Released into the greater human zoo filled with bad lifestyle choices

Last Sunday morning I sat stoned in the front seat of my 4-Runner sweating out residual morphine and readjusting to the quicker pace of the noninfirm. The Wawa parking lot looked like a luau for bull walruses and sea cows. Everyone was going nowhere in a hurry fast, bellies all hanging out, cigarettes dangling from their mouths, 32-ounce sodas caressed like a mother’s breast, tasteless tattoos under “beater” shirts.

This was my culture shock 10 minutes after four days in the orthopedic wing at Beebe Medical Center. I was released to the greater human zoo and was getting a hefty dose of bad lifestyle choices. I patiently waited for my wife to come out with my 24-ounce coffee. I was going to “Get Shorty” but the deli line was 25 deep, she said.

HUMANISTS - I sat on the edge of the other side last Thursday morning voluntarily ready to have the nerve messages to my lower body blocked. I heard the anesthesiologist say, “just a little stick,” which reminded me of a joke but after lots of failed “little sticks” I was sent to the land of lost memories which means my carcass was up for grabs to endure such procedures as intubation and foley catheterization.

“You can’t be cool with a catheter or funny with a foley,” my grandmother said. “You are just the guy with the urine bag and IV lines. You will wake up in recovery looking like a pilot in a World War II movie that has lost cockpit pressure. Take that joke anyway you like.”

Wound dressings and drains are also attractive and former students - now RNs - who ask you if you’ve had a bowel movement today. My friend, Dave Kergaard, who had hip replacement five weeks ago, loved the Beebe staff as did I saying how very nice everyone was, but found all the personal privacy safeguards thrown overboard a bit dehumanizing.

The irony is that nurses and doctors and hospital physical therapists are the ultimate humanists - they are just there to help people get through stuff at Beebe’s new orthopedic wing with 28 private rooms.

Dr. Wilson Choy told me I got a really good hip and even the phlebotomist was astounded by my outstanding hemoglobin numbers.

“Take a walker on the wild side.” I am outta here!

PIZZA BY POPPLETON – Rick Poppleton wanted to remain anonymous, but the Ledo’s delivery guy gave him up. The afternoon after surgery - just ready to come off a liquid diet - I was talking to coach George Glenn when a delivery of five pizzas for “Fredman and the Nurses” was delivered to my room. I suggested the pizzas be taken to the nurse’s lounge of gallows humor.

“It was from your friends in the running community,” Rick emailed me not looking for the credit I took in his place.

“That was so thoughtful of you,” nurses from both shifts said, making sure to thank me. It is just the kind of guy I am.