27/7/98

No pain, no gain

   It's torture.
   They bury people alive. Put them on stretch racks. Crush them. Shock them.
   You don't even want to know about the bloodsucking and bladder-bursting techniques. They insert ghastly devices into various parts of the body. And something never even dreamed up in the Dark Ages, death by hiccups.
    Ve vill make you talk!
    That should be enough to get us a few condemnations at the UN. But these horrific instruments of torture are not being used by the GSS against Arab terrorists; they're being used by Hadassah Hospital, on Jewish patients.
    Such as me.
    There I was, howling for mercy during a galium scan, when it occurred to me that this procedure is probably outlawed for use against mass murderers. To me, they say, it's good for you. I might have argued.
    Yeah, I know, here I am writing about my favorite hospital and being ungrateful again. But no, I'm not complaining.
    Well, just a bit.
    In some cases, suffering is a bonus. The galium scan, for instance, could be considerably more humane if the manufacturer had added a simple, cheap doohicky.

IF YOU'VE been healthy all your life you have no idea what I'm talking about. Take my advice: Stay healthy. This is what you're missing:
    One of the few instruments of torture I may never experience is the mammography. I'm told that anyone who's had a mammogram can never eat pressed duck again.
    The MRI is a coffin in all ways but one: It's noisy enough to wake up the dead. They put you in, scrunch you up so that there is barely room for your lungs to expand, slide you in, turn on the screeching sound effects, then take the rest of the day off, leaving you to die.
    The cruelest part is that it doesn't occur to them to reassure you, warn you, ask if you suffer from claustrophobia. Which you will after this.
    Ephresis, or stem-cell collecting, uses a machine they got right out of a '50s sci-fi pic. They plug you in through a vein in one arm and suck out your blood, sending it swirling around a spin-dryer and then back to a vein in your other arm, minus some vital component that allows you to think independently, or something.
    The galium scan was inspired by the Inquisition. You lie on your back on a narrow, hard board. You extend your arms over your head, wa-a-a-y back. Then you're told, 'Don't move.' It's only for as long as it takes the camera to go around full cycle.
    It takes 45 minutes. The pain in your shoulders is excruciating, the torture from unscratchable itches and tickles all over your body intolerable, and the 45 minutes takes 45 years.
    When it is over, two people come and slowly lower your arms, because you cannot -- and then they tell you whoops, you can't leave just yet, you've got to do it again. And again! One time, they put me through the scan four times. I actually cried.
    This is a thoroughly unnecessary evil. The manufacturers could have put a couple more bucks into their multi-million dollar machine and added a handle or post to hold on to.
    The hospital staffers could easily ease the pain, but, it seems, they can't be bothered. I suppose when you hear whimpering and cries for mercy all day, you don't even notice it anymore.
    Try the bone biopsy. The first needle they give you, in the hip, is supposed to numb the outer flesh. It hurts like hell. The second needle goes deeper, so you shouldn't feel the pain in the inner flesh. It hurts even worse. Then they explain that they're going into the bone, which can't be numbed, so it's going to hurt.
    Four ex-wrestlers are called to lug the biopsy needle to your bedside. They won't let you see the needle, because you can't survive the shock.
    I'd like to meet the person who invented the lithotripsy. It's a bath, you get in, and they zap you with kidney-stone-crushing high-frequency soundwaves. Weird but true.
    The catheter is too embarrassing to talk about.
    I once had a camera pushed down my throat. Through my nose. (It was a very small camera.)
    And hiccups once sent me to the hospital for a week. They were so severe my body couldn't cope, and sort of shut down bit by bit. You know how I got these hiccups? The hospital gave them to me, as a bonus with the chemotherapy. (Chemo is another beaut: They pump you full of poisons, call it a cure, and then fight like the Dickens to save you from the cure.)
    All this is good for you, they say, it's progress, and maybe it is. Like when I took my daughter Nomi to have a split in her forehead sewn up.
    Stitches?! Not these days. They glued it shut instead. That's not how it was when I was a kid.
    The most incredible contraption of all, though, is the hospital elevator. Specifically, the one at Hadassah's Sharett building, where I've spent considerable time.
    The elevator is a tourist attraction. It's the major subject of conversation throughout the seven-story building, because every day it has a different idiosyncracy.
    It's a riot to watch first-timers. They're lulled because the elevator is phenomenally slow, and when - if - it does arrive, the door opens at the rate of an inch a minute.
    But the moment you step across its threshold, WHAM, at the speed of light it closes on you again and again, pulverizing you. It is especially funny watching the old and infirm being whammed off their feet.
    It is also funny to watch people trying to reason with the elevator. 'But it's going up; I thought...' or, 'If this is the first floor, why does the light say 2?' The thing could go left or right instead of up and down, and no one would be surprised.
    If only the Palestinians would complain to the UN about this elevator....