There's No Place Like...
Christmas brings gifts both wonderful and strange. Just before the holiday, my musician friend John got some unexpected news that was both, though it initially felt like less of the former and more of the latter. We're hoping it'll even out soon and that he'll be able to look back on this whole, terrible end-of-a-terrible-decade season and laugh, or at least shake his head at the irony of it all. Right now he'll settle for uneventfulness.
I wrote about John--not his real name--on Thanksgiving when I learned that he had cancer and, like millions of his fellow uninsured Americans, was trying desperately to get some swift and comprehensive treatment at a public hospital. It wasn't happening, to put it mildly. Each appointment at County/USC entailed waits of several hours and consultations with doctors and/or residents who often didn't know his history or the nature of his ailments. Let's just say there was a lack of coordination. Meantime, a tumor pressing on John's spine was making those long waits unbearable; another one in his arm that had been growing for months was making his only paying gig--conductor for a youth orchestra--impossible.
And then the logjam broke. County decided that John was in bad enough shape to get admitted to the hospital, and the treatment process became official. The first order of business was a 7-hour surgery to repair the damage done to John's spine with bolts and pins and the like. He was moved to the intensive care unit to start recuperation. And then...he was discharged.
What? I'm not a doctor, but I've never heard of anybody being discharged directly from ICU. I thought it simply wasn't done. John was as surprised as anybody, but not unhappy about going home and being in his own bed again before Christmas. Still, he wondered about post-op complications in the middle of the night and the ordeal of having to be readmitted. That seemed to be less of a concern to the hospital staff that John overheard talking about the need to free up ICU space for more incoming wounded. Understandably, John didn't argue; he left.
So far, the discharge is looking like an awfully big risk for the right person. John is up and around at his house in South Central and looking almost normal. He's moving about slowly, but he's moving. Being at home in the grand old place he grew up in, among his music and books and the many projects he had to drop when he got sick, is fueling him, I can see. He's actually looking forward to starting cancer treatment, which has to wait until he recovers from the spine surgery. At this pace of recovery, it'll be sooner than the five weeks the doctors at county predicted. Really, what do they know?
