Another trip to the Cleveland Clinic this week, this time for a “transjugular biopsy.” It was an elaborate procedure that ran a catheter through a vein in my neck into the liver for a peek and a pinch.
I was feted to a full-size, looks-just-like-the-ones-on-TV operating room. I had two nurses, a technician and two doctors, one senior with white hair and one young with a sounds-just-like-the-ones-on-TV British accent. And they gave me a gown, a real hospital gown with gaps in improbable places.
My sister, Mary, was my guardian angel for this episode. The main building is splashed invitingly with natural light. This allowed me to use my finely honed observing skills to scan the large, comfortable waiting rooms, some with pianos, others with colorful wall graphics and plants, many of them real. While not disguising the hospital qualities of the building, these made them seem less overt. Mary spent her observing electrodes on more practical matters, like checking for wireless reception and outlets for her laptop.
It was hard to grasp the size of the place since strategically placed elevator banks minimize endless hallway wandering, a blessing because most clients would not be up to major hikes. However, there are clues to the scale in odd details, such as the facts that the waiting rooms have subwaiting rooms and the reception desks have secondary reception desks.
The operating room for the procedure was in a basement and there was an industrial feel at that level. Down the center of the hall an endless river of automatic trolleys sedately rolled by on a pair of tracks. The trolleys, stainless steel flats actually, were empty going one way and loaded going the other. The empty ones could hold a person comfortably and I had this sudden vision of an assembly line, with patients like cars, going forth to stops on the line, one for a bolt turn here, another for a wheel fitting or distributor cap there.
The idea was totally unfair to the Clinic, of course. People were unfailingly warm, courteous, and competent. I had expected a cold reserve. When your every patient is desperately ill, wouldn’t you need to keep an emotional distance to stay sane? I think I would. Much of my time these past few months has been spent trying to think around the enormity of what is happening to me, rather than embrace it. Yet the Clinic staff seems to have been taught a different strategy. Embrace the suffering, acknowledge it, seems to be their philosophy.
My seeing an assembly line was totally at odds with what I was experiencing, yet ever since seeing the sign “Subwaiting Room,” I was primed for absurdity. And the world provides what I wish to see. The next absurdity was the walk, yes walk, to the operating room; I carried my boots and parka, the nurse carried my tote bags. Cataloging absurdity may have been using my finely honed observing skills to distort reality, but it got me through a tough day. I’ll not apologize for seeing silly things but I will agree that I need to think more deeply about this conflict between my perceptions and the reality.
Above: The Goddess of Absurd Endeavors, digital drawing. Copyright 2004 ptw.
My sister, Mary, was my guardian angel for this episode. The main building is splashed invitingly with natural light. This allowed me to use my finely honed observing skills to scan the large, comfortable waiting rooms, some with pianos, others with colorful wall graphics and plants, many of them real. While not disguising the hospital qualities of the building, these made them seem less overt. Mary spent her observing electrodes on more practical matters, like checking for wireless reception and outlets for her laptop.
It was hard to grasp the size of the place since strategically placed elevator banks minimize endless hallway wandering, a blessing because most clients would not be up to major hikes. However, there are clues to the scale in odd details, such as the facts that the waiting rooms have subwaiting rooms and the reception desks have secondary reception desks.
The operating room for the procedure was in a basement and there was an industrial feel at that level. Down the center of the hall an endless river of automatic trolleys sedately rolled by on a pair of tracks. The trolleys, stainless steel flats actually, were empty going one way and loaded going the other. The empty ones could hold a person comfortably and I had this sudden vision of an assembly line, with patients like cars, going forth to stops on the line, one for a bolt turn here, another for a wheel fitting or distributor cap there.
The idea was totally unfair to the Clinic, of course. People were unfailingly warm, courteous, and competent. I had expected a cold reserve. When your every patient is desperately ill, wouldn’t you need to keep an emotional distance to stay sane? I think I would. Much of my time these past few months has been spent trying to think around the enormity of what is happening to me, rather than embrace it. Yet the Clinic staff seems to have been taught a different strategy. Embrace the suffering, acknowledge it, seems to be their philosophy.
My seeing an assembly line was totally at odds with what I was experiencing, yet ever since seeing the sign “Subwaiting Room,” I was primed for absurdity. And the world provides what I wish to see. The next absurdity was the walk, yes walk, to the operating room; I carried my boots and parka, the nurse carried my tote bags. Cataloging absurdity may have been using my finely honed observing skills to distort reality, but it got me through a tough day. I’ll not apologize for seeing silly things but I will agree that I need to think more deeply about this conflict between my perceptions and the reality.
Above: The Goddess of Absurd Endeavors, digital drawing. Copyright 2004 ptw.
