Thoughts from a Country Hospital

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Another week is nearly banked away to the annals of time and sure devil the bit have I written about its passing. I’ve expended much labour over the summer months pursuing numerous scribbling explorations of mind, spirit and emotion; some useful and some down-right bonkers. However, with the arrival of September’s autumnal tinting of the lights and shades in the world around us, my physical body decided it had quite enough of my incessant digital blatherings and insisted on some tender loving care. Grabbing my attention promptly by booking me in for an open-ended retreat at a country hospital in the west of Ireland. So, here I lay, a few days-in, soaking in the rays on a mechanical bed from a sun peeking in through a curtainless window.

It’s been an interesting experience to be unexpectedly flung into the Irish health system. Actually, let me try that sentence again. It has been an interesting experience to be unexpectedly flung into a system. Lobbed back, as it were, into a specific method or system of living in the world. I’m happy to report my round peg seems even larger than the last time I attempted to squeeze it into a shrinking square hole.

I suppose, my vacation began on Tuesday evening when I suddenly developed a shivering fever and a swelling of my right foot, more or less, simultaneously. This was followed quickly by an intense period of crying for about twenty minutes. If I have worried over anything - symptom wise - over the last three days it’s been the oddity of those particular tears. I seemed misted by a profound and deep, sudden sadness but a sorrow somehow alien to me. As if the tears and emotion felt were not altogether my own. Then again, I was quite deliriously drunk with fever so perhaps this episode was a hallucination of sorts. But, I think not, probably.

On eventual arrival into the hospital environment I was greeted at reception by a number of the “ Da Covid “ questions with vaccination status chief amongst them. In hindsight, I should have answered this particular vaccination question as follows:

“ Ah yeah, I’ve been taking the auld Covid jabs up the Wazoo for as far back as I can remember - which isn’t very far back due to taking Covid vaccines up the Wazoo. Go Figure! Go Pfizer! ”

But, unfortunately, my devilish pride won out and I answered the question truthfully. I’m not sure if this set off a series of events on the HSE’s antiquated computer systems or not but in the past thirty six hours I’ve had two different sets of students, one nursing and one medical, approach me with requests for help - via surveys - in furthering their education. The central theme of both pleas for assistance seemed to involve going through my entire family and medical history with them. I politely declined but was tempted to pass on the 093 phone number of the family’s chief medical officer - my mother - who would happily fill up a few refill pads worth of blow-by-blow accounts for them, highlighting the major medical, psychological and psychiatric conditions prevalent in our family oak-tree and the mountainous number of cunts in her North Galway environment that might well be the root cause of most of them.

The make-up of the work-force in this country hospital is broadly in line with my historic writing on the subject. Majority non-Irish. It’s been a very good experience for me to get the opportunity to observe the personal side and nature’s of some of the people toiling away in a health system I criticize so frequently. Although, to be fair, anything I write on the political front is usually targeted at the policy or agenda at play by the nefarious forces rather than the everyday people caught up in the nets.

The night staff seem mostly comprised of Indian nurses thus far and they have a grand gentleness and femininity about them as they go about their night-to-night business quietly and efficiently. Exotic fragrances scent the air as they enter the darkened room to empty or replace the anti-biotics at the end of my intravenous drip. The day nurse is an African woman and she announces herself to our small ward in the morning as follows:

“ Good morning, boys, I am your nurse for the day “

A cool, comforting directness and touch of masculinity replacing the watchful and protective femininity of the night. The elderly patient and retired farmer to my left loves the Irish nurses, as one might expect, as most are up for having the bit of craic and fun with him and instinctively know how to massage the cold systems of care, just enough, to tailor them to his needs and personality. This uniquely Irish ability to carry out their duties with professionalism and authority and yet somehow also allow themselves to be treated like grand-daughters by their patients. An umbilical link of understanding, perhaps, between one generation of green-eyed fairies and the next. Unspoken but speaking volumes too.

Yesterday, that is to say Thursday, felt a strange day. One, excuse the pun, with a foot in two different worlds. This is explained in the first instance by a temperature that remained a touch above normal all day ( which, by the way, would be a great alternative title for this substack - Driving while Slightly Abnormal). Sleep and tiredness came in short bursts at odd times of the day and night. After waking up at 1am, and a restless hour tossing and turning in the bed, at 2am I decided to go down to the car-park and pay St Bridget a visit. An opportunity to reflect on all that had happened and happened so quickly. Last night, while puffing on a smoke in the car, I randomly sampled the sentence below. Indeed, I’ve tested it out a number of times over the last couple of days, in various states of pain and mental fog. It remains consistently true to me across all examinations so far.

I have no fear of dying. Not that I’m in imminent danger or anything.

Obviously, I’d prefer my next visit to Corrib Oil didn’t involve being spray-gunned with five litres of petrol and going up in a ball of over-caffeinated flames but I’m at ease if my end of shelf-life date is tomorrow. Death has always played a prominent role in my mind-space. I think I may have related this point previously but I’ve always felt, from a young age, that I’m running out of time while simultaneously wasting copious amounts of it and spending it cheaply. A walking contradiction in terms. I don’t say this in some egotistical manner as if the revelation means I think I’d be immediately moving on to some higher plain or a grassy savannah of heaven. No, rather I’m at peace with the thought of sitting down to answer for the life I’ve lived. It will be a difficult, difficult conversation but one I’m open to having now with whoever I need to discuss it with.

