Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [38]
What would you do? You’d get her to the quickest hospital, right? Right? That’s what I did. I chose the nearest hospital.
I got there in record time—less than twenty minutes—and we took her in, told them the problem, and they saw to her right away. There was only one doctor on duty, but it wasn’t long before he looked at her.
“It seems that her intestinal tract is blocked. We’re going to take some X-rays.” And, sure enough, the X-rays confirmed the doctor’s suspicions.
They gave her liquids that they said should help. It didn’t. They gave her an IV and they said that should do the trick. It didn’t. While waiting to see which procedure would get the expected results and then seeing no results, the clock had peeled away the hours; it was well past midnight.
“OK,” said the doctor finally. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to give her a series of four or five enemas and keep her overnight. This should work and she should be able to go home tomorrow.”
We went with her to the room they had given her and we stayed until they were ready to start the enema procedures. At that point the nurse suggested, “It’s almost three a.m.—why don’t you go get some sleep and come back in the morning?”
Our mother agreed. “Take your father home and let him get some rest. I’ll be fine. I’ll see you in the morning.”
For reasons we could never later explain to ourselves, we took her advice and, amazingly—shockingly—left her alone there in this tiny hospital. We went home and crashed quickly—and just as quickly we were awoken a few hours later.
“Is this Michael Moore?” said the voice on the phone. “This is Dr. Calkins, the surgeon here at the hospital. The enemas didn’t work on your mother, and she’s taken a turn. We need to operate. How soon can you be here?”
In less than twenty minutes we were there. Mom looked embarrassed and sorry to be putting everyone out for the trouble she was causing. “Did you get some sleep?” was all that was on her mind.
“Don’t worry about us,” I said. “How are you doing?”
“Well, nothing seems to be working. They want to operate,” she said with a weak voice.
I took the doctor aside and asked him to explain to me what was going on.
“Your mother’s intestines are shot,” he said matter-of-factly. “We will more than likely need to take a piece of them out.”
“Are you sure that’s necessary?”
“If we don’t get in there, she could go into septic shock. The bacteria trapped in there may have already seeped through the lining of her intestine. This is a common procedure; I’ve done many of them. Shouldn’t take more than an hour or two. She should be fine.”
“Fine? How many of these did you say you have done?”
“I do one or two a year—and I’ve been doing this for thirty-some years. As it is now, I’m all you got ’cause I’m the only one here—and I think we should get going.”
We went back in the room and the nurse brought in some paperwork for my dad to sign. She then asked my mother to sign the consent form.
“Would you sign it for me, Frank?” she asked my dad.
He took the clipboard and signed it, slowly. We squeezed my mom’s hand and told her everything was going to be OK. She assured us everything was going to be OK. I fought hard not to cry. They took her away and we went to the lounge to wait for the hour or two.
Four hours later the surgeon had not come out, and a pall fell over the room. Whatever the news was, it wasn’t going to be good.
Finally, the doctor appeared.
“I think it went well,” he said. “She’s recovering fine now. We had to remove about a foot of her intestine. I’d say the chances for a full recovery are about 90 percent.”
Whew. You know how many times you’ve seen that doctor come through those doors—a thousand times—on TV shows and in the movies and it’s rarely good news. He explained to us that