Last Thursday night, my deaf friend, who is eighty years old, had to have emergency surgery at Timpkin Mercy Hospital in Canton,..Ohio. His appendix burst and he just made it to the hospital on time to have the whole "mess' removed from his abdomen before blood poisoning set in.
Rosezelle,..his wife,..Mrs. "Usually-cool-and-collected" bawled me out, bawled out their son, bawled out their son's girlfriend,..and bawled out anyone or anything that moved or spoke. Everyone was bad to her!
I was supposed to be selling my story to another publishing company! She even called "The Rev' in Indiana and exploded at him about something. I was working with a "special needs" client and she called me at the client's house and yowled at me on the telephone. The client's phone was an old fashioned one and I could not raise the volume on it so I could barely understand what she said!
When we got to the hosp[ital, my deaf friend was already on the operating room table. His fever was over 104 degrees and he was very sick. The surgeon told Rosezelle that if the pus in his gut had not formed an abcess,..he WOULD have died from blood poisoning. They drained almost a pint of burst appendix and pus out of his gut!!
Everything was going well for him until blood started to pour into his lungs and he had to be put on a respirator with an endotrach tube stuck in his mouth and going down into his trach. Of course,..that was followed by a gastric tube to the esophagus!!
After he was returned to ICU, Rosezelle and I sat for two hours in the ICU unit waiting room from eight o'clock until ten pm,..We were waiting and waiting till the nurses would let us come in and see him. After two hours of waiting, I began to get pissed off as I knew that he had had to have been awake and conscious to have been brought back into the ICU at 8 pm!!
Finally, I really got pissed off and went over to the ICU room door with it's annoying little buzzer and instead of giving it one polite little "buzz," I leaned on it till a nurse came out to chase me away with a security guard.

I politely asked her, "We have been waiting for two hours to see Mr. Qualls. Why have we not been permitted in to see him? We have been sitting and waiting in this hospital for almost nine hours today and I would really like to know why we have had to wait out these last two hours and no one has ever told us why!"

The ICU nurse began the usual, "I only have to explain to family or medical personel...."

"I am a nurse!" I growled, "And his wife is the person, who asked me to find out why we have had to wait so long!'

"Well!" the poor nursie continued, "WE HAVE BEEN TALKING TO THIS MAN FOR ALMOST TWO HOURS AND HE IS JUST NOT RESPONDING TO THE SOUND OF OUR VOICES!! INDEED! HE IS GETTING SO AGITATED THAT HE IS PULLING AND HITTING AT THE SHEET AND WAVING HIS HANDS AROUND IN AN AGITATED MANNER...SO WE HAVE TIED HIS HANDS DOWN!! WE DIDN'T WANT TO GET HIS WIFE AND FAMILY UPSET WITH THIS HORRIBLE NEWS!!"

(STUPID BITCHES,..they tied his hands down!! How was he supposed to talk???)

"The man is D-e-a-f! That should be on his "flow sheet! Can't you read?" I hissed at the ICU nurse, "He has not responded to the sound of ANYONE'S VOICE in over seventy five years as he had encephalitis as a child and lost his hearing!! How the Hell can he talk to his wife and myself if you have tied his hands down?"

The nurses couldn't get us into the ICU fast enough after that!! Buck calmed down after he saw Rosezelle, but he was not speaking clearly as he had pulled so hard against the restraints that his hands and finger had swollen up!! The poor man was actually stuttering as he tried to fingerspell to us, his hands were shaking so badly!! He had only his right arm to talk with as his left arm was full of IV's. They also had an IV in his neck.
I shuddered to think back to the ugly days in the nineteen seventies,..when it was standard practice to put leather restraints on young deaf women, who were delivering their first babies,..rather than get an interpretor to explain to the young ladies just what would happen to to them as they progressed through their deliveries!! What was the reasoning for such cruelty? You don't have to pay a leather restraint like you have to pay an interpretor for the deaf and besides,..EVERYONE KNOWS THAT THE DEAF ARE JUST "DUMB IDIOTS,"...anyway!!
I went back to the hospital and did some major "BITCHIN!" I am pleased to say that while I while I did not foam at the mouth,..I am fairly certain that no one will ever tie Buck's hands down for the rest of this visit to to the hospital. I am also pleased to say that the hospital is paying for an interpretor, who starts today, and every nurse in the ICU is learning to fingerspell...as fast as they can!!