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nightdog_barksSunny and beautiful after yesterday's rain, and cooler. 54 degrees (12.2 Celsius), with a light wind out of the north. Making a pot of beans and smoked pork shanks for dinner tonight.
Wonderful article from Hilary Mantel, writer of Wolf Hall, in the Guardian today, all about being in hospital for a minor operation -- and nothing going right. Here is a quote:
For the month of July, my world is the size of the room that, as an undergraduate, I shared with a medical student, a box of bones under the bed and a skull on our shelf. I think of the long wards of the hospitals I visited as a child, fiercely disinfected but with walls too high to be cleaned properly: those walls receding, vanishing into grey mist, like clouds over a cathedral. Wheezing and fluttering, or slumped into stupor, my great aunts and uncles died in wards like those. Wrapping and muffling themselves, gazing at the long windows streaming rain, visitors would tell the patient, "You're in the best place." And as the last visitor was ushered out on the dot, doors were closed, curtains pulled, and the inner drama of the ward was free to begin again: the drama enacted without spectators, within each curtained arena a private play, and written within the confines of the body a still more secret drama. Death stays when the visitors have gone, and the nurses turn a blind eye; he leans back on his portable throne, he crosses his legs, he says, "Entertain me."
The article is here and is well worth a read.
And on that note, must put the laptop down for a moment to pay some bills so Mr. N can take them to the post office later. :-)
Wonderful article from Hilary Mantel, writer of Wolf Hall, in the Guardian today, all about being in hospital for a minor operation -- and nothing going right. Here is a quote:
For the month of July, my world is the size of the room that, as an undergraduate, I shared with a medical student, a box of bones under the bed and a skull on our shelf. I think of the long wards of the hospitals I visited as a child, fiercely disinfected but with walls too high to be cleaned properly: those walls receding, vanishing into grey mist, like clouds over a cathedral. Wheezing and fluttering, or slumped into stupor, my great aunts and uncles died in wards like those. Wrapping and muffling themselves, gazing at the long windows streaming rain, visitors would tell the patient, "You're in the best place." And as the last visitor was ushered out on the dot, doors were closed, curtains pulled, and the inner drama of the ward was free to begin again: the drama enacted without spectators, within each curtained arena a private play, and written within the confines of the body a still more secret drama. Death stays when the visitors have gone, and the nurses turn a blind eye; he leans back on his portable throne, he crosses his legs, he says, "Entertain me."
The article is here and is well worth a read.
And on that note, must put the laptop down for a moment to pay some bills so Mr. N can take them to the post office later. :-)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 05:54 pm (UTC)I think that our culture, our health/medical culture, views death as UNNATURAL. Like it's not supposed to happen and it's somehow shameful when it does. So they fight to keep patients alive longer than they should, and dying people don't get the support they need. My $0.02.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 06:03 pm (UTC)