Wednesday, July 7, 2004
Once again, I had a dream...
...this morning out of which I awoke sobbing. This time I remember most the dream. Mom and I were in Mesa, living out of our almost empty mobile home for a few days while she entered the hospital for more tests which were supposedly being done to find the source of her chronic anemia. The doctor handling her care was the one doctor who, in reality, visited us in the ER room the night she was admitted for a blood transfusion and lied to me about the results of her informal digit-up-the-ass-looking-for-occult-blood exam performed on her before the transfusion began.
During the first part of the dream I was frantically looking for her in the hospital. I learned she was in room 247, but 247 was not on the second floor. A kind, courteous hospital employee guided me to the separate, one story wing that housed room 247. My mother was not in her room. I was told she was "undergoing tests" which would take "all day" and that I should leave the hospital and return later in the afternoon when she would be in her room. Which I did, wandering about the mobile home park, looking for someone who might be able to help me find adequate medical help for my mother. Unfortunately, no one was in the park.
When I returned the floor plan of the hospital had changed. Again, I was unable to find her room or the wing to which I'd previously been directed until yet another kind, courteous hospital employee took me to an elevator which was to transport me to the floor, several stories above us where I was assured I would find my mother's room. The elevator was a contraption containing three molded seats with holes for one's ass and legs. When the elevator doors opened all three seats were occupied. The seat from which one of the riders exited and was, thus, left for me to occupy was obviously broken. The hospital employee informed me that if I took the empty, broken seat, I may not get to where I'm going. I began a frustrating, protracted search through what became a maze of hospital corridors, staircases and nurses stations looking for my mother.
When I found her room she was sitting on her bed in very good spirits her head shaved except for a few strands of disheveled hair on her crown. There was a hole, about an inch in diameter, on the right side of her head just above her ear covered with a thin, brown disc that appeared to be made out of pressboard and was not well attached. I asked her if the procedure to which this hole attested had been painful and she assured me, remaining in good humor, that it had been "unimaginably" painful.
The doctor managing her care was at the nurses' station writing on a chart. I approached him and asked what sort of test for anemia would have required that a large hole be drilled into the side of her head.
"It's the Sandburg-Ross test," he told me, head down, not looking at me as he spoke. "We had to drill the hole in her head because she ate the mint and parsley on her plate."
"But, she always eats the garnishes," I protested. "Does that have something to do with her anemia?"
"No," he responded. "No one ever eats the parsley and mint when they stay at the hospital so it was necessary to do this test."
"Were any of the tests you performed specific to her anemia?"
"No," he responded. "We need to do more tests."
I decided to remove her from the hospital. She and I wandered the halls, she in her hospital gown with her head shaved and drilled, until we made it through the hospital maze and past the growing crowd of health care professionals who followed us to the parking lot, warning that she needed more tests, the cause of her anemia still hadn't been discovered.
When we arrived at our mobile home and began preparing for our journey back to Prescott we heard something lumbering about in the attic crawlspace. We followed the noise from room to room, trying to determine what sort of creature would make such a noise. When we returned to the living room the animal opened the attic access and peered down at us. It was a mammal, about five feet long including a two foot muscled tail with a sand and black fur coat, looking a bit like kangaroo on all fours with the head and face of a diminutive koala. "It's a wadi [yes, I know that a wadi is not an animal, in reality]," we agreed.
At this point I despaired of ever finding adequate medical help for my mother's anemia and began to sob. As it turns out, in reality, in my sleep, once again within the last couple of weeks, I began to sob and awoke myself.
The obvious point of the dream rings a bell but a few of the specifics do not: The "wadi"; the attic access in the living room (there is no attic access in our mobile home in Mesa as far as I know); the thing about my mother indulging in the medically suspicious behavior of eating her meal green-garnishes (in reality she never eats her green-garnishes, thus I usually eat them); the mobile home park being completely empty, except for us; the number "247"; the drill-a-hole-in-the-head test being named the "Sandburg-Ross" test; why I considered the appearance of the "wadi" proof that non-alternative medicine would never discover the source of my mother's anemia.
When I was in college I took a psychology course in which the instructor asked us to record our sleep dreams, whereupon most of us in the class found ourselves awakening throughout the week immediately at the end of all our dreams and remembering them in great detail. When the class studied our dreams en masse we came to the conclusion that, for the most part, dreams appear to be an activity of the brain wherein it sorts through the detritus of "waking life" [quote's a tribute to Richard Linklater's Waking Life, one of my most beloved films], reviews everything in mysterious sequence with unexplainable embellishment, trashes some of the detail and stores the rest. In view of the above dream I tend to agree with this observation. Still, though, I wonder, is there any personal meaning I should be attempting to extract from the more absurd elements of this particular dream that might help me make some sense of the absurdity of my mother's current non-alternative medical adventure?
