A
couple of weeks ago I described a fun trip
we had taken, but I didn’t talk about how it ended, which was
not as fun. When Fluffy and I were driving to Atlantic City we saw a
farmer’s market just as we crossed into New Jersey. We stopped
to take some pictures and saw some of the prettiest tomatoes we ever
did see. In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit I am
not a fan of tomatoes. I have never
liked tomatoes. But these tomatoes had us fantasizing, and Fluffy
and I made a point of stopping on the drive home to pick some up.
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Some tomatoes can make a tomato-lover out of the most jaded tomato-hater.
Fluffy
picked up six tomatoes, plus a basil plant and a big basket of yams.
We decided to make a whole bunch of BLT sandwiches, plus some
insalatas
caprese. So after Fluffy got in the car again, I got a pen and paper and
started making a grocery list. Next we only had to determine where
we would stop on the way home in order to get the best baguettes and
the nicest mozzarella cheese.
As
we crossed the bridge into Delaware, however, my body started giving
me different marching orders. I got a sudden and severe case of the
chills, and the chills always mean one thing: I need to get to the
hospital, fast.
Instead
of choosing the best supermarket, the question quickly became whether
to go to my regular hospital or the Reston Hospital, which was
closer. The Reston Hospital won out. We didn’t even stop at
home to offload the tomatoes and our other trip treasures first.
I’m
never exactly sure why I’m in the hospital, mind you –
except for the fact that my body loves infections, and seems to want
to collect them all. The word I heard most often this time was
“sepsis,” but I also heard “cellulitis” more
than once.
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A poster in the hospital hallway happily proclaimed that sepsis was the infection du jour.
It also pointed out that I was on a countdown once I got it, and perhaps it was a good thing we had headed straight for the hospital without dallying at home first.
My
infectious diseases specialist (and it’s embarrassing to say
I’ve had the same guy for three years now, who follows me
around when I’ve had one infectious disease after another)
said, “It’s goot you know to come in fast, because fen
you get sick you go downhill qvick.”
How
right he is.
I
checked in on Wednesday. By Sunday, I was going stir-crazy. Those
tomatoes were calling my name, to say nothing of the time I was
losing with Fluffy at home, and the work I should have been doing but
that was being done by others. So when I was promised a Monday
discharge, I was pretty excited.
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The hospital sandwiches I was served were a pathetic substitute for the Fluffy-made BLTs I had envisioned.
Of
course, promises made in hospitals are made to be broken.
Monday
I awoke with a hacking cough. I do not cough gently. My coughs come
up from my toes. I waited to get discharged. When I did not get
discharged, let’s just say Fluffy did not take the news
gracefully.
Although
Fluffy did not take the news with good cheer, the doctors were more
than excited to keep me. Whichever doctor was on charge that day
decided to shoot the medical big guns at me, and I was suddenly
bombarded with a pharmaceutical salvo that was the equivalent of
nuclear war.
My
body responded in the only way it knew how. It came up with a whole
new host of symptoms, and then the doctor who was in charge the next
day responded with his
favorite drug, which (of course) was administered in addition to the
drug that had been prescribed on Monday.
Every
day I got worse and worse and worse. The doctors just saw me as
getting sicker and sicker and sicker, so they kept piling one drug on
top of another. I was getting closer and closer to death.
Fluffy
and I had a different perspective altogether. We decided that just maybe
it was the drugs that were making me sicker, and that if I didn’t
get out of there soon, I was only going to leave that hospital in a
pine box.
I
didn’t finally escape until Friday — nine whole nights
after I had first checked in. By then I had been diagnosed with
atrial fibrillation, a lifelong heart problem (or so the cardiologist
would have me believe). Fluffy and I suspect that as soon as the
drugs are out of my system, all these weird things are going to go
away and I’m going to be back to normal, or at least what
passes for normal on Planet Kathy.
As
far as hospitals go, I really liked the one in Reston. I had a great
bed in a private room, and the nursing staff was stellar. I think it
is my new favorite hospital, although I don’t want to return
there any time soon. But I longed to have a doctor who looked at
Kathy as a whole person, and not as a heart or a set of lungs or an
immune system. It just didn’t happen.
