“My god,
she used to be so thin...”
by Don Drewniak
I was running
low on money late into my sophomore year in
college. Thanks to one of my professors, Dr.
“Jumping Joe” Reardon, I secured a job
working three nights a week (11pm-7am) at a local
Catholic hospital. I chose the night shift
because it paid an extra twenty-five cents an
hour, bringing my earnings to $1.45/hour. That is
the equivalent of $14.03/hour as of this writing.
Big money back then.
The nearly two
years in which I worked at the hospital as an
orderly proved to be quite an education,
especially since I worked in a medical ward.
Upwards of a dozen people died while I was on
duty ranging from a fourteen-year-old boy to a
woman in her mid-90s. However, more often than
not, I saw people recover and smiling as they
prepared to go back to their homes.
I was always
the only male on duty with a head nurse, a
support nurse (sometimes two), two or three
student nurses and a nurse’s aide.
The head nurse
with whom I worked most often, Marie Victor, was
five years older than me, about five-four in
height, slender and attractive. We became good
friends. Whenever things were quiet and she knew
that I had classes a couple of hours after the
shift ended, she let me sleep in one of the broom
closets. (No, she never joined me.)
I left the job
during my senior year as I had saved enough money
to carry me through to graduation. Marie and I
hugged as I left my shift for the final time.
The years
passed. I was in my late 40s and running between
forty to sixty miles per week. I ran a point-to-point
5-mile race on a Thanksgiving morning in the
early 1990s. The last mile was a predominantly
steep downhill and I ran it full throttle. That
proved to be a mistake as the pounding took its
toll.
My wife, my
daughter (home from college for Thanksgiving) and
I were watching an episode of Seinfeld that
evening. I got up to grab a beer during a
commercial. As I did so, there was an audible
cracking sound and a brief sharp pain in my left
knee. I iced the knee, downed a couple of aspirin
and took the next day off from running.
I returned to
my regular training schedule following the day
off. While there was constant pain during the
runs, it was minor and I tried to convince myself
that it was a strain of some sort that would heal
itself. Some three months later while near the
end of an eight-mile run with a friend, the knee
gave way. There was a loud cracking sound and a
knife-stabbing pain in the left knee. Down I went.
An MRI
revealed that I had a double tear in the meniscus,
a cartilage that acts as a shock absorber between
the shinbone and the thighbone. It was off to
surgery a week or two later. Fortunately, it was
arthroscopic surgery that was done at an out-patient
facility. I was given the option of having a
local anesthetic or being put under.
I preferred to
have the local so that I could watch the
procedure on an overhead television monitor.
However, a female anesthesiologist convinced me
to do otherwise when she said that a local often
caused males not to be able to urinate following
the surgery, and that a Foley catheter might have
to be inserted. I viewed several Foley catheter
insertions during my time working at the hospital.
With that, I told her, “Knock me out.”
And so she did.
I have no
remembrance of the following. My wife has told
this tale innumerable times since the day of the
surgery. According to her, she was standing on
one side of the recovery bed and a nurse was on
the other.
As I
supposedly came out of anesthesia, I looked at my
wife and slurred, “Hi, honey.”
I then looked
at the nurse and stared at her name badge which
read, “Marie.”
“Marie,
Marie Victor?”
“Yes, Don,
it’s me.”
“Really?
“Yes.”
From there (again,
according to my wife), I babbled for a minute or
two before Marie said, “You will be up and
about starting tomorrow morning.” She then
walked away.
In a voice
loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room (again,
according to my wife), I yelled, “My god,
what happened to her? She used to be so thin and
now she looks like an elephant.”
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