I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression (16 page)

“Really, madam,” he said, “I am only a sneeze doctor. Don’t make trouble.”

How insulting could you be to a doctor whose stethoscope is made out of tinker toys?

Besides, these experiences in a doctor’s office are vignettes compared to the drama of a hospital visit.

After every hospital stay, I experience a gnawing sensation that sends giddy tingles up and down my spine.

I have the feeling it is only a matter of time until hospitals go the way of zoos: they will lock up all the visitors and let the patients/or animals roam free.

I base this on a recent experience in the hospital, at
which time there were more tourists roaming around my room than there were in Rome during Easter week.

Just for the record, I made note of the people ministering to my needs:

A fledgling pathology worker who kept thrusting a hypodermic needle into an orange and mumbling to himself, “I think I got the hang of it now.”

A farsighted candy-striper who was arranging two rosebuds in a specimen vial.

A visiting clergyman who wanted to pray with me.

A dietitian engaging in an in-depth dialogue with me on why I did not eat the Tomato Surprise.

Three neighbors who were having a heated discussion on who was legally responsible for my expiration if I should fall out of bed.

An intern who was lost.

And an assortment of workers who were specialists in their respective fields: window-sill wiper, under-the-bed duster, sheet smoother, mail deliverer, pillow fluffer, bed-raiser supervisor, water-pitcher captain, boy paper carrier, milk-and-cracker foreman, and pulse-and-temperature recorder.

Any minute I expected to hear Ben Grauer announce that in sixty seconds, the big ball would fall from the New York
Times
Building and it would indeed be another New Year.

The Woodstock atmosphere not only slows down a patient’s recovery, it often turns the “sickee” into a totally different personality. I have seen shy, introverted women enter a hospital who were too embarrassed to say the word pregnant (when they were). Two weeks of hospital routine and they were whipping up and down the halls like wood nymphs dressed only in a table napkin and an ID bracelet. (I once discovered myself discussing my irregularity with a TV repairman I had never seen before in my life.)

The very idea of locking up the help and the visitors and letting the patients run the hospital captures my imagination. I get some kind of a thrill just thinking about standing in front of the cage occupied by my night nurse, Mrs. Needles. I would wait until I saw signs of her deep breathing. Then I would rattle the cage vigorously. When that didn’t rouse her, I would thrust my flashlight into her face, put my arm inside, grab her by the throat and shout into her exposed ear, “Mrs. Needles!
Mrs. Needles!
Will you need something tonight to help you sleep?”

In my imagination, I have dreamed of an entire section devoted to visiting birds. I know a lot of strange birds who deserve to be visited back.

The Good News Warbler:

She’s the gem who sits at your sickbed and informs you that while you are flat on your back your children are under the close scrutiny of the welfare department, your dog wandered off, possibly to die, she hasn’t seen your car since they towed it home, and your husband is finding solace with a person who is well. (She will mention how your hair reminds her of Elliott Gould.)

The Long-Winded Mean-Mouth Thrush:

This is the well-meaning visitor who can’t make it to the hospital in person, so she calls you on the telephone and talks … and talks … and talks. There is no way to get her off the line.

“As I was telling Frank just the other day.…” she rambles.

“I am having labor pains three minutes apart, Delores,” I venture, “I have to hang up now.”

“Wait a minute,” she says, “did I tell you what Leroy brought home from camp. This’ll tear out your stitches.”

“The doctor is here now, Delores. He wants to take out something.”

“Hang on a minute,” she says irritably, covering the
mouthpiece. Later she returns and says, “Leroy is bugging me. He wants to know if he can have a soft drink. I swear all that sugar is going to rot his teeth.”

“Can I call you back, Delores?” I ask feebly. “I’m beginning to black out now.”

“Well, don’t,” she commanded, “until I tell you about Bernie’s garage sale.”

The Bungling Loony Bird:

I can hardly wait to call on this rare species when she’s in custody. She’s the wrongo who can’t do anything right. She never comes to the hospital empty-handed. There’s a bag of caramels for the toothless; cookies for the diabetic; pizza for the gall-bladder recoverer; roses for the allergy sufferer, and a book on ice hockey for the new mother.

The AMA Crested Warbler:

Whatever you’ve got, the AMA Crested Warbler knew someone on a soap opera with the same thing who had to be written out of the script.

A civilian, she is virtually in love with the drama of the hospital and will perch for hours on your bed taking your pulse and quoting from old aspirin bottles.

The Loitering Bedside Hawk:

This is the bird who arrives in time for hospital breakfast and never knows when to go home. She is usually someone you have known for about two weeks. Once you have ascertained you look rotten, you pursue such breathless-making subjects as What outdoor scene are you going to pick for your next checkbook? Does Tom Jones wear lifts in his shoes and should the government control the sale of fireworks?

The Swift-Tailed “Caught Cha”:

This is the species that swoops through your door in moments that would at the very least be called “inopportune.”

When you are lying flat on your back with your sheet
off, trying to pull your gown over your hipbone, the door will crash open—and it’s Caught Cha.

When you have a compact mirror trained on your backside to see if the last shot administered left a crater in your skin, a draft of air will herald the Caught Cha.

