Thursday, September 20, 2007Pole Dancing [Written from the hospital, 9/18/07] I have a new friend. It goes with me wherever I go. Before I can go to the bathroom, we have to unplug it so it can roll along with me. My IV pole didn't bother me half so much when I was in bed all day. But now that I'm pretty mobile, it's driving me crazy. It's a kind of amazing device and I marvel at its function: holding all the apparatus of medicines and pain killers and nutrients in one tidy stack, on wheels, capable of following me, the patient, everywhere I go. The intravenous drip is an amazing concept. I look at the thick plastic bags of fluids and their little receptacles that catch the very regulated drips, and think... some kid, somewhere, got obsessed with the nature of dripping at a science fair one summer. And he made it his life's work and his friends made crazy signals at him behind his back and he had horrible dandruff and no one got it, but one day he said look -- if we can regulate dripping and figure out a way to get it infused directly into the blood stream, we can enable ourselves to do a whole lot of things for a medical patient than we used to be able to do. We can regulate exactly how much food and liquid goes into the body and then, by measuring exactly what comes out, determine if all the plumbing in between is functioning without leaks or building repositories. We can do without direct injections and stick that dreaded needle into a tube rather than into a screaming child's arm. We can let the patient determine when to give themselves more pain relief, and still not worry about lawsuits when he decides that Sister Morphine is someone he loves very very much. While I can marvel at the technological intricacies of my IV pole for long moments on end, I am spending more time these days getting annoyed. A technogical marvel: yes. A great dance partner: not so much. I have about four feet of tether on my leash. This is just enough for me to barely go around my bed without bringing the pole along. Why would I want to go around the bed? Well, me being me, and me feeling better -- there's a lot of organizing to do in my little room. Sometimes I want my computer over here by the window. And sometimes I want my little table with all my books and magazines and tabloids (I have such great friends) to be on the other side of the bed. Flowers need to be moved, based on long analysis of aesthetics and space considerations from my tilted up bed, from the counter by the sink to the table the nurses set up for me. And sometimes a truly urgent need arises -- like for a set of headphones so I can watch Grey's Anatomy on my laptop... but the headphones are about 8 feet away and... even if I stretch out the cables a bit... and lean out really really far... just outside of reach. Then, there's the twisting. My dance partner especially likes to do the twist when we're going to the restroom together. Somehow my tubes get all tied up around the pole so every exit from the loo looks like a weird pas de deux, with my twirling it around backwards, trying to get enough leash back for myself so I can get into bed. Since I started writing this, I'm happy to say, my IV has actually been disconnected, I've been cleared for solid foods, and I'm slated to go home later today. I have walked around the floor of my wing, amazed at the sense of freedom of being solid and substantial on my own two feet (and nothing more). I actually look forward to other dance partners in my future, ones that may entangle just as much, but in far more heartfelt ways. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 10:32 PM  
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