Lessons From a Hospital Bed

After months of visiting the patients at Mandiram Hospital, the time came for me to fully experience their travails. A couple of weeks of sharp abdominal pain (probably not too uncommon for westerner in India) got me a few antacids. One day of yellow eyes, though, and I was admitted to the M Ward room 403…my new home for 7 days. Apparently jaundice is no laughing matter here. The usual suspects were rolled out for consideration. Surely I ate some bacteria at an outside restaurant. Or maybe I had some bad water on the trip to north India. Or, horror of horrors, maybe there is some parasite, read ‘worms’, living inside me all the way back from my imbibing lake water in Sri Lanka. Diagnosis number 1: Hepatitis. Problem number 1: Got those vaccinations. Diagnosis number 2: We don’t know, go to a gastroenterologist. Diagnosis number 3: after an extensive ultrasound…gall stones! The good news is that it is none of the other options considered. The bad news is that I have to be on a low fat diet the rest of my time here (meaning no more banana fry, ok maybe just one more), and I might have to get the gall bladder removed upon coming back to the U S of A. Really, though, still better than those other options. And on the upside, I learned some valuable life lessons:

-No matter what their actual professions, all visitors become doctors for their time spent with the patient. A conversation is not to be had that does not involve some medical advice, usually dietary, and often conflicting with that of the person before.

-Ayn Rand does not make for good hospital reading.

-Scratch that. Ayn Rand does not make for good reading, period.

-There are many home remedies for jaundice, the most common of which involves eating an herbal paste and then avoiding meat and fatty foods for a year afterwards. Thank goodness my yellow tinge was from a loose stone rather than the infection for which this remedy is meant.

-Of the films represented on my bootleg Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio romance DVD collection, The Beach is by far the worst.

-Watching The Chronicles of Narnia while sitting under sheets in an air conditioned room feels a little bit like Christmas.

-IVs are not enjoyable.

-Rice porridge (kanji) for every meal gets old after a few days.

-Chess and cribbage are great sick games if you have willing competitors.

-Nurses do a lot of thankless work and deserve a lot of thanks for it.

-It is a strange thing to have your bed made and temperature taken by your own students.

-Nothing quite beats fresh fruit for hospital eating.

-Ultra sounds are not only for pregnant women, and the jelly is actually quite a nice sensation on the belly.

-A birthday spent in the hospital can still feel like a birthday if the ladoo (a Kerala treat) ever make it to your room.

-People really care about other people a lot. Some even care enough to hold my IV tube while I pee. Or come up with a system of peeing in a bucket by my bed and then washing it out for me.

That is the main lesson. People really do care. I find myself halfway across the world for my first overnight hospital stay, and I really have no problem because I am so well loved here. Not only do close friends visit, but random passersby who see an open door and even the post office lady. They offer medical advice. They offer fruits. They offer conversation to get over the doldrums. They pray. They gawk at seeing a white man wearing shorts and laid up in a hospital. They smile. They spend the night. And all of this because they love. How lucky am I to be amongst the people whom I get to be around?

Thankfully I have been released with only a few pills and a low fat diet, because tomorrow morning Mom, Dad, and Brady arrive! Maybe I will tell you about it next time.