The story was like a black story about Mrs. C. lying with me in the ICU, she had a spinal operation. She was, to put it politely, a very intense patient requiring a great deal of attention. She spoke enthusiastically about her husband, whom she described as a keen sportsman covering dozens of kilometres a day on his bicycle. And this was how he also rode to visit her in the hospital. Regularly until the day he was hit by a car somewhere near Cologne. He called Mrs. C. from the scene of the accident to say he was being taken to the hospital. There, after an examination and a CT scan, he was taken straight to the operating theatre. As a result, Mrs. Č. was lying after spinal surgery in the Hospital na Homolce and her husband was lying 3 days later after spinal surgery in the neighbouring Motol Hospital.
At night in the ICU, because of the surgeries and because of the amount of opioids the patients are getting in, there were some interesting stories. One night my gentlemen neighbors got into a lively conversation like this. The gentleman on the right who felt like he was collecting eggs in a chicken coop and the gentleman on the left who felt strapped in his car. For ten minutes, half asleep and half awake, they argued with each other about who was going to turn off the light….. that was eating up the electricity….and neither of them wanted to pay the big bill that was coming….the gentleman on the right couldn’t because he was in the chicken coop….the gentleman on the left promptly argued that he couldn’t either because he was strapped in the vehicle…. there were a few swear words hurled at each other about who was the bigger sucker and who was going to pay the electricity bill. As the aggression of both men increased, the decibels rose, the swearing increased, and if one had not been in the chicken coop and the other in the vehicle, there would probably have been fisticuffs, the nurse came in, turned off the light, and the argument was over.
Another interesting observation for me was the unwanted membership in the club of the so called “Headhunters”. That’s what the nurses call us. Headhunters are all neurosurgery patients who have had head surgery. And we all had the same symptoms. I don’t want to describe the pain, insomnia and various neurological problems, because I knew in advance that they would occur and they are common knowledge. But what I had no idea and had never read before is the fact that Headhunters are very sensitive to weather changes. It’s called meteosensitivity. When the weather changes, the head reacts very intensely. So one evening, there was a scene on the seventh floor like something out of an apocalyptic movie. At an unscheduled time and at the same moment, the Headmasters left their rooms and marched down the hospital corridor as if delirious. And so did I, of course. Because in addition to the headache, other sensations such as tingling, humming, whistling, nausea, and feelings of loss of control over the body were added…. and we were all trying to intuitively sort of figure it out in the hallway. It made the seventh floor look like an organized zombie march…. Men and women, one way in and then back out, absent expressions, heads bandaged…… extras for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest….. I asked my sister what was going on. She looked with one eye and quite stoically informed me that a storm was coming. And it was explained. Headhunters….
Never give up on your dream just because it takes time to achieve it. Time will pass anyway.
