Chapter Eight: Recovering in a plague hospital at the epicentre of Covid
Hey Dad:
Since my heart attack at 41, Peter’s death when he was fifty and your death dad in 2018, I knew mortality had a bead line on me. To awake alive from rectal cancer surgery and without a hole in the side of my abdomen to place an ileostomy was a relief. I was alive and my death postponed for a little while longer and that left me joyful. I understood now why mum’s first words after she woke up from her quadruple bypass surgery in 1997 were declarative and victorious; “I live.”
As my gurney was pushed to my wardroom, I was drunk on morphine. It made me giddy, optimistic, and chatty. I waved to the nurses at their stations as if I were a participant on a parade float saluting the crowd.
When I was transferred to my bed, a porter brought me lukewarm water in a plastic cup on a tray with a thin tea bag, resting on it. “Drink,” urged the porter who raised my bed to better swallow the tea. I asked her if she felt safe, from Covid, she said “no, but what can I do my family must eat.”
When she left, I lapped up the tea and said to myself, “drink, you are not a god,” like Omar Sharif’s character said in Laurence of Arabia to Peter O’Toole. It went down my throat with the smoothness of nectar, and it connected me back to the animal world of needs and wants.
I was still feeble from the operation, but I climbed out of my bed to sit on a chair near my room’s window. The faint rays of the afternoon sun warmed my face, and I whispered in amazement and joy, “Spring will soon come.”
Afterwards, I opened my overnight case and took out the picture I brought of you, along with a copy of Harry’s Last Stand that I put on the table by my bed. I took a selfie and posted it on Twitter and Facebook, and then began to wonder how long it would take to become whole again?
In the bed across from me was a woman originally from Leicester. She was scared and alone because her husband couldn’t visit, and she had major surgery for endometrial cancer. I heard her speak to her mother in England on a video call. While talking to her mum this patient near my bed cried with the frequency of an English rain while her mother tried to find words that might comfort her daughter. They talked of Britain’s lockdown, but also spoke approvingly of Boris Johnson. “Tories,” I thought, I can’t ever shake them.
I dozed for a while and upon waking touched the gauze bandage that covered my surgical scar. I recoiled at the knowledge that only hours ago, I was being operated on for cancer. But I was lucky because the man in the bed closest to the door in my room had the same procedure as me. He however required an ileostomy until his intestines were considered strong enough to be reconnected. Hidden behind curtains drawn around his bed, I heard him complain to the nurses about his pain and the shame he felt at being altered.
I was not permitted food until I farted and had a bowel movement, which indicated the anastomosis or new join between my rectum and colon was functioning. So, I waited fearful and worried that my operation hadn’t connected my bowels correctly.
When the sunset on my first night in hospital, I listened to the nurses talk in agitated voices about the pandemic and their new responsibilities. They were frightened and angry with management because they believed they weren't protected. Among themselves, they chatted nervously about the patients being admitted to the ward, who tested positive for covid and were treated by them.
“No one is protecting, us.”
As the night wore on, my pain at the surgical site was intense. I was given more morphine by a nurse originally from Iran. I talked to her about Persia and the carpets you once sold to Canada’s well-heeled that had been woven in Iran’s holiest of cities, Qum.
The next day, I was allowed to walk the ward, which I did as if it was the lido deck of a cruise ship. I held onto my catheter bag and pushed an IV drip in front of me and said each step you take is a step to the exit and home. On my stroll, I saw many rooms isolated and occupied by patients infected with Covid. There were giant posted signs not to enter their rooms without authorisation and full PPE kit. I could hear them struggling for breath their lungs wheezing congested and overwhelmed by the virus. They were dying and there weren’t enough ICU beds to treat them and so they languished on our surgery recovery ward. Code blues echoed over the PA system.
I was concerned for my own safety that so many around me were infected by Covid. I would, however, never thought of complaining because the hospital to me was like a life raft and all of us were equally worthy to survive. Everyone there was in their own fight for survival and no complaining or praying from me was going to change that outcome. The vibe during my stay was the end of the world was nigh. So be of good cheer.
On the second night of my hospital stay, I still hadn’t taken a shit and began to vomit up the broth I had been given, for my supper. The woman originally from Leicester began to weep and cried out, “ “I felt perfectly fine a month ago and now look at me. How am I ever going to manage at home?”
A nurse cleaned up my vomit, and I asked why I couldn’t keep down even liquids. “If it can’t come out one way, it will come up another.” But in the early morning hours of that night, I farted, which indicated my bowels were not obstructed. The woman originally from Leicester applauded and laughed when I remarked, "now that's a trump I can approve."
Nevertheless, my body was having a terrible and skittish time trying to understand why my intestines had been amputated. Even with the pain meds, I hurt too much to sleep for any longer than twenty minutes. Between these twilight moments of unconsciousness, I eavesdropped to the growing concerns the nurses of my hospital had for a pandemic that threatened to collapse our healthcare system.
