Hospital
My favourite hospital houses its maternity ward to the left of the staircase on the first floor, its surgical ward to the right.
The maternity ward is all sunlight and balmy sea breezes, or at least it used to be when I was first a resident there. What started out late at night as normal labour turned into an emergency cesarean section procedure and I was a mom by 5.30 am. We spent a couple of days being pampered silly by the lovely dragon like matron and the nursing staff. I have fond memories of three course meals – grilled chicken, soup and jam roll smothered in custard. The housekeeping staff would sneak in an extra piece or two for my over worked husband and we would both tuck in to the dinner, as if sitting at a romantic candlelit beachfront restaurant…
The nurses cooed over my baby and fussed around me, their gentle malayali accents a balm to my ears. My gynaecologist strode those corridors like a Goliath in her high heels, the sound of which sent the ward scurrying. The genial young paediatrician recommended by her remains my children’s doctor to this day, though now they both top him by an inch or two in height.
Two years on, and we spent New Year’s Day back in hospital dealing with the trauma of a lost pregnancy. The ward was quiet, the nurses tiptoed in and out, and I kept my face averted from their sweetly sympathetic faces and subdued eyes.
But another new year came along, and pregnant again, I found myself in a room across the corridor, terrified that an infected appendix was going to end this pregnancy too. Until a gentle bear of a surgeon sat down next to me, held my hand and promised me that he wouldn’t let anything happen to my baby. The appendix was laparoscopically removed, the untroubled occupant of my uterus continued to grow and turn and kick until on the night of my thirtieth birthday, he decided to put in an early appearance. Six weeks ahead of schedule, I went into labour and my second child was born, once again in the ward to the left of the staircase, and was whisked away to the NICU. Here, he lay, a giant amongst the other preemies, leading the matron to shake her head and pronounce: this child wasn’t early at all, you simply had your dates wrong. I whiled away the time between feeds working on a piece of embroidery, basking in the warm January sun on the balcony of my room, entertaining my toddler during visiting hours and tucking in to the still heavenly food they plied us new mums with.
The years passed. Parents and older friends were admitted to other wards on other floors. Some recovered, others passed away: the constant pull and tug between life and death mirroring the ebb and flow of the sea outside the hospital walls.
A few days ago, I found myself back on the first floor of my favourite hospital, turning right this time, the young nurses calling me Aunty this time. A few episodes of sharp abdominal pain had sent me here to have a diagnostic laporoscopy procedure. The hospital was completely full so a shared room with three strangers was my accomodation on that first night. I sent the spouse home. Dinner was unappetising, they save the good stuff for lactating mums. I slept in a hard bed with a lumpy pillow (pre-op patients are given tough love), all senses aware of the six strangers (three patients, three attendants) sharing my space.
Medical progress and technology are fascinating to me. As I was wheeled into OT 7, I was never more aware of the changes from twenty years ago as when I lay on the table, warm and cozy under a heated blanket, instead of with teeth chattering and shivering as the anaesthesia took effect. This time, the anaesthesia was through a smooth IV line so that one second I was staring up at the rather ugly ceiling and thinking of the lyrics to a song I heard again recently after many years (Without you by Asia), and the next I was retching over a basin as I came around, almost two and a half hours later.
I spent the rest of the day in a blessedly quiet room, hazy recollections of doctors, nurses, dietiticians floating in and out, or so it seemed to my anaesthetised brain. The better half proved once again that I made the best choice thirty one years ago. He was there, patiently typing messages to friends and family, listening to my crazy rambling, soothing and gentling.
The doctors, one a friend, the other an almost stranger, came in to explain: it was like a junkyard down there, the friend said bluntly. We took out the stuff you don’t need anymore, and that should be the end of the pain. My trivia crazy mind went googling: the procedure was a dual oophorectomy done laparoscopically.
The brain cleared up the next day. Sharper memories of a sharp tug in the side as I turned in bed; the IV line giving problems because of thin veins (always a recurring highpoint of hospital stays); a hugely pregnant nurse, cheerfully breathless herself, helping to flush out the IV line; the crankiness kicking in after almost 36 hours of nil by mouth and liquid diet…and then eating the first meal of mushy rice and dal and bottle gourd. It tasted like heaven to my parched mouth and empty stomach.
I spent two and a half days in hospital this time, a short stay. As we left, we wished the pregnant nurse a safe delivery and the best of luck as she steps into parenthood.
I left behind two ovaries sent for biopsy but like my doctor friend said, I didn’t really need them anymore. Instead, I came home to my 23 year old son’s hug and mumbled I love you Mom. He’s the one who gave me my first scar but it was so worth it. The 20 year old son called and heard me out patiently from half a world away, as I rambled on about this latest experience. He’s an old soul, that one, though once upon a time, he was so very eager to meet the world and me.
I’m glad my reproductive journey began and ended 24 years apart at opposite ends of the same hospital corridor. It’s odd, I suppose, to have a favourite hospital. But it is, for a simple reason: its staff have always made me feel safe and cared for. Even in a crisis, there is always a nurse or a ward boy or a resident doctor, a security guard, who reaches out and reassures. There are many other hospitals in our city, more professionally run, with cutting edge technology and hotshot doctors. But for me, personally, these places are too professional. There is the expertise to cure all ills but it comes at the loss of caring. These new age hospitals, business like and brisk, could learn a thing or two about genuine patient care from my old fashioned whitewashed hospital by the sea.