Within the past 15 minutes, I have heard my roommate push the nurse call button four times because she wants to take a shower and the nurses have not arrived quickly enough for her. She had called about getting prepped for a shower earlier, but when they arrived, her breakfast had arrived and she didn’t want it to get cold, so she sent them away and they promised they would come back. As soon as she was done with breakfast, she started calling, drumming her fingernails on the arm of her chair as her impatience increased.
Now it has been five times. They arrived. She is now appeased.
I have been cold in my hospital room for the past few days, because my side of the room has a constant cold breeze coming from the corner of the room. It’s as if all the ghosts of people who have died in this hospital are put through a tube and funneled through this vent and graze me with a cold spectral finger as they pass. (Or, you know, if there were a cold breeze in your room.) When I ask for the heat to be turned up, she complains because she’s too hot. I finally got them to sneak the heat up last night and was snug and warm when she awoke and complained that it was too hot and she wouldn’t be able to go to sleep. I woke up a few hours later freezing and raided the blanket warmer for more blankets. (To be fair, I love the temperature hot and like my thermostat set somewhere just shy of Bikram yoga studio all winter.)
Now she calls and waits for her bed to be changed, as if we are in a luxury hotel and not a cancer hospital. Tap-tap-tap go the nails. She calls two to three times.
As you know, my body is trying to poop itself to death because of the hormones created by the tumors, and I’m actually dangerously close to losing this battle right now despite the supplements and the IV fluids. It’s pretty gross. The doctors observed this past week that it’s a very poor quality of life. With some tincture of opium here (not covered by my insurance for outpatient use), I at least don’t have nightly accidents. I can’t tell you how much human dignity that has returned to me simply by not waking up in a wet diaper every time I fall asleep.
I have to collect my “output” in buckets in the bathroom, as does she. It’s not pleasant, and you have to call to have the nurses record your output and dispose of it. It happens pretty often, because I’m so sick. I always remember to call, but yesterday, I forgot, once. She made an angry call to the nurses’ station about the “filthy” bathroom. I apologized and she begrudgingly accepted.
Then the dam broke. It’s that small thing that causes all the pent-up anger and sadness to flow freely and rush out. I spend a lot of time cleaning up after myself, and it’s not easy because I don’t feel well. It’s embarrassing and disgusting and I hate this so much. I didn’t expect to have to wear a diaper to bed every night shortly after turning 40. I spent an hour yesterday afternoon crying bitter, angry tears, about why I am here, someone who is literally full of crap. I sometimes feel like I am more of a burden than anything. She is staying an extra day because she wants an extra day of recovery after her Whipple, the procedure I had done a few years ago. I resent her for being able to make that choice, for having the luxury of an insurance policy that will allow that, for being able to go home at all when my future here is so uncertain and dependent on the diarrhea that just won’t clear up because of the spreading tumors.
I have devoted at least an hour to disliking her. I even hate her now as she calls someone on the phone and her demeanor shifts to her public-facing one. I’ve made terrible judgements about her and am irritated with her very presence. I have assigned her crimes that I can’t even prove. For example, the therapy dog did not arrive yesterday, and I’m convinced that she told them not to send a therapy dog to the room because she is allergic to dogs, even though it would be only on my side and would be a hypoallergenic dog. I have the chorus to Tori Amos’ “Waitress” (a song I haven’t thought about in years) stuck in my head.
How did I get to this hateful ugly place? Last night, as I huddled beneath my extra blankets, I wondered if she had become symbolic of the cancer for me. Something/someone who put things outside of my control. An entity that is never happy with a little bit, but wants it all, and now. A constant, unwanted presence. The stronger she feels, the more she wants and the less she is satisfied. I have assigned her the traits of my cancer and have made her a manifestation of my disease when she is just a woman, like me, making her way through a terrible and scary situation. I don’t know who she is at all, and this post reflects on the type of person I am, and I don’t know if I like it.
I hold up an image of her and use it as a mirror. People have been so kind to me and done so much to cheer me up and make me feel better, and sometimes I worry it’s wasted on me and that I don’t deserve it. I worry that my public face and the voice I write in for this blog isn’t the real me. It’s often ugly. Sometimes only a few people hear the bitterness and anger and panic that I regularly vent and they see only the best self I can present. Now I am trying to accept that my roommate is not a bad person, but just another person whose patience and courage is being tested by this disease. Yet another part of me just wants to wheel my IV pole to her side of the room and smack her upside the head with a pillow. Someone recently sent me When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Buddhist nun Pema Chodron, and so far, the thing I most relate to most is from her pre-monk life, when her husband cheats on her and she picks up a fistful of gravel and throws it at him. (I would have chosen a boulder.)
She is demanding, but she does not deserve the hate I’ve projected her way. This blog was a way to drain my venom from my fangs. I don’t hate her; I hate this situation. I am angry at the cancer. She goes home tomorrow. I am slated for a tumor embolization, but I’m worried my tumors won’t be so easily dispatched.
Still, someone suggested that while she is asleep, I “allow all the dogs in.” I enjoy the mental image of a pack of dogs just outside our room. I open the door and a scene ensues like the Bumpuses’ dogs in A Christmas Story as she stands, apoplectic, in the doorway.