Let’s put some teeth in the story
Recently, a friend of my wife’s (we’ll call her Susie) had to admit her husband to a local hospital due to illness. His diagnosis was a bit more serious than first thought and he was transferred to one of the large hospitals in Atlanta. There he was admitted and placed in the Intensive Care Unit. Susie then began that long vigil of waiting that so many of us have endured in the past.
This particular hospital had the spouses and friends of the patients virtually in the hall right outside the unit. Of course, visitation is limited and only allows visits periodically and for short intervals. During the days to follow, Susie struck up a friendship with another lady whose husband was in the next room. They became good friends and enjoyed each other’s company during the long hours of inactivity and the all too short visitation periods. Susie left her chair in the hall only to grab a sandwich or take a break, but she was never far away. After five days of living in a chair in the hallway of a major hospital, Susie was physically and emotionally drained. Sleep for any length of time was impossible. Nerves supplanted appetite, and general worry occupied most of her waking moments. I think most of us have been in similar situations and understand Susie’s plight.
Sometime during the fifth night, exhaustion won and Susie was sound asleep in her hall chair when a nurse came to wake her up, startling her and telling her that her husband was awake and wanted to see her. She jumped up and ran into the room. When she arrived at the bedside, she discovered that he was better and just wanted to visit for a moment. Hubby soon was back into a deep sleep and Susie, standing by the bed, holding on to the railing with both hands, also went to sleep. She startled herself awake as she began to fall. A few quick steps backward and close proximity to a wall prevented Susie from falling down, but it scared her to death! She went to the bathroom in his room, washing her face and trying to get awake. She then returned to her chair in the hall and opened up a magazine and tried to read. But sitting in the chair, Susie did not feel right. Something was wrong and she couldn’t tell what it was. She got a peppermint out of her pocketbook and as she put it in her mouth, she knew! Now Susie is not so old, only a shade over fifty, but she does wear dentures. And as soon as the peppermint hit her mouth she panicked! “My teeth are gone! Where are my teeth?” she thinks to herself as she jumps to her feet. They were not in the chair, nor under it. “Oh Lord,” she thinks, “I went to sleep standing by the bed in his room. My teeth must have fallen out then.” Susie burst into the ICU and straight over to her husband’s room without asking or telling anybody. She was now in full panic mode! She looked on the bed, under the bed, felt up under her husband in case he had rolled over on them. She looked in the bathroom, in the floor, in the sink and throughout the rest of the room. Her pocketbook was examined. No teeth!
Susie went back to the hall and fell into her chair. “What am I going to do?” she thought. “I can’t stay here without my teeth. How will I eat? What am I going to do at daylight, when doctors and other staff start coming in?” Now, Susie wasn’t exactly vain, but she wasn’t in the habit of running around without her teeth.
As Susie sat in her chair pondering her fate, she noticed an object in the hall about 30 or 40 feet away. “Nah, it couldn’t be,” she thought. Nevertheless, she got out of her chair and started walking toward the object. She told my wife, “As soon as I got about halfway there, I could tell it was my teeth, just laying there smiling up at me.” “What did you do?” my wife asked. “Why I snatched them suckers up, run into the bathroom, washed them real good and plopped them back in my head!” she stated. “Thinking all the time someone could have stepped on my teeth and fell or even worse, broke my teeth. Then what would I have done?” Susie guessed that she or the nurse had made a hockey puck out of the teeth when she jumped up and hurried into her husband’s room. Apparently they had fallen out while she slept in the chair.
As that crisis ended, it’s fair to say that Susie was now wide awake. On the fourth floor she knew that she could freshen up, and with an overnight bag that her daughter had brought earlier in the day, she headed that way. Susie has real short hair and most of the time she wears a wig. Although while at the hospital she had not worn one, her daughter had packed her favorite in the bag along with her makeup. Susie showers, applies makeup, puts on nice clothes and wig for the first time in a week. She is back in her chair when her friend returns at daylight. The new friend sticks out her hand in greeting and asks, “Did Susie go home for awhile? Are you a sister or a relative?”
“I am Susie, don’t you recognize me?” Susie asked.
“Lord no!” her friend replied. “I don’t know what you done, but I want me a double dose of it!” With that, both ladies cracked up and a nurse had to come over to quiet them down.
Susie told my wife, “I must have really looked like a booger after talking with that woman for five days and her not even recognizing me!”
Susie’s husband is home now and improving daily. I told her that I just had to write about her adventure and ask what she thought about it.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Just tell them old women that if they have to go to the hospital, to keep their mouths shut and their hair on their heads!”
I promised to do just that. And, now I have.