A Reality Check

A holiday accident led to an overheard conversation in a medical exam booth. It set Alan Holman thinking, but no longer was it about himself.

The person who suggested that one should not complain about having no toes when there are people around without feet was spot-on. I thought about this a few months ago when I involuntarily had a visit to hospital.

Building an aviary, the potential for shoddy workmanship or disaster or both was always lurking. This time it would be disaster. Holding a star picket in my left hand, and a sledge hammer in my right, I experienced a problem of coordination. The head of the sledge hammer didn’t quite hit the right spot and drove the jagged edge of the stake down the back of my left forefinger. It was a deep, long and rough tear; it bled a lot and hurt like crazy. My understanding wife—“Not again, dearest”—taped it, and under protest, drove me to the nearest emergency ward, an hour distant. It was an expensive option, but being Sunday, in fact Boxing Day, choices were limited.

Along with a number of other hapless patients—many of whom were suffering from post-Christmas excess—I was ushered into a curtained cubicle to await a doctor. In fact after my initial visit, this was to be the pattern for a week, as a painful and annoying infection set in. Each day, my sausage-like finger was prodded, injected and bandaged. I began to feel like one of the emergency ward family, referring to people by their first names.

The nurses and doctors were remarkable. It was, after all, the Christmas break. When everyone else was at home or holidaying with their family, they were cheerfully soldiering on, tidying up after people. To them, it was normal, except for the Christmas decorations festooning the reception area. But behind the ho-ho-ho, were some very sad human situations that made my bloated, bacteria-laden-finger appear quite petty.

On one visit, in the next-door cubicle, was a middle-aged man and his wife. The man, I suppose, for I never saw either person, was the patient, was lying on the hard emergency bed. I was complaining to my wife about the injustice of my own situation—having to travel all that way, day after day, all because of a sore finger—when it became apparent that something of far greater gravity was happening there. Through the flimsy curtain, which made it inevitable that we heard, drifted a sad, sad conversation.

The doctor was quietly speaking to the wife. He was breaking the incredibly bad news that “the test results were conclusive. Your husband has an inoperable cancer of the pancreas.”

The doctor’s voice was low, even, descriptive, honest and, above all, gentle. Probably in shock, the wife’s response was measured and practical: “What about our holiday? What and how will we tell the family?” “How long?” the husband quietly insisted.

In our cubicle, my wife and I froze into silence. The cotton barrier could not protect us. The doctor chatted on as if he had the whole day to spend with them. I thought: It’s one thing to stitch wounds, but quite another to tell someone they’ve got three months of life left.

On our way home, my finger rebandaged, we quietly contemplated what we’d heard. It was sobering, overwhelming and hard to cope with. Although unseen and total strangers, our encounter of five minutes changed our thinking.

We pondered their questions to the doctor, wondering how they’d be answered as I reflected on my cut and infected finger. It certainly wasn’t a mortal wound—although I’d behaved as if it were. And I wondered how my anonymous acquaintances were feeling as 2005 dawned. How do you say, “Happy New Year”?