2.20 Small Holy Cups

San Jose ~ During the time I lived with Mom, I was hospitalized several times for malnutrition and dehydration from vomiting spells. The first time it happened I was five. I only remember a couple of episodes as those recollections are tangled up inside me.

It will only hurt for a second. Close your eyes. Don’t breathe. I repeated this mantra, trying not to be afraid while I was scared half to death. It usually took more than one try to get a vein for the IV, and the nurses had to hold me down until the doctor had the needle properly inserted. Sometimes the needles snapped in half. In the beginning, they used veins in my wrists, on the backs of my hands, or the bends in my arms. Over time, when those veins collapsed, they used those in my ankles and the backs of my knees. I rocked myself with tiny back-and-forth movements, my body shaking as if it would never stop. I held my breath, sharp pain moving through me. My tears slid quietly down the side of my face, filling my ears like small holy cups. Then it got quiet, a profound, white quiet. I felt I was hovering overhead, that I was there but not there, watching everything from the ceiling in a detached way. It was safer near the ceiling.

I didn’t have a satin-edged blanket or a small bear. Instead, I sucked two of my fingers; slipping them into my mouth soothed me and relieved my gnawing stomach. The more agonizing hospital stays happened when the IV was on my left arm. Taped to a long, thin board so my arm wouldn’t bend, I couldn’t get my fingers to my mouth. My right-hand fingers just wouldn’t do. Plus it hurt to breathe; the air burned my throat, dry and rough as hot sandpaper. My lips were cracked and I was dying of thirst but I couldn’t keep water down. Sometimes they let me have ice chips, sometimes a white wet washcloth to suck on, but the washcloth hurt my teeth because the enamel on them was so thin. It also made me gag and reminded me of the rough gauze packed in the back of my throat that filled with blood and choked me when I had my tonsils out.

I watched the long thin hands on the round, white-faced clock high on the wall, listened to the tick-ticking, the red second hand stuck for three counts each time it hit the six, one Mississippi… two Mississippi… three Mississippi, then jump ahead and catch up as the black minute hand slowly circled ’round and ’round without missing a beat. I practiced ellemmennopee, counted as high as I could, glanced back at the clock, then watched the drip, drip, drip of the IV fluid slowly descending through the plastic tubing to the needle, draining into my parchment arm.

The nurses silently floated around me. The younger ones slipped me slivers of ice. Nurse Ratched wandered in every few hours to change the empty glass bottle hanging on the metal stand next to me. When she got to it, she brought me a refrigerated metal bedpan. She didn’t want to be bothered with any requests; patients interfered with her routine.

I didn’t have visitors. I only remember Mom coming once (though I’m sure she must’ve come more than that) with a man I hadn’t seen before. “A friend,” she said. She brought me a Bugs Bunny coloring book and a brand new box of 48 Crayolas. I studied the “M”s in the box: magenta, maize, melon, mahogany, maroon. I loved how periwinkle, Prussian blue, and thistle rolled off my tongue. The flesh, salmon, and carnation pink were sappy colors; the blue-violet my favorite. Mom and her friend held hands, talked to each other, and didn’t stay long. I wasn’t interested in coloring anymore.

When three or four days passed and I was well enough to go home, it was always the same routine. I’d beg the doctor to slowly pull off one small strip at a time the adhesive tape that attached the board and needle to my arm, but he always cut away the whole section, tearing it off in one yank and not even counting to three, ripping out all the hair on my forearm, my shriek startling the bejeesus out of everyone.

Cathy and Baby, Dec 1956

I wasn’t abused as a child. I was tortured. My mother attempted to run me through her meat grinder, I was gassed to oblivion while having my tonsils out for no good reason, and have had needles jabbed and stuck and jammed into me. I had every molar in my head drilled and filled by Nazi dentists using horse-sized needles and a concrete pile-driver until the corners of my mouth cracked and my jaw wanted to split, the buzz-saw sound of the drill slicing through my brain and careening off the inside of my skull. I’ve had dozens of moles cut off my body by an Exacto knife or burnt off with a soldering iron, the smell of my burning skin making me nearly faint. I was attacked by our rooster that was as big as I was and the living daylights scared out of me when Mom’s chickens chased me after she whacked off their heads. I’ve been stung by bees that “won’t hurt me” and scratched by cats that “don’t scratch” and bitten by two large German Shepherds that “don’t bite.”

I am afraid. I’m afraid of pain, of having no control or power to stop it, of not being able to bear it. I’m scared of shots and needles and stitches, worried about slivers and stings and bites, afraid of blood and cuts and scrapes. I don’t trust anything that could do any sort of damage to my body. You’d think I’d be used to it. I’m not. There was seldom anyone there to hold my hand or stroke my cheek, to tell me the pain wouldn’t last forever and that I’d be okay, to assure me that I wouldn’t die. I implored God to help, but He must have been busy. After a few years of this, I finally quit asking.

to be continued…

© 2018. Catherine Sevenau.
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