said to be functioning regularly, my temperature was reported normal (though I knew it was not), and I was told that all blood tests and examinations indicated that I was on the highway to recovery. Still I protested that something had me in its deadly grip, and I began to be alarmed. I complained to the nurse, who said I was only tired and needed sleep. I complained to every doctor that came in, and each in turn, as if they had all rehearsed together, said it was “only natural”; and every time I expostulated with Doctor Will he good-naturedly turned the matter aside with some joke. Once he said that if the fire alarm were to ring, I’d be the first patient to jump out the window.

While they all seemed disposed to listen to me with that kindly forbearance usually shown to a talkative old lady in a high class private sanitarium for feeble-minded, nobody was seriously impressed. There was no use trying to argue with anyone; they simply listened tolerantly as long as it amused me to talk. Indeed the harassment of my body and mind was such that I sometimes wondered if I had become an inmate instead of a patient.

They said the records showed I was getting well, and that’s all there was to it. Whatever I said or however I felt seemed not to alter the purely scientific fact that my condition was normal.

There are certain reactions that customarily follow certain operations; and in common practice the patient is not supposed to develop any complications not on the regular calendar. The signposts were all set indicating my lines of recovery, and all I had to do was to keep within bounds and follow directions. But some deadly microbe having intervened to upset their calculations, I was unable to eat a mouthful of food, or to adjust my mental and physical reactions to the prescribed order of things. In other words, theoretically I was getting well, but practically I was becoming a physical wreck.

About this time I received a call one afternoon from the pastor of a church in the town, who having read in the local newspaper that I was from Boston probably jumped to the conclusion that I must be in need of spiritual aid. He was a soft-spoken, amiable, benevolent appearing man, and regretted to find me laid so low. Seeing that I was too sick to indulge in much general conversation he very considerately came at once to the point and asked if I were a believer. When I assured him that I was, he inquired if I felt prepared for any eventuality.

“My friend,” said I, “no one has a more profound veneration for your cloth than I have, and you show the true Christian spirit in coming to see me; but I am decidedly dubious about death-bed repentance. Religion, it seems to me, is something that should be acquired and practiced in health, not in sickness. A soldier who has been a worthless slacker in health can be of little service to his general when he lies at the point of death. This last moment contrition makes salvation too easy to be genuine.”

His answer was that those who came late to the vineyard received the same pay as the ones who came earlier; but my mind was too muddled to comprehend how this applied to those who remained away till they were too ill or decrepit to be of any service at all; and having delivered my little sermon I was not disposed to argue the matter any further.

“My dear brother,” he said at length, “nothing is more uncertain than life. You are making a brave fight, but if by some hard decree of fate you should be called to your final accounting, do you feel that you are prepared to meet your--”

“Yes, I feel quite prepared,” said I, and without stopping to realize how it might shock his religious sensibilities I added--“But if you saw a man in a pasture running for a fence with a raging bull close at his heels there wouldn’t be much use stopping him to inquire if he were prepared for the consequences in case he stumbled.”

A few days later, though my head still reeled and I felt the slowly increasing ravages of some sort of poisoning, I became restless for a change of environment. The hospital rooms were equipped with an electrical signaling instrument that clicked busily night and day, and nearly drove me mad. Then came Christmas Eve, with a group of noisy merry-makers parading up and down the corridors, singing Christmas carols and hallelujah songs. It was after visitors’ hours, and my night nurse having gone out, perhaps to join in the festivities, I lay there conjuring up melancholy thoughts, and contrasting the wretchedness of that night with the happiness of former times. Whether it was the peculiar nature of my illness or what, I cannot say, but Christmas music seemed utterly out of tune with my situation, and I can recall nothing that ever made me so blue, either before or after.

At length Doctor Will submitted to my entreaties, and so they bundled me up, put me onto a stretcher and took me in an ambulance down to the Kahler hospital, where I was placed on the convalescent floor. This brought me more conveniently near my family, who were living at the Kahler hotel, in the same building with the hospital. For the first two days I was reduced to one nurse, who did twenty-hour duty; that is, she was off from two till six P. M., and during this interval various members of my family took turns at entertaining me by trying to convince me that the doctors, nurses and everybody else knew more than I did. Now that I was listed among the convalescents, they couldn’t understand what made me persist in being so stubborn about getting well. Indeed doctors, nurses, friends and relatives all boosted me along and although I had lost nearly thirty pounds--mostly from my face, it seemed--they all insisted that I was improving rapidly and “looking fine.” Several letters and telegrams came from friends congratulating me on my rapid recovery, and everybody seemed jubilant, except me.