The Bluebird of Happiness:

For obvious reasons, I have saved my visit to my doctor until last, as timing is of the essence.

I would visit my doctor only when he is bathing in a saucepan with one arm balancing the soap and washcloth and the other clutching a wet sheet to his body.

Then I would hover over his breakfast tray and with a look of horror point to a mound of white and gasp, “What is that?” Finally, I would fight my way through the crowds of people around his bed and before parting toss a humorous little one-liner over my shoulder like, “Get some rest.”

Looking back, I realized now that I married too young, but when you’re forty-three and in love, who can tell you anything?

The transition from typewriter to toilet bowls is never an easy one. I always wondered if someone ran an ad in the New York
Times:
WANTED
: Household drudge, 140 hour week, no retirement, no sick leave, no room of own, no Sundays off. Must be good with animals, kids and hamburger. Must share bath, would 42 million women still apply?

Every day my husband returns to his lair and asks mechanically, “What kind of a day did you have today?”

Resentment caused me to turn on him the other day and ask, “What kind of a day did you think I had?”

He grabbed a pencil and began to write. The result was headed:

ERMA’S DAY

“Well,” he said triumphantly, “did I miss anything?”

“Yes,” I said, “when you are asleep, I run out and move the car seat up under the steering wheel so your legs will cramp.”

“You know,” he said, “the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that someday women will be replaced by automation.”

On that thought I went to bed only to dream that my husband ran away with my modern kitchen and was living in sin with it in an apartment in New Jersey.

“What kind of wife is this?” I asked, storming into his room without knocking.

“The best kind,” he said. “When I come home, Phyllis, the electric cocktail stirrer, has a drink for me; Iris, the oven, has hot hors d’oeuvres on her shelf; Evelyn, the broiler, has a steak going; Margaret, the electric percolator, has fresh, hot coffee brewing; Roberta, the stereo, has soft music going; and when I am finished, Bertha, the disposer does away with my leftovers neat and tidy.”

“You’re not being fair,” I sobbed.

“Oh, but I am. Elsa, the dishwasher, never grabs my plate out from under me before I am finished. And Toni, the refrigerator, works day and night to keep me in ice cubes.”

“You’re pretty cute, aren’t you?” I said. “But what about your laundry?”

“Meet the twins, Shirley and Selma. Shirley washes my clothes to perfection. Never have I had to wear pink underwear or use faded peach handkerchiefs. And Selma, God love her, dries my clothes smooth and knows enough to keep her lint trap shut when I am tired.”

“What’s that dinging?” I asked.

“It’s Iris, reminding me my Baked Alaska is ready. Isn’t she a treasure?”

“So were the Dead Sea Scrolls,” I said dryly.

“You’re jealous,” he smiled.

“Who me? Ridiculous. I just wondered who is going to warm your feet on a cold winter night and pick up after you?”

“No sweat,” he said. “Meet Caroline, my electric blanket, and Jeanine, my electric broom.”

“But who listens to your problems and laughs at your jokes?”

“I’ve got Sophie, a portable tape recorder, and Bunny, a cassette of warm, soft laughter. Really, my dear, you are wasting your time here. What could I possibly have with a real, live wife that my girls cannot do with maddening efficiency?”

I shook him suddenly out of a sound sleep.

“If you wanted a girl with a clock in her navel, why didn’t you marry one?” I shouted.

See what I mean? Not for a minute do men appreciate the frustrations … the futility … the loneliness … the decisions we make in a single day.

To begin with, there is no such thing as a simple household chore. All of them have built-in aggravations.

Take the laundry. I wish you would.

My washer is on a new tack.

For years, it has seen fit to eat one sock out of every pair I have fed into it. Oh, I questioned it at first, but
after a while everyone adjusted. They would put a cast on one leg, or a bicycle clamp around their trouser cuff or laugh nervously and say, “Good heavens, one sock
is
brown and the other one pale blue, isn’t it?”

Three weeks ago, my washer did a reversal. It gave birth to a pair of men’s briefs. They did not look familiar to me, but then, I get a little behind sometimes and have been known to stumble onto navel bands in pre-soak. (The baby is thirteen.)

For starters, I put the briefs on my thirteen-year-old’s stack of laundry. He came down early the next morning and asked, “Where’s a belt? My shorts keep falling down.”

“Don’t be funny,” I said. “Put them in your brother’s drawer.”

The sixteen-year-old came out the next morning and said, “Where’s a belt?”

“Give them to your father,” I said dryly.

My husband said, “They aren’t mine. They’ve got elastic in them. I haven’t owned a pair with new elastic in years.”

I figured out they had to belong to a friend of my son’s who had just spent a few weeks with us, so I put them in an envelope and mailed them to Ohio. We received them back within a week with a note attached. “These are wonderful for showing home movies on but somewhere there must be someone walking around who needs them. They aren’t ours.”

I sent them to my father who also spent a few weeks with us. He called long distance to say if this was his birthday present, would I please exchange them for the right size.

The shorts became an obsession with me. Where did they come from? Where had they been? Was there an anxious mother somewhere looking into her washer and saying, “Is that all there is?”