Observations, translated…
People are putting on shows all over the places, but, the expressions of real emotions, now that, would be, a rarity. If the patient is mistaken, into believing, that this or that person is, disclosing real emotions, then, it would be fine. There are those who are blessed, for being dim-witted. And, if the patient is clear in mind, and cared a lot, then, s/he would be in trouble. Watching this person, putting on a show in front of another person, the majority of the patients can only, go along with what’s going on…
- The patients may be able to get off of their beds and move about and around, or not, but, so long as their minds are still lucid, then, they would have the best views, and experienced everything that’s going on around them to the fullest extent. In multiple ways, the patients are different, than the normal populations, like two small pieces of the puzzles that didn’t fit into the big pictures, but belonging, to an entirely different puzzle. Or maybe, they would get surprised themselves: how they can now, easily observe what was going on in the wards, that they could’ve missed out on, for the decades that went by their sides from before. Whether or not they are willing, they’d trained themselves to be turned into observant students, and quickly, absorbed the knowledge that came to them.
The near-dying patients, should be the students who made the highest grades. The knowledge that came to them may be vast and deeply impressive, and it may be hard, for them to accept, they are, entirely, helpless, and can only tremble, as they face it. But no matter what, death, will have its rewards.
What, would be the rewards from death? The living wouldn’t know. There are, rarely anything, that the living, would know.
- Once, there was, a woman who lived up in the mountains who owned a fruit plantation in the bed next to mine. She’d entered into the hospital by herself, and, for the first three days, nobody came to visit with her, there were, only, a handful of her neighbors who came. By the evening of the fourth day, at dusk, a well-groomed middle-aged man entered, called her, “mom”, then, he’d, explained her condition to her, “what you have is called rhabdomyolysis. Because of the damages in the muscles, the agents that were released after the muscle damages got into the bloodstream, and chemicals like myosin, becoming too concentrated, and, it’d caused damages to the kidneys, causing kidney failure, but, if the concentration was not high, then, one would usually heal up in just a couple of days. The primary treatment methods include, intravenous injections………”
His mother opened up her eyes wide, and, kept saying, “oh!” but, she probably didn’t understand those medical terms, so other than keep on saying “oh!”, there’s no other way she can respond. After the middle-aged man finished explaining, he’d listed out a number of things she needed to watch out for, hoped that his mother would follow the rules strictly, so she can make her full recovery. He’d continued talking for ten more minutes. The woman lay on the bed, opened her eyes wide, didn’t dare change her lying position, like the bottles, the chopsticks by her bedside stand, for over ten minutes.
not my photograph…
3.
It’s truly, difficult, to watch those who are taking care of their aging and ailing loved ones, there’s, a mixture of emotions including sadness, anger, regret. And, these can only be known, by the close loved ones who are looking after their ill loved ones. Getting older is a road of no return, the final destination being death. And, on the way, the elderly will deteriorate by the day, and it can only get worse and worse, not just in the body, but also, in the mind too. The elderly are normally very stubborn, easily angered, fragile, and especially when they’d fallen ill, and those family members who were accompanying them became the scapegoats of their negative emotions. And, it’s also possible, that one day, they’d become, completely demented, and completely, being rid of, the rules of this world, but the family members who loved them are still bound. The members of the family need to continually playing the roles of the offspring, and take care of the elderly that’s no longer reasonable.
The woman I bumped into in the pharmacy who took care of her demented mother. She’d blamed herself, felt, that she’d not done enough, as her mother fell and died. Her self-blame is probably real, because she’d not needed, to disclose so much about her life to me, and she got all emotional, as she talked to me about it.
not my photo…
She has a younger brother and two younger sisters. Based off of what I could gather, they’re all, very busy, couldn’t take care of the mother. Would those three siblings blame themselves? Not very likely. Even if they would, then, that sort of self-blame would still not be the real kind, as they’d never, gone through the real process of caring, all of those huge or miniscule things, that time period that started, morphing. They’d lacked, the ingredients, for self-blames.
4.
There’s the freedom of time from the regular wards, the visitors can stay as long as they wished. But, before going to visit someone in the hospital, the visitors had already, mapped out the time they are to spend in the hospitals. An elderly woman who’d entered and exited the hospital ward once told me, “Forty minutes!”, she said, although the guests are of different statuses, or may not know one another, but, they’d become so in-synch in the time spent in the room. If the time is too short, then, there would be this lack of honesty and goodwill; too long, they themselves can’t handle it, and, their true selves would, certainly show.
In the forty minutes’ time, those who brought a child along is the wisest. She said, that children are a multi-purpose tool in any sort of situation, they can help the time pass by quicker. As forty minutes are up, the visitor would find a reason, get up, then, the most widely used phrase was, “You rest up now”, or, “We should let you rest”, then, make their escapes.
not my picture…
5.
One of the worst things that can happen after you checked into a hospital ward is having a very selfish roommate. Some of the patients—no matter what they may have, they’d needed the television on at all times, as if, having the television on, is more important, than any forms of treatment procedures. For these individuals, the television that stood idol is too much of a temptation to resist, comparable to that of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. They’d needed, to hold on to the remote, chose the channels, and, adjust the sound volumes. Even if they were taken out temporarily, like for X-rays, ultrasound scans, or something else, the television will stay on. With this sort of a patient as roommate, one can only blame one’s own bad luck. The Buddhist would say, that it’s a bad affinity from a previous lifetime, that’s returned, to collect; and those who are richer can make up some reason, and transfer to a single-patient room.
6.