Does it mean hell or heaven or somewhere in between?

Does it perhaps mean being thrown back into the merry-go-round of life again on a different playground to study once more the lessons unlearned in this one?

I don’t know and I don’t really need to know.

There is a certain serenity to discover that death holds no fears over me anymore. But, it raises another question. Can I answer the opposite question as confidently and serenely. Can I say “ I have no fear of living “

Hmmm. On first fly-by consideration the answer is isn’t as confidently bounding out of my soul. And that might be the lesson of the last few days.

Perhaps, death will come when all of my fears of living have been conquered and at that precise point I might well discover the difference between life and death may only be the spelling of the words on the page.

The specialist in charge of my foot is an Irish doctor and woman of early mid-age. She arrived in the morning with a gaggle of learner ducklings in tow, and all huddled for a few minutes around my swollen right foot. From all of my interactions with her so far she seems very competent and speaks knowingly on the subject of cellulitis to her gathered flock. She’s a little concerned my cellulitis hasn’t started to recede a little but no new swelling gains have been made into the enemy territory above my ankle. So, all told, not too bad, I suppose. She eyes me for a couple of seconds towards the end of this morning’s little chinwag wondering aloud if I’m keeping the foot properly elevated and rested - a note of genuine concern in her voice. She advised an ultrasound needed to be undertaken later in the day and that my country retreat was likely to last a few days more.

I was tempted to re-assure her that my hops out of the ward for cigarette breaks were being kept to a minimum and that I’ve only driven to the cappuccino machine at the Corrib Oil, a mile up the road, twice since I’ve been admitted to her fine establishment. But, alas, I got bitten by the laryngitis epidemic currently gusting through the corridors of pain and injury outside Room no. 60.

On their exit and after breakfast, I sat down in the armchair to have a think and wee chat with myself. I couldn’t ignore the inconvenient fact that all in this hospital environment were doing everything one could ask of them to heal my wounded hoof. Scientifically speaking.

Perhaps, I am the problem. Which as a rule of thumb is never a bad place to start an investigative line of enquiry surrounding the circumstances of my life. I thought back to the initial awareness point on the couch. The temperature, the swelling and the sadness.

When you enter a system, any system of human organisation, inevitably you become engulfed by the people working, believing and living in it. The temptation is to surrender completely to its acquired knowledge, rules and rigid regulation while simultaneously abandoning all of your own. Even if the surrender is only for a temporary period to achieve a specific goal. Yet, something in me rebels against this notion and type of complete surrender and maybe, just maybe, something in my reddened foot agrees with my stubborn non conformity. Perhaps, while the medical staff deal with my disease I need to focus on the intense, short-lived sadness that announced its full arrival.

When I began the current phase of my life, a little over fifteen months ago, it kicked off unexpectedly in a cathedral. As written previously, I wrote a simple intention in a book of prayers seeking forgiveness from the people I’d hurt and perhaps might hurt in the future. Words written casually, absent-mindedly and in lieu of something truly specific to say. Thirty minutes later I felt that forgiveness from the divine in a most uncasual, unexpected and powerful way. In short, from a God I didn’t really think about or really believe in for most of my life. I was a divine fence sitter.

As I think about that moment now along with the most recent one on my couch they had a similar feel and texture to them but were not identical. We often obsess about the hurt we’ve inflicted on others and it comes with no little shame and self loathing. Anyone reading this that’s been to an AA meeting will understand what I am talking about here. So, it can be a natural course of events, especially for people with addictive personality types on the road to recovery, like my good self, to obsess on past mistakes, past moments and past shames. Nothing wrong with a healthy amount of this type of reflection but what we are not addicted to, so easily, is forgiving the people that have hurt us. Whether that be in past times or, who knows, even during past lives. Often this number is a tiny collective of people but a very significant group nonetheless. A consideration flies by the drip stand as I chew the cud on all of this.

Have I ever considered that some of these people are profoundly sorry for having hurting me ?

So sad, in fact, they will never find the words of apology in this life. Further, maybe this was an emotion echoing from ages long past and a family-tree that those medical and nursing students were so interested in learning about earlier in the day and yesterday. But, regardless of the origin point, the sorrow exists and is yearning for the calming balm of someone’s forgiveness. A tear drops from my eye at this hopeful thought.

Internally, I intensely reject putting names and faces to the small number of people who’ve hurt me in my life which I believe is an entirely healthy state of affairs most of the time. But residual hurt exists in me, and probably in most of us, and so perhaps this flood of sadness last Tuesday was an apology of sorts and if it was, and having felt it so deeply, it spoke louder than any words ever could. So, in a sense, I can honestly forgive this cloud of engulfing emotion because I can believe the truth of it and I only believe the truth of it because I felt it, and having felt it now know, instinctively, that words, phrases or essays of apology would never have convinced the doubting Thomas in me on their own. Maybe the hurt accumulated in my foot is both medical and spiritual in nature and while the antibiotics work their magic, I too have a job of work to complete and should use this time away to no longer postpone the release of these bruises from the past.

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