Okay, I’m in hospital, it’s around 9 p.m., and I’m trying to go to sleep, which I do and am loving it when the light goes on and a CNA growls, “Vitals.” What that means is she will check my blood pressure, my temperature and my oxygen level. Innocuous stuff, but just enough to fully awaken me. She thanks me, leaves and I try to sleep. However, I am now aware that my coccyx (tailbone) hurts. I adjust my body and resume my seeking of repose. I have to pee. Damn. I hate to pee in a urinal because inevitably I miss and wet the top sheet or splash and feel in run down under my butt and soak into the pad beneath me. Whatever happens, it means changing my clothes–a flimsy gown open all the way in back to reveal my raggedy posterior to the world–and changing bed linen with me in the bed, a trying procedure with me being rolled back and forth across the mattress, tangling my IV lines, pulling my feeding tube and making sure sleep won’t come for several more hours. I can ignore the mess and wait until morning, but wet clothes and bed linen does not induce slumber.
Anyway, I grab the urinal, which is cleverly hung on the rail by my head, pull down the covers, expose Willy and place the plastic piss pot close between my legs, drape Willy over the side and commence voiding. Far out! I hit it just right. But, I feel an ooze start from the porches of my anus. I cannot stop it. Once an ooze oozes it can’t be stopped by cutting off Willy, so to speak. (Cut off Willy? Egad.) So, there you have it. Oozing feces, messed up clothes and bed linen. Finish peeing, call for nurse. Admit to brutish behavior as I watch her face cloud, her eyes dilate and darken like a cat’s. She says through tightly gritted teeth, “Oh, that’s all right.”
Now, in walks two CNAs, big buxom CNAs who resemble iron workers, and they simply, deftly, unhesitatingly strip me and the bed naked, wiping ooze as they go. In my pink emaciated body, not much more than penis and eyeballs are staring up at them (of course Willy is hiding in a pelvic pocket peeking pitifully out and ducking as hands pull loose skin and appendages, mopping up ooze. Deep in their minds I know the CNAs are satisfied now that white guys are poorly hung compared to a brother.
Anyway, that happened about five times. Different CNAs each time so, I guess, the entire staff could take a look at Wee Willie Wonka, the only five-year-old looking penis they’ve ever seen attached to a 68-year-old emaciation right out of Auschwitz. I believe I saw tickets being sold.
Tomorrow, I’ll go into a day-in-the-life of me at Methodist Hospital, Indianapolis, Indiana. I ain’t pretty.
