Читать книгу Laughing at Cancer - Ros Ben-Moshe - Страница 20

20 June 2011

Time in Hospital

Seconds feel like minutes, minutes like hours, hours like days. Time passes agonisingly slowly. Willing it to go quicker is counterproductive; the clock ticks even slower. The hands on my watch are my enemy. A cheap Thai special, the hour hand does not fall on the hour and in the dim and darkened night light. I can never be sure of the exact time. I have been tricked into thinking it was a full hour later only to downheartedly realise on closer inspection it is a full hour earlier. Can’t it be morning yet?

I am slowly becoming accustomed to a different rhythm. At home, mornings begin anytime from the first bird song to the rude awakenings of the neighbour’s courier vans revving into action. Obnoxious noise pollution, together with real pollution, infiltrates and permeates our slumber and bedroom. Here I drift in and out of consciousness marred by the sounds of beeping drip machines, alarms ringing and the shuffling of nurses’ footsteps bypassing my room. The closest thing to a 6.45am alarm call is the clanging of the water trolley, getting louder and louder as it approaches my bedroom door. I want it to go away. Please leave me alone.

I strain to utter ‘no ice’ as my raspy first words of the day, belated-ly followed by a guilty ‘thank you’. Every morning I wonder how people can begin their day by imbibing an icy cold fluid that jolts their inner system in a manner more akin to shock therapy than hydration therapy. Surely the best and kindest thing for your body is to drink beverages at room temperature or even warmer?

Please can’t time pass quicker? Can’t I be well enough to go home already? I don’t know what’s worse at times, the physical pain or the pain of time passing so slowly. I lie around waiting. In theory I’d love to have visitors but am in no way up to it. I’m not used to ‘being visited’ as a passive patient. Revealing a part of myself that should only be shared with the closest of family or friends is just not something I’m comfortable with. I’m not on exhibition.

Let’s face it, I feel lousy. Yet, I am fully aware that I am the lucky one. I think of all those patients whose stays in hospitals are so long that the familiarity of home fades into something from the past—unattainable and removed—a distant memory, and perhaps one that will stay as just that.

I continue staring at the hands of my watch as they slowly tick over. On the one hand I relax into the moment and count my blessings; whilst on the other I conjure up images of my body being able to heal in fast-forward motion, like time-lapse photography.

Recount a time when time has moved agonisingly slowly.

What, if anything, did you do to speed up the passage of time? Did it help?

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