Nobody Listens
to You
by Jerry Robbins
An important
lesson that I have learned about senior life is
that although I may say a lot most of it is not
heard by anybody. I learned this
lesson in the operating room of a hospital. I
was in the hospital for an errant heart, one that
would not keep regular 4-4 time, but
insisted on slipping into a cha-cha now and then.
Actually, it (my heart) was not involved in a
pussyfooting dance but a full blown case of
chronic atrial fibrillation. "They"
were going to try to "shock" me back
into regular rhythm.
Here's the
picture, they were going to hook electrodes up to
my body and zap me with untold amounts of
electricity. And I signed up for that? In fact,
it was a regulated amount of zap, so why should I
be concerned? Well, to help me be
unconcerned, they gave me a sedative, a shot of
valium, in fact. This was intended to
calm me down before they gave me the
"gas" that would put me out.
The valium was
gggggreat. Indeed, I was happy as a drunken
sailor on leave. "Bring it on," I
stammered in my drunken glee. And that was just
the beginning. I wanted to know the
names of all the nurses, the
anethesiologist, the orderlies and the janitor on
duty. "Oh, You just got back from your lunch
break at Reese's Bar and Grill? You
had how many drinks?”
I wanted to
sing the National Anthem. "Everyone
join in now." And I did and they
didn't. That was the first clue to the fact that
they had already tuned me out. All the flurry of
white uniforms around me, all the
attention to procedure, and me right
in the middle, but no one was listening to
me. I might as well have been on the moon
which the drug had already led me to suspect was
the case. All these white aliens around me, who
could certainly learn from me, and no one was
paying the least bit of attention to me.
I told them
about my latest race in which I got
into atrial fib. "It was the hill
at the end." I told them about
the regimen I was on that was supposed to restore
my rhythm. I told them about what was
wrong with the state, the university, and
the country. I told them how much I loved
everyone of them... All good stuff, and not one
comment. They were either recovering from their
three-beer lunch, or they were being polite, or
they hadn't heard a word I'd said.
Later in the
recovery room, my wife congratulated me on the
successful outcome. I confided in her, "I
saw one of them actually trip and pull a wire out
of the monitor machine. They know what they are
doing, but they are not particularly friendly. They
know where all the equipment is but
they have lost the patient. How can
they run a first-class operation like that? I was
lucky to get out of there alive."
"I'm
sorry, what did you say, dear?" my wife said.
Parting Shot:
"Talk low, talk slow, and don't say too much.”
John Wayne
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