Agency

From the techs, to the floor nurses, to the charge nurse, to the Haitian lady emptying the trash, a single question hung in the air of the hospital ward: “When will he poop?” I hadn’t received such attention to this bodily function since my mother dosed me with cod liver oil before I set off every morning to Charles Barrett Elementary School. Over the three days I spent at St. Anthony’s Hospital, at least fourteen people expressed an interest in my pooping. They cared.

At 1:30 AM on the Friday of Labor Day Weekend, I prodded My Life’s Editor as she lay asleep and I croaked, “We have to go the Emergency Room. Now!” She drove us through downtown, which was crowded with strolling party animals. They were having fun. Why else would they be out at 2 AM? I, on the other hand, felt like I was giving birth to a watermelon. A Cesarean section was my only way out. At each stoplight, I mumbled at the cars ahead of us, “What’s wrong with these people? Can’t they go any faster?!” Drivers lingered at intersections, applying makeup, facetiming with a bestie in Albuquerque. At each 5^th Avenue bump, I emitted pitiful squeaks. I remembered driving herself down the Edens Expressway into Chicago at 2:00 AM in the morning. She protested at each ripple in the roadbed. We were sure daughter Peyton would be delivered on the passenger seat floor well. I knew nothing about birthing babies or cutting umbilical cords.

In the Emergency Room I tried to be brave. I thought of cowboy movies where the hero bites on a bullet while a kindly doc with a white beard and moustache carves slugs out of him. I folded like a cheap tent. “Morphine, please!” The crack triage nurse, Candace, ignored my bleats to bring on the good stuff until vitals were checked and the doc on the floor nodded an approval. Then it was off to enter the maw of the CT scanner, where I was laid out like a hot dog in a bun.

The small intestine is like the childhood board game of Chutes and Ladders. There are 22 feet of ups and downs, loops, and squiggles. It is in the business of finding the good stuff you have eaten. The good stuff is FedExed to destinations in your body that can use it. That excludes the large chunk of chocolate cake from Publix you gobbled down last night. The cake, as well as other rejected bits, is handed over to the large intestine. From there, it whooshes down the Exit corridor.

Inexplicably, my small intestine had experienced a blockage. This may have been a work stoppage organized by the villi, little finger-like guys that absorb nutrients. Maybe they said “No mas” when the chili peppers from last night’s Southwestern salad arrived unannounced. Or I created a kink in the tubing by overdoing a Down Dog at yoga. In either case, digestive activities had slammed to a halt.

Doctors Burke and Butano agreed that letting the garden hose unkink was preferable to a search-and-splice mission in my innards. The plan was to drain what was causing the tumult, while at the same time feed me a drip of glucose and electrolytes.

I was introduced to a device called an NG tube. “This is going down your nose,” explained April, the charge nurse. Say what? In 7^th grade, “Up your nose with a rubber hose!” was considered a hilarious comeback line. No more. Further, she informed me I would not be able to leave the hospital until I had (a) experienced flatulence and (b) pooped. Though this is normally a slam dunk for me, it now seemed an impossible dream.

My daughter the Philosophy Professor often mentions the concept of “agency.” It means you have control over your actions and can act on your environment.  When I entered my hospital room, I looked out the window, turned, and looked back at the door. I had no agency. However warm and EQ-laden they were, my captors dictated the terms of my incarceration. Their schedule, not mine.  

Hope came with the admonition of the nurses, “You have to walk to get things working.” I began to ambulate around my ward floor in warm footies. I weaved around nurses and techs, mobile workstations, trash carts, and after-meal collection wagons like a hockey player going down ice, my trusty IV pole out in front. Visitors batted their eyes briefly at the sight of a man with a hose up his nose.

Allied prisoners, held in German camps in WW2, created agency where there was none. They formed clubs, games and tended gardens. I organized my bedside table. Toothbrush and toothpaste lined up, parallel to the box of tissues, cellphone stacked on book, water cup with straw central and pee bottle exiled to the far corner. A control play on my part.

“To sleep, perchance to dream,” said Hamlet.  Hamlet would not have had a chance in the hospital after 9:00 PM. Morning arrived after seven scheduled official intrusions, as well as several bleats from the PCU (Point of Care Unit) calling me out for kinking the drip line.

When the blessed event occurred, word spread rapidly on the floor. I was hustled back to the CT scanner for verification that all systems were go. Back in my room, I lay in bed, awaiting the verdict. The door burst open, there was a host of nurses and techs, singing the Hallelujah Chorus, the cleaning lady taking the descant.

I was free at last.