On Sunday night, I checked into Sirirat Government Hospital in Pinklao, Bangkok in preparation for surgery on Monday to remove scar tissue that prevented my right testicle from dangling normally. I laid in a hospital bed for a day eating pretty good hospital food and losing the hair I had between my belly-button and halfway-down my thigh thanks to the fine work of a nice ladyboy nurse who afterward invited me out for a drink and kissed me on the cheek. I met many different people who all asked me the same set of questions: What is your name? Do you speak Thai? How long have you stayed in Thailand? Where do you work? What is your major health complaint? Some of these questions were asked in Thai and were therefore difficult to answer. I could not even begin to explain my particular health issue because I have yet to be able to remember the word for testicle. When I explained the problem in English, I usually used some form of visual aid. I gave a friend two oranges and told her to hold them in each hand. Then I told her to swing the oranges back and forth. See, that's the way testicles normally work. I then asked her to hold the right orange higher than the left and to swing the left orange while the right orange remained relatively still. This model did not include many other vital parts of the scrotum, and thus failed to explain that the lack of free movement was causing dilated and tangled veins within my scrotum and that these too were painful. So instead of trying to explain the problem with fractured sentences and maddening hand gestures, I often just stood up and dropped my pants. This alarmed very few people as most of the nagging questioners were medical practitioners. From this viewpoint, they could easily see the left testicle hanging much lower than the right testicle and the dark varicose veins bulging from within the scrotum. I had the most difficulty with the Thai woman who wanted my family history (I struggled direly to explain the concept of an economist with my lacking Thai vocabulary) and the anesthesiologist who explained a spinal block and its effects in Thai. The conversation with the anesthesiologist necessitated a phone call to my girlfriend because spinal blocks are scary.
At night, you could see the lights of boats on the Chao Phaya river from the window next to my hospital bed. It was beautiful.
On Monday, nurses woke me up at 5 a.m., checked my temperature and blood pressure, and temporarily left me to my own devices only to cheat me of several more good hours of sleep with regular temperature and blood pressure checks. The same process of questioning from the previous day began again. The work shifts had changed so that there were now all new nurses and student doctors to ask the same questions that I had answered several different times with several other nurses and student doctors. Two or three times, these people traveled in packs and I was pushed into dropping my pants for a large group. I believe the experiences at this time have made it much easier for me to expose myself to others in the future, however, I do not think this is a socially-acceptable life skill.
At around 11 a.m., I was finally wheeled down to the surgical ward, and left on a bed in a cold room next to others on beds waiting to go into surgery. There was also one cradle with a crying infant. I waited restlessly for an hour until finally it was my turn to enter the OR and be transferred to the operating table under large pancake-shaped lamps. There were mild beeps, but I couldn't make a tune from it a la that old Levi's Commercial with "Tainted Love". The surgical staff was friendly and light-hearted. We had some trouble understanding each other when they wanted me to curl into a ball on my side so they could stick the spinal block needle into my lower back, but they gave a cheer when I figured it out. Then they stuck me, and it hurt. They gave me a mild sedative and put up a blue screen between me and where the actual surgery was performed. I complained about this for a while to the nurse. She laughed at me. I became bored and fell asleep.
When I awoke, I was being wheeled away from the OR and into another cold room where others lay on beds. This time, I had lost feeling entirely in my legs. I struggled half-halfheartedly (knowing that it was pointless) to wiggle my left toe, but there was no response from it or feeling that it was there. From the waist down, my body was stony and cold. I could feel the hard skin of my legs but could not feel the muscles beneath. I became mildly frightened by this and impatient at being stuck in another waiting room with no information whatsoever about the results of the surgery. For all I knew, it had gone well. I could see that I still had testicles. I assumed that things were successful from that alone. I leaned up and down trying to look for someone to ask, but none of the faces in that waiting room were the same as ones in surgery. Finally, I was taken back to the general ward where I stayed before. In an hour or so, I began to be able to move my feet and then slowly the use of my legs came back, and, finally, after seven hours, I was even able to empty my bladder. The return of feeling also brought a lot of pain and discomfort as my right testicle swelled and the surgical scar in the side of it hurt any time I tried to move in any direction. Families came to see other patients staying in my general ward, and I felt stupid for having surgery done in a foreign country where I knew of few people I could ask to visit me in the hospital. I had very little to fill my time but Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (which I'm disappointed to say is more of a dime novel than an interesting way to look at culture shock) and my view of a bridge over the Chao Phaya. In the morning the bridge had few cars and they moved quickly. In the afternoon, the cars were backed up and struggled to move inches forward. Thirty minutes before lights out and when I had managed to stand to brush my teeth before sleeping, my girlfriend arrived and I felt very soothed by the company of a person I could understand and be understood by easily. She left soon after, taking the keys to my apartment with her.
At night, I could not sleep. I tossed and turned the little I could. The pain in my testicles and my back (strained from the awkward exercises needed to perform simple tasks like drinking water or putting food in my mouth) prevented me from sleeping on my side as I am accustomed. A sick old man had also entered the ward, and he tossed and turned more ferociously, complaining loudly after great phlegm-filled coughing fits. I could not sleep. I hated him, but hated myself for my lack of sympathy. He stared me in the eyes and I think he begged for relief, but as I could not fully understand him or walk to actually help him, I just reached for the button to call the nurses. They came in before I had a chance to press it though, and seemed to yell at him until he calmed down. It was 3:30 a.m. I got barely an hour of sleep before the same nasty nurse who yelled at the old man demanded I sit up to take an antibiotic. Bitter and sleep-deprived as I was, I rebelled and took it lying down.
I was stirred from sleep several more times by blood-pressure checks, temperature checks, and packs of nurses. My doctor finally showed up and gave me the news that the surgery was successful. The scar was removed and dilated veins relieved. I was warned against sex for a week, which was a better estimate than previous by three weeks. My girlfriend arrived an hour or so later and I again felt grateful for her presence even though she teased me so mercilessly I threatened to leave her for a cute nurse. I was even more grateful to her because she got the ball rolling on getting me out of the hospital. For some reason, they insisted I go myself to pay the bill, so my girlfriend and I walked shuffling step by shuffling step (well, she can walk normally) to the elevator then I shuffled more, confused as to where to pay, and all of this in a surgical gown surrounded by many well-dressed police officers, doctors, and visitors ambling more gracefully. At the same time, my mother called me furious that I had not kept her informed. I apologized and promised to call her later, took care of the bill, and headed back upstairs. After a long explanation of how I should take care of myself at home, the nurse asked me for my e-mail so that she could take English lessons with me.
I grabbed my stuff, shuffled downstairs, luckily was able to grab a taxi mere yards from the elevator (although to me they were much longer), and headed home to my bed. I slept soundly, free of distraction from nurses, hospital administrators who never introduced themselves or their position, student doctors, and other sick patients. Unfortunately, the surgery caused my testicles to swell to the size of a tennis ball and become hard as a turtle’s shell, so I had yet to fully recover from my first surgical experience, but the worst seemed to be over. The doctors gave me a week off from work, and in watching John Goodman HBO’s “Treme,” I was inspired to stop forcing individuals to read about my life in dastardly long e-mails, and instead give anyone the chance to read about my life by putting it on a blog. And so, “No News Means No Bad News” began.
Take it easy, 9 to 5 cowboys and cowgirls
-Sean
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