I heard nurses in the hallway chatter in fearful tones about Covid 19 and their insufficient protection. The cleaning staff also told me that with both anxiety and anger, the hospital only provided one mask per day for each staff member. They complained their unions weren’t doing enough for them. But no matter how much they complained about how higher-ups had made them vulnerable to COVID 19, they never shirked their work responsibilities.
By the third morning, I was hoping I’d be released. But my body began to revolt against its new configuration. After a breakfast of eggs and tea, I was wracked by violent and never-ending bowel movements. The fear was so great that I might have COVID 19 or C-difficile that my nurses isolated me from everyone on the ward. A curtain was drawn around my bed, and I was provided with a commode to evacuate my bowels into. I was forbidden to leave my twenty-five square foot enclosure. Within hours, I was dehydrated, exhausted and raw from diaper rash. I still hoped I had nothing serious and spent a lonely day, sometimes drenched in my faeces and my stench. Every time a nurse cleaned up my bed or removed my bedpan, I apologised profusely. I was exhausted beyond definition by my operation and having to shit every ten minutes. To keep my strength up, I listen to an audio book version of Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War. Listening to the tales of what soviet women endured during their fight against Hitler made my struggles against cancer and covid seem mild in comparison.
By the fourth day, my bowel movements settled down to a 30-minute occurrence, rather than four times per half hour. The doctor on rounds that day checked up on me and said the test had come back for c-difficile was negative. “I suppose you can go home if you feel up to it. Is there someone who can pick you up?” I said I had arranged for a friend to come and collect me. Before leaving my bedside, he noticed a copy of Harry’s Last Stand on my table. “He was your dad, wasn’t he?” I said “yes.”
“I trained in the NHS. You don’t know how much hope and encouragement your dad gave to people working in healthcare in England. Your dad was inspirational.”
When he left, my nurse appeared and got me ready to depart. I told her I was concerned I might have an accident on my way home, as it was a 2-and-a-half-hour journey. So, I asked if she could provide me with an adult diaper. It was a humiliating request, as it made me wonder if they were going to become habitual, as they had with you in the end, after you became incontinent from a persistent UTI. For the last eight months of your life, I needed to put a diaper on you at night and then took it off in the morning because your hands had become too frail to pull the plastic tabs on the side open. I remember how apologetic and shamed you were if the bed became wet with urine, in the night.
In the mornings, when I changed your diaper, I’d place it into a rubbish bag and then hand you a face cloth soaked in warm water to wash down your genitals, followed by a towel to dry yourself off. Afterwards, I helped you dressed and then finished by placing your shoes on your feet and tying them.
You hated that I had to dress you, “I am a fucking mannequin being dressed for the shop window.” It’s because today is the big sale, and they need the handsomest dummy on display. “Piss off,” you responded in good but irritated humour, and then stood up by using your walker as support.
After the nurse left, I gathered up my belongings, put them in my overnight bag, and walked out of the room. There were no porters, so I was just told to find my way out. I wondered lost along the hospital corridors feeling faint. I was like the ancient mariner wanting to tell the tale of what I had seen and just experienced. But no one paid heed to me stumbling around looking for an exit to the outside.
When I walked out of the hospital, it was raining and fell onto my head and face with the gentleness of kisses. My friend pulled up into the patient pick up line with her passenger van. Before picking me up she scrubbed down her vehicle with Lysol like she was a murderer who wanted to remove all DNA traces from the scene of the crime.
I climbed into the back seat of the van. As she pulled out of the hospital entrance onto Mount Pleasant Avenue, I began to whimper. I was overwhelmed. I had too many thoughts and feelings banging around in my head. While on the ward, I put on a brave face. I knew others were worse off than me, and it helped my initial healing to think I was as stoical, as you, mum, or Peter, were in the face of your own deadly health issues.
But alone in the car, it struck me how close I was to death. I sobbed because last time you didn’t make it home from the hospital as I did. I knew I was going home to recuperate, and if I could skirt becoming infected with covid, I had a chance of surviving for at least a few more years. My friend tried to be consoling and said, “don’t cry, it’s all over.” But I knew it was far from over, and it was only starting for me and everyone else because of the Coronavirus.
During that long drive home to my apartment, my raw wounds ached. The highway was desolate. Everything about Toronto, its suburbs, satellite cities and country towns far from it looked forlorn. We were coming into spring, but to me, we were going into a time of ending. I saw no new promising beginnings ahead for me or the world.
As always, thanks you for reading. Your subscriptions to Harry’s Last Stand keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith alive and me housed. Take Care, John What you have just read is a sample from my unpublished memoir about my dad, me, our family, his last stand and me dealing with cancer after his death during a global pandemic.