During the first part of the dream I was frantically looking for her in the hospital. I learned she was in room 247, but 247 was not on the second floor. A kind, courteous hospital employee guided me to the separate, one story wing that housed room 247. My mother was not in her room. I was told she was "undergoing tests" which would take "all day" and that I should leave the hospital and return later in the afternoon when she would be in her room. Which I did, wandering about the mobile home park, looking for someone who might be able to help me find adequate medical help for my mother. Unfortunately, no one was in the park.
When I returned the floor plan of the hospital had changed. Again, I was unable to find her room or the wing to which I'd previously been directed until yet another kind, courteous hospital employee took me to an elevator which was to transport me to the floor, several stories above us where I was assured I would find my mother's room. The elevator was a contraption containing three molded seats with holes for one's ass and legs. When the elevator doors opened all three seats were occupied. The seat from which one of the riders exited and was, thus, left for me to occupy was obviously broken. The hospital employee informed me that if I took the empty, broken seat, I may not get to where I'm going. I began a frustrating, protracted search through what became a maze of hospital corridors, staircases and nurses stations looking for my mother.
When I found her room she was sitting on her bed in very good spirits her head shaved except for a few strands of disheveled hair on her crown. There was a hole, about an inch in diameter, on the right side of her head just above her ear covered with a thin, brown disc that appeared to be made out of pressboard and was not well attached. I asked her if the procedure to which this hole attested had been painful and she assured me, remaining in good humor, that it had been "unimaginably" painful.
The doctor managing her care was at the nurses' station writing on a chart. I approached him and asked what sort of test for anemia would have required that a large hole be drilled into the side of her head.
"It's the Sandburg-Ross test," he told me, head down, not looking at me as he spoke. "We had to drill the hole in her head because she ate the mint and parsley on her plate."
"But, she always eats the garnishes," I protested. "Does that have something to do with her anemia?"
"No," he responded. "No one ever eats the parsley and mint when they stay at the hospital so it was necessary to do this test."
"Were any of the tests you performed specific to her anemia?"
"No," he responded. "We need to do more tests."
I decided to remove her from the hospital. She and I wandered the halls, she in her hospital gown with her head shaved and drilled, until we made it through the hospital maze and past the growing crowd of health care professionals who followed us to the parking lot, warning that she needed more tests, the cause of her anemia still hadn't been discovered.
When we arrived at our mobile home and began preparing for our journey back to Prescott we heard something lumbering about in the attic crawlspace. We followed the noise from room to room, trying to determine what sort of creature would make such a noise. When we returned to the living room the animal opened the attic access and peered down at us. It was a mammal, about five feet long including a two foot muscled tail with a sand and black fur coat, looking a bit like kangaroo on all fours with the head and face of a diminutive koala. "It's a wadi [yes, I know that a wadi is not an animal, in reality]," we agreed.
At this point I despaired of ever finding adequate medical help for my mother's anemia and began to sob. As it turns out, in reality, in my sleep, once again within the last couple of weeks, I began to sob and awoke myself.
The obvious point of the dream rings a bell but a few of the specifics do not: The "wadi"; the attic access in the living room (there is no attic access in our mobile home in Mesa as far as I know); the thing about my mother indulging in the medically suspicious behavior of eating her meal green-garnishes (in reality she never eats her green-garnishes, thus I usually eat them); the mobile home park being completely empty, except for us; the number "247"; the drill-a-hole-in-the-head test being named the "Sandburg-Ross" test; why I considered the appearance of the "wadi" proof that non-alternative medicine would never discover the source of my mother's anemia.
When I was in college I took a psychology course in which the instructor asked us to record our sleep dreams, whereupon most of us in the class found ourselves awakening throughout the week immediately at the end of all our dreams and remembering them in great detail. When the class studied our dreams en masse we came to the conclusion that, for the most part, dreams appear to be an activity of the brain wherein it sorts through the detritus of "waking life" [quote's a tribute to Richard Linklater's Waking Life, one of my most beloved films], reviews everything in mysterious sequence with unexplainable embellishment, trashes some of the detail and stores the rest. In view of the above dream I tend to agree with this observation. Still, though, I wonder, is there any personal meaning I should be attempting to extract from the more absurd elements of this particular dream that might help me make some sense of the absurdity of my mother's current non-alternative medical adventure?
