SURGERY FOR THE IGNORANT
God bless University of Iowa health clinics, but I just remembered one of the most bizarre times I went there. In and out surgery to uncross those eyes. I was thirteen. I overheard what I could, but they just did not tell me much beyond that. When I was 18 months old, my mother tells me it took three nurses and one or two doctors to administer a hypodermic shot so they could check out my paralysis. This did not set me up for a life of loving medical procedures. Oh, by the way, about that shot... I squirmed at the wrong minute and it broke and had to be extracted with tweezers. So went my uneasy visits to Iowa City. Back to the surgery, I went under o.k., came to vomitng (and with a healthy distaste for Juicy Fruit gum because that is what I was told the anesthesia tasted like and coming around the second time was definitely not appealing), then I really came to my senses. "Help! Help! I am blind and I knew this would happen! I just knew it!"evidently I had no fear sharing this opinion. I felt slightly foolish when told my eyes were still bandaged and that was why I could not see. So I am wheeled into the children's ward. Bandages come off and I see what appeared to be a bald headed man staring at me, "What are you doing in here?" I demanded. Turns out to be a girl of fifteen who has had chemotherapy and lost all of her hair. I saw that when allowed my glasses. I also had one of those all too brief teen moments to be thankful for the good health I did possess. |