Welcome back to timid normality, Max. Sounds bracing, despite your cares, the company you found. The post-
op tram trip heroic.
Bill
On Wed, Dec 4th, 2013 at 12:45 PM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Home After Three Nights Away
>
> Release from hospital - euphoric
> even after only three nights.
> Going there by tram felt right,
> submitting to the big machine.
>
> Getting wheeled in to the cheery
> anesthetist and succumbing...
> stirring later wondering when
> will the surgeon do his stuff?
>
> He'd done it. First night after,
> with lower body numbness and -
> one's first-ever catheter -
> felt hard, but in the other beds
>
> were chaps taking it harder.
> General admiration of nurses.
> Next day was the lowest,
> too dim to chat when she arrives,
>
> the beloved, with the daily paper
> and chocolate, my laptop
> and her smile. Taking a walk
> round the ward carrying gear
>
> seemed out of the question.
> But appetite returns, restlessness;
> a slow walk-about is tried
> wrapped in one's old kimono
>
> (exclaimed at by old Tim -
> he who was in the army the day
> Pearl Harbour was bombed,
> and then Darwin; lordy, such
>
> old-style rural drawl he and his wife
> and son commune in, like Dad
> and Dave in the old wireless show).
> Rob, opposite, is up to a walk,
>
> so we go together, we discover
> our New Zealand background
> and stories. Never buy the franchise
> for the cafe at the Rotorua Airport.
>
> Once the catheter is out (ouch),
> a timid normality resumes,
> the nurses with their checking
> bring steady reassurance.
>
> Fancy hospital food being appetising!
> Fancy the air-con being stuck on Cool.
> Fancy the lovely variety of nurses;
> the big windows showing Melbourne
>
> at its spring best. Old Tim has been
> in agony, now he's telling me Look,
> lovely women walking past. And -
> country hick he ain't! a local man,
>
> same house for sixty years, same job,
> waterworks, for forty. Well, Rob
> and I, our waterworks fixed, can
> leave. Good luck, Tim. I feel so good
>
> I skip the cab rank, take a tram clanking
> home. Slowly up the birch walk.
> Buzz, buzz. It's me, dear, slowly up
> the stairs, so happy to be home with you.
>
>
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