International Nurse Goes Carpal

Yesterday I took Mark to the hospital to be knocked out and mended. We woke up dark and early at 5am (after I’d been asleep for a mere nonconsecutive 3 hours due to insomnia and MNOTS). With a felt pen Mark wrote all over his wounded leg while waiting for the knife and caused anxiety and pissiness among the nurses. After the anesthesiologist wheeled him away, I sat in a tired daze in the hospital café, ate a bagel (not bad) and read some more of the Sunday New York Times. Finally around 10am Dr. Gomez met me in the waiting room for an update. The surgery went well, he told me. He also explained to me everything he did and further what else he saw going on inside Mark’s knee. Dr. Gomez rocks, Dr. Gomez is the man, Dr. Gomez deserves awards.

Here’s why: beyond being cool and down-to-earth while clearly caring about his patients at the same time, he sent home a video of the operation. Watching the video (I prefer to call it "award-winning independent film") you see up very close the tissues and ligaments inside Mark’s knee, flapping in the wind. Seriously, they’re flapping like leaves on an island tree. Dr. Gomez’s metal instrument moves and prods around and with each movement he explains precisely what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. At the same time he commentates as though he is talking directly to Mark (even though Mark is knocked out at the time); his comments are specific to Mark the person, not to Mark the next patient. This impresses me. It’s difficult to find a good doctor who is sensitive to emotional and psychological human needs, i.e. acts like a real person. This award-winning independent film is one of the most fascinating and incredible things I’ve seen.

In conclusion, Mark has been intermittently groggy and in terrible pain, and I have been Eager Nurse Sara. He was sent home with this vacuum contraption attached to him. It’s round and plastic, with a tube running into it from his knee, draining blood. Draining a lot of blood, which every so often must be poured into a pee cup, measured and recorded. Afterward, it is disposed of in the sink. Weird. Or not that weird. I do find it strange, though, that doctors think they can loose the average patient and trust him or her to accomplish this task. Scenes of bloody catastrophe and misread measurements flash through my noggin.

In other news, Amsterdam is becoming my Ireland, maybe. Just had a web conference with my new "contact’ for the journal’s new web-based system, an Amsterdam fellow. Friday afternoon the Amsterdam fellow in charge of the whole publishing company will be here in the office. If I go see a band from Amsterdam in the next week, I will know how the world works: in internationally coincidental triplets that add up to nothing but giddy blog-banter.

Ok. I think I’m getting carpal tunnel, really, and my posts, especially the last one, are usually big-windy anyway. Onward, ho. Today is a Flaming Lips day, any album.