I took some time off from writing last week, mainly because I had so many things to do, like make Brunswick Stew for a dinner party Friday night. Terry’s son, Brian, and his family came over for dinner, and I volunteered to make supper. Big mistake for I got so tired I was a wreck during the dinner party. I forget that I am not 100% healed, and when I feel pretty good, I’ll overdo and make myself sick. Terry warns me, but since I am a male, do I listen? Is the Pope Jewish?

Back to the hospital. I guess the one aspect of being in hospital that is the worst for me is loneliness. My twin daughters, who are secretaries in ER, came to see me each day, and I so looked forward to that. But after they left, hardly anyone came in. Oh, the nurses occasionally, but they are so over-worked that I hesitated calling them even when I needed to.  A doctor drops by, perhaps, but most often a nurse practicianer, which is fine because they usually know what they are talking about. But the rest of the time is spent alone.

Reading is an option and well as writing, but I was so weak of body and mind that I could do neither. TV was out of the question because the medium is so outstandingly stupid. I mean, here is the most influential channel for world culture, and it is broadcasting game shows that only challenge severely mentally handicapped people. Or, soap operas whose only redeeming grace is they can be used in acting classes as examples of bad acting and what not to do in front of a camera. I taught acting for many years, and I dare say some of my first year students, all green teens, could act most soap performers off the tube. Soap writing is just as bad, offering inane dialogue to inane plots most always centered around some kind of sexual stimulus: either exploitation, rape, fornication or cheating on one’s significant other. Now, I’m no prude and I like a good plot centered on sex, but let’s be reasonable: not every person of any age is in a sexual rage of some kind like they appear to be on soaps.As it happens the rest of television is devoted to sports.  I am not a sports nut.  A good game of, say, football like the XLII Super Bowel yesterday was very enjoyable, and a like at least the first five laps of a auto race (the rest of it is just round and round and round ad nauseam until the end, which can be exciting sometimes.)  Basketball for me is boring from tip-off to final buzzer.  I hate hockey, golf induces long hours of deep sleep, even if Tiger Wood is competing. I mean, golf cow pasture pool: hit the ball, walk to find the ball, hit the ball again, putt to a little hole, miss, try again for a birdie, maybe an owl? Raven? Vulture? What the hell is a bogey?  Bogey! That was the name of my first grade teacher, Miss Bogey. She was a golf shot? Maybe bogey was named after her or one of her kin.  I don’t know. Golf seems nuts to me. Birdie can suggest eagle–not a long reach–but why eagle? Why not a buzzard? I mean, an eagle is two over par, which seems sort of stinky to me. Oh well, golf comes to us from Scotland, a strange country that has blessed us with many weird things, from oatmeal boiled in a sheep’s stomach to the finest malt whiskies in the world. Golf is just another Scottish peculiarity.

Enough about the wasteland of TV. I am now able to sit in a chair and escape the confines of the bed. But, being incarcerated in one room is not fun. Three times a week physical therapy people come and we walk up and down the hall once and do some exercises, but that’s it as far as getting out of the room in concerned. Stir crazy is a real thing, I learn.Two sets of privacy curtains reveal that my room is a double. Having mersa, however, gets me a private room because they consider me contaminated. Whenever hospital staff come in they gown and mask so they won’t catch it. Like being visited by mummers in some surreal mardi gras.I have a private bathroom, except the show doesn’t work. When I can I use it, but oozing comes too fast sometimes so I have a bedside commode I can get to quickly.  Shades of Miriam’s confinement: she lived with a bedside commode for years.  Adjacent to the bathroom is a large cabinet that contains linen, towels and contraptions that look like plastic jugs with huge syringes stuck in them. Later, I learn these are for flushing the feeding tube that dangles from my body. I hate that tube, but it is my only means of nourishment. Nightly, I get fed via the tube. And, every morning I wake up and puke first thing. Well, puking is not accurate. Dry heaving is accurate. Like I’d been on a toot for a couple of days and can do nothing but heave into the great porcelain basin beloved by drunks coming down. I sit on my bed and clutch a plastic basin into which I heave nothing. Nothing gets you nothing except very sore abs.As I heave into the plastic basin, in walks a doctor, first one I’ve seen in two days. We talk between heaves. When I can I tell him I think the nightly feedings are making me sick, he says, “Oh?” sagaciously.”Yes,” I gag. “They’re too fast and my stomach is too small.”He thinks for a moment, then says, “You may be right. Let’s stop the feedings altogether and see.”I agree, and the next morning, sans feeding, I AM NOT SICK.  Same doctor drops in.”I feel great,” I tell him.”Good,” he says, once again sagaciously. “But now all nourishment will have to come through your mouth.  an you do that?”I tell him that we should try, and off he toddles to refuel his sagacity tank while I dream of my first food in two months.I need a whole column to describe my experience with hospital food, so let me do that tomorrow.