The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Awhile back I was at the Big Hospital up north looking up a friend who’d been admitted the day before. Something about a hospital that puts you off your ease … even after working at one for 10 years. Or maybe because of it.

I’d slipped past Admitting and planned to head right up to my buddy’s room, but I needed to use the john so I found a sign that pointed to the restrooms at the far end of the hall. When I turned the corner a guy was standing next to the Men’s room with his back to me. What, a line? I’d barely seen anybody cruising the halls, couple of nurses about it. I was about to ask if he was waiting for the toilet when he turned around and mumbled in a garbled voice something I couldn’t quite make out.

“Say again?” I asked. He was pointing now to his crotch. Zipper unzipped. Creepy thoughts were flashing red lights in my head when he mumbled something else unintelligible. I shook my head. “No comprende,” I said and he pointed to his crotch again with the zipper wide open. He was tugging at the thing in some distress and I was feeling more than a little distressed myself.

“Mmm, muh, mawah,” he told me. You read these stories in the newspaper, you get overdosed with em on TV news. You think perverts are everywhere, waiting down an alley, crouched in a dark corridor, hiding in a bathroom stall. We’re all one step from being victims, the next night’s news lead. Don’t trust anyone. Don’t let your kids out of your sight. Lock your doors, bolt em from inside. Buy a gun. Hell, carry a gun. Depravity is everywhere! Danger! Danger!

Don’t ask me why, but I stood there. “What?” I asked and he pointed one more time at his crotch, zipper down. Finally, finally, I asked if he wanted help getting it zipped up. He garbled something happily, nodded his head yes. I reached down and put two hands on his fly, pulled the zipper up and looked at this guy. He was nodding earnestly. He mangled something that sounded like thanks. I took it to be exactly that. When he started down the hallway, he had a tortured gait, hip akimbo, leg hauled along painfully, holding close to the wall.

It’s a small thing, that little act of hesitant kindness. I hate to think how hard this man’s life must be, how much fear he witnesses day in and day out, how courage must seem rare to him. Maybe we should quit watching the nightly crap on the evening news. It makes cowards of us.

I got myself some new health insurance last year which replaced the ‘catastrophic’ health plan we had the past 30 years or so. The catastrophic plan was actually more of a catatonic plan, meaning, we’d have to be nearly dead to get any benefit from it. It just kept the wolves from picking the bones clean when things got bad and our savings were used up in the first round of care. For the past few years I’ve been hobbled a bit with a bad knee, something I figured would heal up over time but didn’t. So … with that new insurance plan in hand, I decided to limp in for a look-see.

The South End Clinic is a small but busy little place. My appointment to see a doc took a month, but I finally got in for an appointment just before Christmas. The doctor asked questions, rotated the knee, said it could be any number of things so he scheduled me for an x-ray. A week later I had the knee x-rayed at a clinic in town. A few days later the South End Clinic called me with the results. Mostly old age, they said and gave me an appointment for another visit to see the doctor.

I went in a few days ago. Got my blood pressure rechecked and my weight redone, then I got deposited in a waiting room. My doc came in, checked my chart, asked how I felt, asked if my wrist feel any better. I said my wrist still hurt, but it was my knee I wanted to have looked at. He checked the chart again then asked once more about my wrist. After a couple verses of the kneebone’s connected to the neck bone he finally seemed exasperated and called me by name.  Ronald somebody.

No, I said, wrong patient. I’m the one with the bad knee. He shook his head sadly, apologized and told me to wait for a few minutes while he retrieved my chart, probably from some poor guy down the hall getting arthroscopic surgery on a knee that wasn’t bothering him. Just before he shut the door I asked, “This mean I don’t get that new heart?”

It took him a double-take but he finally smiled. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. Me, I can’t tell you how good it feels to be in the health care system finally.

I guess most of us have asked ourselves the Big Cosmic Questions. We’ve traveled our separate paths looking for Answers. We’ve read the holy scriptures, we’ve chanted OM until we’re blue in the face, we’ve sat in quiet meditation or done yoga poses, mindful of our breath, listening for the First Sound. We’ve wanted something to believe in that seems, well, More. Physics maybe, maybe the Bible, maybe the Book of Mormon or the Koran. Maybe poetry or a sign held up by some mendicant on 5th and Jefferson that says Will Work for Food God Bless.

Maybe something is missing. Maybe something in us just likes a Spiritual Journey…. We go to Tibet up 15,000 feet to eat rice and sit at the naked feet of the monks. We seek a swami who hasn’t spoken in 20 years in some jungle Hindu cave. We listen for Clues in AM pop songs and signs in the numerology of license plates. We envy the natives who seem Closer to something important. We see Jesus in the stain on a box of Cheerios. We read Carlos Castenada and watch for Omens, we’ve smoked ganja, we’ve eaten magic mushrooms, we’ve consulted psychiatrists, we read self-help books.

We’ve searched for the Wise Man, the Guru, the Priest and the Monk and come up short. We thought Happiness was an answer. Or Wisdom. Or all you need is Love, yeah yeah yeah.

I’ve lived 65 years in this body, in this mind, and I have yet to meet anyone that might come close to that Enlightened Person. I sat once with the Head Honcho of the B’Hai. Nice guy. Something to be said for that, I thought at the time, and still do.

The world is a riddle and maybe the riddle is the world. There comes a time, at least for me, when the paths seemed … oh … dead ends. That the questions themselves were wrong. That the seeking itself was the problem. That the mysteries would always be mysteries. That this life is just exactly what you think it is. That the universe is exactly what you experience. If there’s More, what does it matter?

So be careful, I guess, what you think this life is. Down here on the unenlightened South End, it seems plenty. And try to be good to your neighbor, it might be me.

So I’m sitting in the South End Clinic filling out paperwork they lost the last and only visit many years ago … when a young guy comes in with what he tells the receptionist is a very bad cut on his hand from work. His hand is wrapped in a dirty handkerchief held in place with duct tape. The receptionist explained they don’t do that kind of emergency — he’d need to drive himself to the next clinic down the road in Stanwoodopolis. About 10 to 15 miles.

But wait … did he have insurance, she asks. He did, but then he was told the clinic about two pints of hemoglobin away wouldn’t accept the insurance he had. Could he drive 15 to 20 miles further?

Healthcare, at least from my seat in the waiting room, seemed hazardous to this guy’s health, if he even makes it the 40 mile drive before blacking out at the wheel. No one asked him how bad the cut was, whether fingers were missing, if a transfusion was necessary. I know it’s not an emergency room, but it is, supposedly, a part of the health care system.

My brother, back in our days together in college, wanted to be a doctor … until the night he did a drunken back flip and hit the radiator in his dorm room with his head. His roommate ran him to the University ER where he sat for a couple of hours with other patients bleeding and vomiting and oozing fluids. By the time he got stitched up he had changed his major from Pre-Med to Don’t Know. Probably good to learn he was squeamish around pain and blood before he interned.

Sitting my turn at the South End Clinic, I know how he felt. Trouble was, I was a patient. On the South End we’ve always relied more on Self-Reliance than health insurance. But sadly, the time comes to all of us when we need outside help. Course, chances are good they’ll tell you to go further on up the road. Keep the gas tank full is what I’d suggest. And carry a tourniquet.