Free Don't Leave Me This Way: Or When I Get Back on My Feet You'll Be Sorry by Julia Fox Garrison Page B

Stick with Dr. Neuro—he hasn’t said you’re going to die.”
    “Yeah, but he hasn’t exactly said I’m going to live, either. Nobody will say I’m going to live.”
    “But you feel secure with Dr. Neuro, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then why don’t you call him, for Christ’s sake?”
    Johnny always has a way of calming you down. Even when he’s hollering at you.
     
    YOU CALL DR. NEURO, right then and there. By the end of the call things are not quite so black and white. You’re in one piece again, you’re so grateful to Johnny that you make him give you a long hug, and you’re wondering whether you should have given a Judge Judy response during that encounter with Dr. Panic. You imagine you’re in her chair peering down at this nobody doctor: “Well, I don’t believe you. Case closed. You’re dismissed.”

You Can Keep the Dime
    THERE IS AN UNSPOKEN RULE you are learning: Nurses never answer call lights. Pushing the button by your bed will never produce a nurse, only a nurse’s aide. The aides are responsible for initial contact.
    You have been waiting for over fifty minutes to urinate. You can’t do it yourself; you need to be helped. And you have a bladder infection. And no one is materializing. Must be the aide’s lunch hour.
    You keep pushing the call button, but no one responds.
    What’s the worst that could happen? You pee in the bed and soak everything. But what if you were choking on something? What if you fell? What if the volcano in your head went off again?
    You pick up the phone and call the main switchboard from the outside line.
    “How may I direct your call?” an official-sounding voice queries. “Hi, I’m sorry to bother you but no one is answering the call button on my floor.”
    “Is this a joke?”
    Like you’re in the middle of some juvenile telephone prank. (“Is your refrigerator running? You’d better go catch it.”)
    “If so,” the voice continues, scolding you, “it’s not a very good joke. This is a hospital, and pranks like this can have serious consequences.”
    “My name is Julia Garrison, I’m in room 417. Please look it up. I have to be lifted to the potty chair and I’ve been waiting a really long time. It hurts.” You sound panicked; you’re extremely eager for her to take you seriously.
    “I’ll see what I can do.”
    As if you were in a joking frame of mind. You’re not.
    If you’d been willing to joke, you’d have said, “Ahhh, relief. Never mind. Could you send someone from housekeeping?”
    The tiny Hawaiian nurse who shows up a few minutes later with her hair in a tight bun is not so approving of your resourcefulness.
    “It’s against procedure for patients to call the front desk,” she says as she pulls the covers back and hoists you up.
    “Is it against procedure to make a patient with a bladder infection wait nearly an hour to pee?” you ask.
    “Just don’t call the operator again.”
    While you’re perched over the toilet, you consider singing her the old Jim Croce song “Operator” as you relieve yourself. But she’s holding you up, so you think better of it.
    You sing it silently inside your head, though, and when you start cackling with laughter, she doesn’t seem to understand what’s so funny.

Coming to Terms with Shoe Envy
    Before your stroke. Sitting at home. When your body still worked…
    Jim walks in the room and says he’s going to watch a video. He brings you a video and asks whether you want to watch it with him. He holds up the video case and shows you the title. And you look at the case, and it has the title written in big black letters and the title of the video is…
    The title of the video Jim asks whether you want to watch is…
    Big black letters and you can read them and the title of the video he wants to watch with you is…
    See a woman’s face, see a woman’s face, see a woman’s face, who is it?
     
    HOPE IS A POWERFUL MOTIVATOR. Hope is always what gets you to the next goal; once achieved,