Published: August 23, 2008 12:00 am      

Senior Scene: As Times Goes By: Oh, no! Not again

I am completely without a clue as I write this. However, this does not concern me as I am without a clue more often than not.

I woke up the other morning with a "hot" right leg. (Hot as in temperature and not as in stolen.)

I went to the doctor and the doctor said, "Get your butt right out of bed, I'm sending you to the hospital." He made what I had sound like a bad case of the plague. It was cellulitis. (Nasty stuff!) Soon, I was flat on my back with life-saving liquids running through my veins. (No, it was not vodka.)

The phlebotomist who installed the plumbing was an "old" pro. (Actually she was young and pretty, but my animosity for "blood-suckers" clouded my thinking.) I asked her how many of these hookups she had installed to date and she replied, "More than you have." I couldn't argue with that. She was so fast and efficient that I went into the lavatory after she left to check if everything was still there and not snipped off.

Sometimes you get a roommate where, no matter how hard you try to find some modicum of compatibility, it just doesn't happen and you spend all your time figuring out how to stop his oxygen flow.

I had one roommate in Albany who thought he was staying at the Waldorf because he was pressing the "nurse button" all the time. It seems "he wanted his pillow fluffed." (He was lucky he didn't get it pressed over his face in the dead of night.)

I got real lucky this time. I had the perfect roommate. No, it was not a long-legged blonde bombshell with a penchant for older men, but almost as good. (He will remain nameless only to protect him from his wife, who knows nothing of all the shenanigans we got into.)

My roommate was a few years older but so much wiser and obviously much smarter. He was an avid reader of this column and kept regaling me with praise for my writing style and humor. Being humble as I am, I could not disagree with anything he said. As I said, he was a smart man.

We were a perfect hospital room match and soon we were plotting "our escape." I had $2 in my pocket (to buy a Daily Star each morning) and we decided to "blow the whole works" on cinnamon buns and latte at the Dunkin' Donuts shop down the block. (To hell with buying The Daily Star!) The only problem was that when the "witching hour" came to "bolt and run," one or both of us were sound asleep. It seems like the "bolt and runs" that were installed in us were defective. It's hell to grow older.

Let's talk about nurses. My roommate had been in and out of Fox so often they had put a revolving door on his room. The advantage to being seasoned in the hospital game was that he was such a nice guy that nurses flocked to him like ants on a hunk of watermelon rind. It was so nice to have these lovelies pass by me to talk to my roommate. (I would be remiss to ignore the male nurses, but let's face it, my way reads better.) I have contacted Hugh Heffner at Playboy about doing a series on the nurses at Fox versus the nurses at Bassett. I bet we win.

Thanks, roommate, and take my advice and stay out of hospitals _ they are full of sick people and if nothing was wrong with you before you went in, something is sure to be wrong when you get out. (Even the doctor had a cough.)

Let's face it, our nurses are people who are over-worked and underpaid. I have no complaints with my Fox experience.

I suspect I have "restless leg syndrome" in my right leg that I must have picked up during my stay in the hospital. I woke up one night at 3 a.m. with my bed sheet wrapped around me like a mummy's shroud. I could barely move my hands but eventually I was able to push the nurse buzzer with my nose and help arrived within seconds. "How did you ever do this?" my Nightingale lovely asked me. I looked at her eye-to-eye and said with total honesty, "I haven't a clue."

The people who invented hospital gowns should be forced to wear one without underwear to church. I am 6-foot-4 and always get the wrong hospital gown. I always get the one that you slip into and the hem line stops at my belly button. This means everything south of the border is left in the breeze. (At one time I might have written "swinging in the breeze" or even "dangling in the breeze," but at 71, I am happy and content to just "feel the breeze.")

Night sounds in a hospital are interesting. There is always a low hum of voices, which is comforting because you know that help, if you should need it, is only a hum away. Watching an I.V. drip is almost as exciting as watching paint dry.

But then in the night there are the voices that cry out for "mother," or "God help me," or just the sentence "I don't belong here, I want to get out, just please let me go," over and over almost like a chant. I found myself rooting for this poor soul. I wonder how far he or she would get in a hospital gown?

I will close with the visit from the nutritionist who took one look at me and said "you know something, you need to lose some weight." So what else is new? We discussed a 1,600 calorie diet but found that I would blow twice that amount in my usual "cake and ice cream breakfast." I wondered if I could get a 1,600-calorie advance from the next day to help today look more manageable. Sadly she shook her head, "No."

So, I started with good intentions to stick to my 1,600 calories per day limit. I looked calorie values up online. Did you know that a sneeze is more than 1,600 calories? Passing a bakery is 1,600 calories if you just take a deep sniff to enjoy the aroma. If you say "double cheeseburger with bacon, hold the pickles double the relish" is enough food to last a month (only if you cut it up into little itty-bitty pieces.)

Well, gang, there is a new plan in town _ you don't count calories, and you get to eat five or six times per day. One month's supply of "FOOD" is shipped to you in a shoe-box sized container. My wife and I have signed up for this, and I am sure it will be worth at least one or more articles before I am done.

As time goes by, and this "Wellness Plan" works, there will be less and less of me to love.

Henry Geerken is a three-time NYSUT award-winner writing humorous articles addressing retiree and senior citizen concerns. Geerken also writes for Sail-World, World Cruising Newsletter, regarding his many humorous sailing episodes through the years. He can be reached by e-mail at hgeerken@stny.rr.com.