Independently Speaking By Brent Olson

The views expressed are those of the individual author and not necessarily those of DTN, its management or employees.

By DTN

Hospital

The other day we were sitting in a hospital room waiting for some medication to show up and I said to my wife, “Huh. This is the same room I was in when I got my appendix out.”

She gave me one of those looks that despite a half century of experience I still cannot decipher and asked, “When was that?”

I said, “1967.”

She said, “Why would you remember that?”

Geez, I don’t know. Look, I’m as puzzled as anyone by the way my mind works. On the other hand, it was a memorable trip. My folks suspected I was sick when my mom made some of those packaged pastries that had plastic envelopes of white goop to squeeze out for frosting, and I declined to eat one. That was certainly new, at least for me. Off to the hospital we went, where they took out my appendix, told me I’d feel a lot better in a couple of days, and a nun showed me how to make a bed with hospital corners. My roommate was an old guy — and I mean really old, like late fifties, maybe even in his sixties — who was suffering from gout. His sore toe stuck up in the air like a sentinel and he read western magazines with lurid covers about Comanche ambushes.

The doctor was wrong about me feeling better in a couple of days and when he was poking the swollen incision in an effort to figure out why, the stitches popped open, and a cascade of unpleasant fluids poured out. I don’t know how the doctor felt about that, but I was certainly riveted. You know that scene in “Alien” where the little monster pops out of the guy’s stomach and runs away? It was like that, but with less screaming.

The room next door is where I spent a week following a memorable motorcycle accident. I had a refresher course in hospital corners because the sheets had to be changed twice a day as the gravel worked its way out of my somewhat tattered skin. Down the hall to the left is where I recovered from a bout of hog house air induced pneumonia and a different nun brought me a bowl of popcorn at 3:00 in the morning on the condition that I keep my mouth shut about where it came from. A couple doors in the other direction is where I spent an entire night with my head and shoulders pushed inside an oxygen tent that encased a crib, entertaining a toddler who very much wanted to climb out. And, of course, across the hall from that one is the room where my wife and I and a competent nurse delivered our youngest child when the doctor was delayed on the way to the hospital. Because of that event I had to miss Anna Elvabakke’s funeral, but we gave our little girl Anna as a middle name, so it worked out.

Upon further thought, maybe the question should not be why I would remember those hospital details, but how in the world I could forget any of them.