When I first went to the Los Angeles County Hospital for some tests after completing my Ph.D. program. I was quickly exposed to an environment run amuck. A significant part of the problem was language. The hospital was located on the poor side of Los Angeles, and was probably the only significant employer for miles around. Not only did many of the patients there not speak or understand English, but a very large part of the low-level staff effectively didn't appear to either (or at least their educational deficiency made it virtually impossible to communicate with them). I noticed that when the staff told a patient to sit down, and he asked "what" or otherwise did not seem to understand, it was immediately followed by "asiente se!", which got reaction.
I spent a day there trying to get some diagnostic tests done, and the doctors told me that it would take weeks to complete what I needed for diagnosis as an out-patient! They told me the only way to have it done efficiently was as an in-patient in the hospital. So I arranged to come as a perfectly healthy in-patient in the hospital for "observation". When I was admitted a few days later, I just sat there in bed in the hospital bed, dying for a little exercise, for almost 2 days. More than once I had told the nurse to "be sure the doctors know I'm here", to which she just replied "oh, they know you're here". But of course, as I suspected, and as was verified late the next day when the doctors finally learned I was there, they did not!
So, on the third day I was able to get all the diagnostic tests intended for a 1-day stay in the hospital. This included a very painful session of flourescence diagnostics in which my arms and legs were literally tied tightly to boards and a catherter was threaded up a vein in my leg to the brain, and a number of injections made to diagnose the response on a detector, all while I was conscious and being yelled at a couple of verbally abusive nurses. Well, as least now I was sick, and felt that I belonged in the hospital!
Several days after the tests were complete I came in for the surgery itself. The evening before surgery, after cutting my hair, they shaved my head so I was completely bald. A student nurse tried to start an IV on me, and began a toruous process when she could never reach the vein. Finally after a huge swelling appeared on the wrist, I strongly objected and insisted that she get someone who knew how to do it. AFter an argument, she finally got someone who quickly resolved the problem. When the pain subsided I fell asleep.
Early the next morning I remember being moved to the operating room, which struck me as a contrast much cleaner more attractive environment than the rest of the hospital, and starting to breathe the anesthesia. When I awoke it was the next morning and I was in bed with a very strange feeling in my head, and realized I was in intensive care and on the day after the operation. I learned that the operation had taken 8 hours! In that lengthy period they the surgeons were not able to remove all of the tumor right next to the optic nerve without a risk of damaging it. That of course meant I would have to have the surgery following by radiation treatment.
In the surgery the surgeons had drilled through my skull on the right-hand side of my upper forehead, then used a medication to shrink the size of my brain to allow them to access the pituitary gland and the large tumor that was pressing on my optic nerve. When I was describing this later to my brother-in-law Ed, a man with a definite sense of humor, he started laughing. I quickly pointed out that even after it was shrunk, it was still bigger than his!
In the intensive care room I was treated well (with the exception of one verbally-abusive nurse). When I was finally sent back to the ward several days later it was like a different world. There a major problem of both understaffing and what impressed me as a general lack of caring and coordination seemed to exist. I would often wake up dis-orientated, and I remember sometimes the clock above my bed appeared to be bent or distorted. The area I was in was necessarily kept at a colder temperature (around 65°), and I would often request a blanket. I seldom got it. Maybe the $400 a day they charged in the ward did not include blankets.
The surgical stay ended after a couple of weeks and returned home in a rather weak state. Test showed that serious deficiencies of 3 hormones either produced by or stimulated by the pituitary. Furthermore, I had diabetes insipidus and a virtually blind left eye. But on the bright side I slowly regained strength and the hair on my shaved head started to grow back out. That bright side lasted for 2-3 months, until I started about 10 weeks of radiation therapy. Given the fact that radiation beams were to be coming from 4 different directions to focus in the center on my pituitary tumor (a process for which I have coined the word "quadrangulation"), you might say that all sides were going to now be bright!
Preparation for the radiation treatment involved creating a mask that fit over my face, so they could mark precise positioning for the radiation beams on the mask rather than on my face (otherwise I would wear an inked target on my head for the next 8-10 weeks). Before being made aware of this objective, I suspected they might be trying to embalm my head!
Once radiation treatments started, every morning the nurse would try to line the mask, with me in it, up with the beam. Every time she moved the mask, it would no longer fit snugly over my face where it should, and so I would move so my face would be where it should be. That would get an immediate yell "Be still!" from the nurse. Of course if I stayed still, it would have done no good -- the mask would be lined up, but my face would not! I was the true target of the beam, not the mask, and if I was not in line, not only would be radiation miss the tumor, but it could hit my eyeballs and destroy the bulk of my vision that still remained!
After discussion with the nurse administering the radiation she soon appreciated the problem and we eventually worked out ways to achieve the task of aligning. However, her assistant seemingly never did appreciate the problem. She was just like a drill sergeant, barking out "Be still!" commands for several weeks of those treatments!
A few days after starting the radiation treatments I suddenly was unable to eat properly, despite being hungry. My sense of smell had already been messed up since an olfactory nerve was cut in the surgery, which had replaced my real sense of smell by strange ghost smells. Then, in the treatments the radiation was going through the part of the brain that controls smell and taste. Thus these ghost smells became much fouler and much stronger (becoming more like foul ghost tastes, several of which reminded me of foul-smelling rubber and tar), and left me in a state of recurring nausea. I could not stand to eat many foods because their tastes were either overpowered by or just a tiny bit similar to the foul ghost tastes.
Daily I drove or took the bus very early in the morning down to the hospital, always in a state of nausea, to receive my dose of radiation under a marked mask. It was a state of living hell I went thru for 10 weeks. But I can now look on the bright side: it always gives me a reference state to compare to. When I am sick or things are going badly, I can look back with fondness and say, "Hey! They aren't THAT bad!"
These foul tastes continued for a while after I had completed the radiation treatments at the Los Angeles County Hospital, a place which I have ever since then viewed as a great place to avoid being sick at. I saved the radiation mask and took it home for a ritual burning, hoping to break free of those awful sensations and make a subsequent excape from the Los Angeles area. Finally, a few weeks later I started to get more pleasant ghost tastes coming back, and these engendered cravings. I would do things such as go to a restaurant and order about 5 bowls of soup!
I moved to Tennessee from California about that time, probably helped engender the impression to some locals that pretty strange people came from California! Since I taught classes at the University of Tennessee the next fall then left for Washington, DC less than a year later, I may have created a legend down there: a man from California with a Texas accent, a tough professor looking deceptively young that failed half of his class, and a weirdo that could really pack away that soup!
NEXT NEWSLETTER:
This article will be part of a forthcoming book Crockett is writing,
which should become available early next year. Short selections of it
will also appear in Christine Clifford's new book Cancer
Has Its Privileges . Crockett is available for public speaking on
"Enabling the Future".
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