To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Saturday, October 24, 2015
 
Heard this quote by Mike Tyson, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face!”? In my case, it’s more like punched in the foot. Literally. One early morning on a weekend, I woke up to the sound of gushing water running out of an open tap and the next moment I was lying sprawled on the floor with my foot stuck in a chest of drawers, bleeding and swollen. 15 days later, here I am, still sprawled with feet up—except for the soft sofa underneath me. And yeah, so much for ‘plans’.

I have always had a deep dislike, almost bordering on paranoia, for hospitals. Luckily for me, I haven’t had much occasion to get over it. I have never been in one save for more than a few minutes, and that most often to visit other people, who knowing how I loved the ambience, were always too happy to get rid of me. But this time, I was in for a longish affair. I could have cried when I was told I would have to lie in one for all of 4 days if not more. And I dare say I did. Was there no way to get me cured at home? It was just a foot and it happened at HOME. I mean, that had to count for something? Apparently if I took a chance, I could run the risk of spending a lot more time in later. So you can tell I didn’t need more convincing. I was also told that if a foot like this had happened to be of a Diabetes patient, which I always fear I might be some day given the not-so-stellar family history, they might have considered chopping off the foot. (My expression exactly …!)

I’m not sure what sort of personality my blog projects of me—but I do tend to be a bit particular about particulars. And that being so, I can never be sure if this is just me being ‘particular’ or if a regular Mr. Not-So-Particular would find the same thing just as queer. As I lay in the hospital, numerous inefficiencies struck me. Take for example when I was asked to be wheeled into my room by the doctor because I shouldn’t be stressing my foot at all. The ‘Maushi’ as they called the elderly women who did some of these extra-curricular activities wheeled me into the elevator, got me off at floor 6, and then looked at me ruefully requesting if I could walk down a floor because the elevator apparently wasn’t working on that floor! I mean, so much for not stressing my foot! Or take the case of this nurse, whom I almost started dreading, who puts the drip thing on and does not tell me I should call for her when the liquid was emptied. Did I really have to tell people this was my ‘first time’ and I didn’t know how these weird things worked? Blood starts oozing and flowing out of the prick needle or whatever they call the contraption, which I happily don’t notice because I am busily working at my phone, and when she comes in and notices, almost barks at me for not alerting her!  “But you didn’t tell me to”, are words that don’t seem to register!

These and other instances start growing on me. It strikes me that the cost of a mistake at work here was so high I could die! They aren’t dealing in grammar and punctuation errors, mind you, a comma missing is not equal to an eye gone!  (Makes you really think about how insignificant these commas really are). These nurses looked too jolly to be trusted with bottles of drips. I’d probably look like the face of death handling one of these. What if they mistook a bottle of A and administered me B? And what effect would B have on my body? And is there a way to remove all the B from the body once it was all in? And what if I caught some malady I couldn’t get rid of for the rest of my life…? You can tell where this line of thinking was taking me? …no, maybe not.

I had stopped praying to let my foot heal soon. I was praying to let me get out of the clutches of this hospital, QUICKLY, before they messed up really bad, with nothing worse than a bad foot. I was hoping none of the mischances my brain kept playing in my head would occur and I would be out of here none the worse than when I came in, if you know what I mean :(

(As it happened, I did come out with a very sore wrist which was swollen because of the injections, apart from an on-it’s-way-to-be-healed-foot… it’s a lot better now though :))


posted by Sylvia D'souza at 8:44 pm 0 comments
Wednesday, October 07, 2015
 

In a ‘verse’y mood after a long time…

 
This weary mask

I carry with me every day

Laughing, smiling, joking, talking

Let it not fall

Even a little

The world will point out

And giggle

There’s no room for a real face

Real words, real tears

Lest they shatter

A carefully laid-out glassy world

With a pierce

Of a real scream

But still the glass keeps cracking

Little by little

As the gagged and trodden lose their masks

Horror of horrors

Their real faces reflecting

What masked ones try so hard to hide

 

 

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 10:28 am 7 comments
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