After receiving my third skin graft on
the right side of my head, I went to get all of the bandages removed.
This time I wasn't in the fancy private hospital with the Scary Room
where they do all of these things, I was at a Social Security
Hospital where everyone is just crammed into the hallways, looking
like the walking wounded after some terrible man-made event, waiting
noisily for their turn. At the SS, the doctors are expected to see
one patient every seven minutes, chop chop, they are not allowed the
privacy or the time to be gentle and helpful as they are in the
private hospital. I am a big baby at the hospital. By some strange
coincidence the doctor I had had at the fancy private hospital was my
surgeon at this SS hospital for this repair on my scalp. He was doing
an internship on burn patients. I was very lucky because not only had
he operated on me 23 times before, we had developed sort of a rather
jolly relationship. As he went to remove the bandages I started to
wail and as he grabbed a likely looking bit of tape and began to pull
slowly I screamed all the louder with each and every pull. So he
looked at my daughter Amber, shrugged in an expressive and soulful
way, said “what the hell” and just went wrench! After
a moment's shocked silence I screamed so loud that doctors and
staff from all of the adjoining surgeries poured into the room to see
what was the problem. My Doctor, Javier, just looked cool and said
laconically “don't worry she is always like this” and they
departed with strange looks and troubled thoughts about this new
young doctor. He asked me if I had never had my legs waxed and I told
him no, so he said I had now. After he finished the curing of my
wounds he said to Amber and myself to be sure to say in a loud voice
as we were leaving the office: “ Well! Isn't he the best doctor you
have ever had, and so gentle?”.
We had lot of giggles together over the
years. He was the surgeon that often used to hold my hand when I went
to sleep on the operating table, remember 23 operations there, mostly
with him in attendance and then four more times with him again at the
state hospital before he had to return to his fancy practice at the
other place. After one surgery I remember he came in and said “so
that is how much you love me, as soon as you are asleep you let go of
my hand” At the beginning of the next operation when they were just
about to put me to sleep he held my hand as usual but this time I
brought out a tube of Super Glue and said that this time I wouldn't
let go. The whole thing was very funny, gallows’s humor perhaps,
obviously I couldn't use the glue – he needed his hands for
operating but we all had a good laugh.