If
there had been a patient advocate who looked at me as me, he or she
could have looked at my chart and said, “Here’s what’s
going on. You put her on prednisone for her lungs, and her heart
went out of rhythm. Prednisone can cause atrial fibrillation. Let’s
get her off the prednisone, and see if the a-fib goes away. There’s
no need for panic here. This isn’t a lifelong situation.”
But
there wasn’t a patient advocate. Instead there was a lung
doctor prescribing prednisone and a heart doctor panicking and
deciding I had a permanent, debilitating heart problem. It took
Kathy going home and checking the internet to see that prednisone,
sure enough, can cause atrial fibrillation.
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What I needed was a mad Dr. Fluffy who looked at the whole Kathy, instead of just my heart or my lungs.
Why
didn’t the hospital know that? Because doctors have tunnel
vision, that’s why. They are trained in their own area of
expertise, and they don’t have time to focus on the big
picture.
As
far as the cardiologist was concerned, the diagnosis of atrial
fibrillation was the important thing. How I got it was immaterial.
He was interested in what was happening with my heart. The rest of
Kathy was a bag o’ flesh surrounding my heart — something
that said hi, and that answered his questions as he asked them. We
got along just fine, but the heart was the bottom line as far as he
was concerned.
The
longer I stayed in that hospital, the more I felt like the elephant
in that old poem, “The Blind Men and the Elephant (a Hindoo
Fable),” by John Godfrey Saxe:
The Blind Men and the Elephant A Hindoo Fable
I.
IT was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
II.
The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! — but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!"
III.
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried:"Ho! — what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 't is mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!"
IV.
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a snake!"
V.
The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he;
"'T is clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!"
VI.
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!"
VII.
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a rope!"
VIII.
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
MORAL.
So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen!
There
were a lot of blind doctors in that hospital. All of them worked
hard on me, but I don’t think any of the doctors saw the whole
elephant, even though I was lying there in the bed for all of them to
observe.
It
isn’t just doctors who fail to see the whole picture, however.
We are all guilty of selective vision, as 1 Corinthians 13 tells us:
9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
Selective
vision is part of the human picture. We look at others and think we
know what is going on in their lives, but we are woefully ignorant.
We judge them based on our limited understanding, but we only see
bits and pieces. We never see the whole thing.
It
is only God who sees us completely. It is only God who knows us from
the inside out. The next time I am tempted to nod my head sagely and
think I know what is going on in the mind or the heart of another, I
hope I remember the doctors in the hospital — each of whom
looked at a small piece of me and thought he knew the whole.
Kathryn H. Kidd has been writing fiction, nonfiction, and "anything for money" longer than
most of her readers have even been alive. She has something to say on every topic, and the
possibility that her opinions may be dead wrong has never stopped her from expressing them at
every opportunity.
A native of New Orleans, Kathy grew up in Mandeville, Louisiana. She attended Brigham
Young University as a generic Protestant, having left the Episcopal Church when she was eight
because that church didn't believe what she did. She joined The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints as a BYU junior, finally overcoming her natural stubbornness because she
wanted a patriarchal blessing and couldn't get one unless she was a member of the Church. She
was baptized on a Saturday and received her patriarchal blessing two days later.
She married Clark L. Kidd, who appears in her columns as "Fluffy," more than thirty-five
years ago. They are the authors of numerous LDS-related books, the most popular of which is A
Convert's Guide to Mormon Life.
A former managing editor for Meridian Magazine, Kathy moderated a weekly column ("Circle of Sisters") for Meridian until she was derailed by illness in December of 2012. However, her biggest claim to fame is that she co-authored
Lovelock with Orson Scott Card. Lovelock has been translated into Spanish and Polish, which
would be a little more gratifying than it actually is if Kathy had been referred to by her real name
and not "Kathryn Kerr" on the cover of the Polish version.
Kathy has her own website, www.planetkathy.com, where she hopes to get back to writing a weekday blog once she recovers from being dysfunctional. Her entries recount her adventures and misadventures with Fluffy, who heroically
allows himself to be used as fodder for her columns at every possible opportunity.
Kathy spent seven years as a teacher of the Young Women in her ward, until she was recently released. She has not yet gotten used to interacting with the adults, and suspects it may take another seven years. A long-time home teacher with her husband, Clark, they have home taught the same family since 1988. The two of them have been temple workers since 1995, serving in the Washington D.C. Temple.