There is, drama that constantly filled up the wards, like those primetime soaps. But, the former being real-life, so there’s, more hidden and unclear. Everybody has the ability to act, the skills to perform is not at all, limited, to just the actors and actresses. Doctors, nurses, nurse’s aides, foreign caretakers, families, visitors, everybody enters from the hospital wards, walked over to their locations, speak, act, make their exits off the scenes. Those who complained aren’t necessarily bad, and those who spoke mild and gently may not have the kindness. The real mixed with the falsities, layered, one on top the next, there are, always, this opaqueness about it, hardly ever transparent. Just like the lyrics, “I can’t get you, just as you don’t understand me”.
There’s shows everywhere, but, to find real emotions, that’s really difficult. If the patients became mixed up, and mistook this person or that as being genuine, it would be fine. Those who are scatterbrained are blessed by their not knowing. But, if the patient is clear in the mind, then, it would be troublesome. Watching this person or that, putting on a show before oneself, the patients mostly just, went along with it. As the actors made their exits, the ward became, quiet again. And, if you, listened close, to this silence, you can hear, the ruptures, of the internal organs.
7.
The nurses’ aides have a twelve-hour shift, there are usually, two to three people per shift, in charge of everybody on this floor. They normally are not highly educated, and, the subjects of their discussion usually revolved around money, then, children, traveling, and, matters of love. They are overseen by the nurses’ stations, and, they oversee the foreign bedside assistants, as well as the private nurse’s aides.
Some of these nurses’ aides had been working for over a decade, they’d seen enough sickness. After they’d become more familiar with the situations, they would say, “puked again, it’s not good.” Or, “If you drank more cranberry juices, you need to watch out when you go to the bathrooms”, their work is hard, in a twelve-hour shift, they rarely get any resting time.
A small number of them, maybe because of their seniority, or perhaps, they’d bore witness to many tragic things, they would contemplate on the basic of problems, to the point, of nothing can bother them again. It’s just, I’d found, that that sort of freedom from experience, is close to craziness. And, in order to avoid going crazy or having to deal with the emptiness all the time, a lot of them turned to religions, some made up their minds, to make more money.
not my photo…
8.
The following, is my personal experiences in the hospital wards:
The elderly woman is eighty, she’s hospitalized because of a urinary tract infection, there was a foreign hired bedside assistant named, Didi, looking after her. She has a son, rarely comes back, her daughter-in-law, had never shown. Everything about her—feeding, meds, turning her over, wiping baths, using the bathrooms—all done by Didi.
Like all the foreign hired helps, Didi has a smartphone. And because her employer rarely showed, and the elderly woman was immobilized, Didi can use her cell phone anytime she wanted to. In the hospital wards, she would keep herself under strict watch, after all, there were, nurses, caretakers, janitors, and other patients, the families, the visitors. But, after eight at night, she’d let go of all her reserves. She’d stopped talking on her cell, until the midnight hours.
Didi is in her forties, after her divorce, her daughter was placed under her custody. She’s probably looking to remarry again, the people she talked on the phones with at night are all men. One day I’d asked her, “who are you talking to?”, she’d replied, “My boyfriend, he’s working in Singapore”, after a few days, she’d told me, that her boyfriend in Kaohsiung is coming up to see her. How many boyfriends does she have? I never asked.
In the hospitals, Didi met several other foreign hired assistants. They’d introduced her to shop at a local Indonesian store. Once, she’d returned, very excited, showed me a set of bracelets. I’d first commented on how pretty they are, then, asked her how much she’d spent on it. She’d told me $6,000, my immediate reaction was, “How expensive!”, I’d apparently, offended her, with this scent of despise, said, “I’m returning to Indonesia next year, and I will sell it for even more, more than $6,000. The shop owner of the Indonesian store told me so.”
not my photo still…
9.
Here, is another incident:
The elderly woman was from northern China, seventy-five years-old, her cold became full-blown pneumonia. The elderly man arrives at the hospital at 9:30 in the morn, then, at noon, he’d taken the shuttle bus back home, in order to have someone to look after his wife when he wasn’t there, he’d hired a nurse’s aide.
This aide is sixty (or so she says), that she was once married, to a retired elderly veteran, that, was why she came to Taiwan. Her husband had his stomach removed by surgery, and only ate one dumpling each meal, but is still alive. Every noon and early in the evenings, she’d leave the ward for a bit, based off of what she’d told, she went home, to make the meals for her husband.
The elderly man is also, a retired veteran, shared the same home town of this foreign bedside caretaker, and so, that may be why they have so many thing to talk about, they’d traveled through space and time together, and, an entire morning doesn’t seem to be quite enough for them. The elderly woman, his wife also found out about this. One day at dusk, the elderly man went home, the nurse’s aide wasn’t there too, the elderly woman started speaking, more to herself, and, as if, to ask me, “They are so engaged in conversations? And tried on each other’s reading glasses too!”
That nurse’s aide once told, that her husband was in her nineties, can’t live that long anyways. The elderly woman replied back then, “Find another, you’re still, quite young.” The elderly woman is extremely kind, to the point, of, being too naïve (how can you be naïve, if you’re unkind?)
On the day of my release, I said goodbye to the elderly woman, told her, to get better soon. I’d wanted to tell her something else, but, I’d, bitten my own tongue. What right have I, to interfere? Plus, I may be wrong in my instincts and observations. I truly hope, that I am, mistaken.
So, you can see, so many thing, going on in this hospital, and it’s all, aside from the treatments of what people are there for, and, being in a hospital for a short stay, you get to observe how life and death plays out, so long as you’re not, a long-term resident yourselves.
Life, the Obstacle Course 