Hospitals can kill you

by Walt Edminster

During the Korean war I was a Navy combat air crewman and later, in the Middle East, I spent 20 years trying to stay out of three of their wars. The threat of being bombed by terrorists was always present. That didn't=t bother me but the thought of going into a hospital for something as minor as an ingrown toe nail turned me into a sniveling wimp.

Now I=m an extreme case. Most people who go to hospitals don=t quake with fear the way I do. They=re afraid, naturally, but not rendered incoherent. My first hospital experience was in 1935 when my father took me to the emergency room because I=d stopped breathing and was turning blue. They threw me on a table, cut a two inch piece of rib out of my back, stuck a knife into the hole and drained out enough pus to fill a fruit jar. I was crying a lot. The doctor told me to shut up. I shut up. I didn't=t know it then but I only had about 30 minutes to live when I went in there. I recovered and for the next 55 years I was healthy as a bear. I was never going back to another hospital. They throw you around like a sack of potatoes, they curse at you, they stick knives in you, and they send you home with a rubber tube hanging out of your back.

But in 1986 I had no choice, I needed a hernia operation. Since my first visit to a hospital the techniques have improved considerably.  I can=t say the same for the people. They still go about their business in the cold methodical manner of a mechanic changing a fuel pump. The hospital I was assigned to had a strict rule everyone followed to the letter. Say as little as possible to the patient and above all, never smile.

When I checked in I was immediately taken to my room and told to undress. They handed me a funny looking cape and told me to put it on.  I did.  They told me to take it back off and turn it around. It opened in the back instead of the front.  I later discovered why it was so important to have the back open rather than the front.

Once I was properly dressed, they laid me on a narrow cart, ran me into a small room, and left me there without a word of explanation. I laid there for 20 minutes wondering what was going to happen next.

A nurse resembling Hulk Hogan will enter carrying a huge syringe with a quarter inch thick needle. With a Satanic grin on her face she will plunge it into me repeatedly until most of my blood has been drained from my body.

This actually happened but the nurse and the needle were much smaller than I=d envisioned. This act was followed by an enema skillfully administered by a small Filipino girl with an object resembling something I once bought at Wal-Mart to calk leaks in my roof. She spoke only five words of English, "Hold it for ten minutes." Then they put me to bed for the night.