Daily Excerpt: Good Blood, A Journey of Healing (Schaffer): From 1978, Chapter 3
Excerpt from Good Blood: A Journey of Healing (Irit Schaffer):
From:
1978 (Chapter 3)
At 5:30 a.m., I wake up, and my head is pounding. A shooting wave of pain goes through my abdomen. Within thirty seconds of waking, I rush to the bathroom. I make it just in time.
Did I upset my stomach? Did anyone else get sick? I wonder. Ok, go back to sleep, Irit, I tell myself.
No sooner do I crawl under the down comforter than the shooting pain sears through my gut again. Almost instantly, I start to feel nauseous, and my hands get clammy. I bolt for the toilet once again, and this time I throw up.
What is going on? I wonder. It can’t be the food I ate because Barna and Jofie ate everything I did, and they’re ok. I would know if they were getting up.
One hour passes, and my back and belly are on fire. As I head to the bathroom for the umpteenth time, I hear footsteps. Barna’s kind Hungarian voice comes through the bathroom door, “Are you alright?”
I’m having trouble thinking of the right words to say in Hungarian. Slowly, I get my wits together and mutter, “I don’t feel well.”
I open the bathroom door and see Barna standing outside with a concerned look on his face. “What is going on?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I hurt everywhere.”
He reaches out to touch my face and then says, “Your head is hot. Let me take your temperature.” After a minute, Barna grabs the thermometer from me and reads, “39.5 Celsius.”
I sigh with frustration. “Is that a lot?” I ask. “I’m used to Fahrenheit.”
“It is a big fever.”
“Ok, maybe I just have a little bug, and I’ll be better soon,” I say, hopefully.
Barna nods and says, “I will make you tea, and when Petr arrives, he’ll know what to do because of his medical training.”
I see Jofie come out of the bedroom. I feel bad for waking everyone so early.
“Can I make you something?” she asks.
“Just tea,” I say, gratefully.
“Do you want a hot water bottle?”
Before I can answer, I have to rush to the bathroom again. For the millionth time that day, I use the cord overhead to flush the toilet.
I go into the other room to wash my hands, and as I return to bed, I think, there can’t possibly be anything left in my body. The pain in my back is not letting up, and the knife-like feeling in my abdomen is getting stronger. My head is spinning, and I’m still nauseous.
This can’t be happening to me, I think, exasperatedly. This is my vacation! I have never been sick like this in my life. I’m glad that Petr is a doctor. Maybe he will know what the problem is. I can’t imagine what it would be like to get sick in a foreign country if I didn’t know anyone. It would be terrifying.
As if on cue, I hear the key in the door, which opens to reveal Petr. Before Petr can say anything, Barna rushes to him, and I hear my name.
Petr looks over at me. “Your face looks green,” he says.
I give him a weak smile and say, “Thanks! I guess I look as bad as I feel.”
“What’s wrong?”
“My back, my stomach, my head, everything hurts. I’ve gone to the bathroom at least six or seven times to throw up.”
“I’m sorry that you are feeling so bad,” Petr says with concern in his voice.
I look up at him. I have known Petr for only a short period of time. Yet, somehow I feel very close to him.
“Can you lie down?” he asks. “I’ll do an exam.”
I lay down, and he starts prodding around on my stomach. “Tell me if this hurts,” he says.
“Ow!” I shriek as he touches a spot on my right side. “What is going on?”
“Let me check a few more things. Does it hurt here?” He tries another spot, and again my voice rises ten decibels.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes. I need to make a phone call.”
Don’t panic, I say to myself. You’re in good hands.
Petr comes back into the room and says, “I just got off phone with a doctor.”
“Doctor?” I say, unable to hide the fear in my voice. “Why?”
“I think you have appendicitis.”
“What? That can’t be. Maybe it’s just a bug. Appendicitis will spoil my plans! I’m supposed to meet…”
“You have classic symptoms,” Petr interrupts. “The doctor can see you in one hour.”
There is no letup in the pain as we drive to the doctor’s office. Last night I had felt so comfortable in this car even without the shock absorbers, but today I can feel every bump in the road as we go. It hurts too much to talk.
We arrive, and it is 1:00 by the time I enter the doctor’s dark office. It is so spooky in here, I think as I walk, alone, into the examination room. The doctor walks in behind me, and, in broken English, says, “I do pelvic exam.”
“Why a pelvic exam?” I ask.
“To make sure.”
“Make sure of what?”
No answer. I feel a sense of dread overwhelm me.
“Now, go on table and put legs here,” the surgeon says.
Stirrups? What have I gotten myself into? I am starting to panic. He starts the exam, and I scream as the worst pain yet courses through my body. It feels like he just poked me with a sharp knife.
“Don’t be so weak,” the doctor says.
Fear is taking over, and I try to think of my dad for comfort. I better not say anything more to the doctor, or he’ll make it worse.
“It’s not so bad,” the doctor says to me in his monotone voice.
He is so cavalier about my pain that, before I can edit my own thoughts, I blurt out, “If you weren’t such a butcher, I wouldn’t have screamed so much.”
The doctor smiles, so I know he probably didn’t understand me. At least, I have the language barrier going for me, or that might have caused some trouble.
I leave the office, and Petr stays behind a few minutes longer to speak to him.
“I’m sorry, but we have to drive to hospital now. You need to have your appendix removed.”
“Petr, he is not doing my surgery,” I demand in a panic. “I won’t let him.” I am getting hysterical.
“He won’t,” Petr reassures me. “We have to go to Charles Hospital, and the surgeon on call there will do it. I just brought you to this doctor to confirm the diagnosis."
“I can’t believe this. Three years ago, I had a grand mal seizure as I was en route to the airport heading to Sweden. Now this!”
“Are you epileptic?”
“No. I just had one seizure. A group of us, participating in a university-sponsored physical education program abroad stopped for a planned lunch prior to heading for the airport. Unbeknownst to us, the tuna fish salad was laced with cockroach insecticide poisoning, and one by one we suffered grand mal seizures.”
I remember that experience like it was yesterday. Two days later, the camera crew was at the airport when we arrived again, and my picture ended up appearing in the front page with the headline that read something like Physical Educators Survive Close Encounter with Death. Ever since that happened, I have imagined newspaper headlines whenever I’m in high stakes situations.
“Don’t worry. You are going to the best hospital in Prague. It is where I was born.”
As if that is a good barometer, I think. I’m about to have surgery in a communist hospital. That’s a little bit scarier than being born if you ask me. I pause and try to calm myself down. Petr is a doctor. I remind myself, he won’t let any harm come to me.
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