Memoir: The Kidney Stone

(The following was published in The Globe and Mail, March, 1998, all rights reserved.)

A passing strange experience

In which I learn that morphine is nice, and so is Jell-O, and so are the nurses who accord us all our dignity, even a middle-aged guy with a kidney stone that won't quit.

Thursday, March 5, 1998

HAD Wordsworth had kidney stones, his legacy would surely have included an Ode: Intimations of Mortality . For there is nothing like that assault on the "gentles" to make a man realize he is passing. Not passing strange, or passing 55 or passing a gravel pit, but just plain passing.

Mine hits me like an unidentified truck of a Tuesday morn. When I have to crawl back to my bed I reckon I should phone in, cancel my meetings, pass on the downtown luncheon and sleep it off. That works. I go through the rest of the week with daily spasms that pass with a Tylenol or three.

Now, I don't know what I've got. I note that I haven't had -- how can I put this delicately? -- a good bowel movement for four days. So I put one and two together and conclude: my colon looks like my sofa and it's about to explode.

By Sunday, the pain is unbearable. Nothing dispels it. My midriff seems a swirling fire. No position is comfortable. Oddly, I feel the least discomfort when I lie on the area afflicted. I can't place the pain precisely. It's just -- inside. About 3 a.m. I give in, call a cab and check in at the emergency room of my friendly neighbourhood Foothills Hospital.

Within 15 minutes, I'm hustled into a row of cubicles and deposited on a bed. After quick questioning by two or three nurses, covering the same ground -- can I keep my story straight? -- I'm eventually introduced to the fast, fast, fast relief of morphine. A very nice drug. It's in a pouch supplementing the saline solution in my IV. The pain dissolves and I sleep. I like morphine.

In the morning, the doctor on duty opines that I have a kidney stone. To confirm, he runs me through the full-gut CAT scan. "Usually these things work themselves out on their own. Let's hope so." He sends me home with a vial of Tylenol 3s. "If these don't do it, come back to us. Drink lots of fluids."

"Can I have a flask of morphine to go?"

(Why should I take up valuable emergency room space when I don't have to? I'm a conscientious citizen. Also, you should know this: I come from solid Russian peasant stock who wouldn't be caught dead going to a hospital. Take a swig and soldier on, I say.)

"I'm afraid not, sir."

Monday, I go to work and realize immediately I should have stayed in bed. By mid-afternoon, the pain leaves those Tylenol 3s licking dust. I call a cab back to the hospital. When I get there, the pain has subsided. For three hours I watch the passing scene. Then the pain returns. Huge. I'm ushered back to the cubicles, interviewed all over again by the day cast and finally, finally, given that little morphine spike to my IV.

The doctor du jour is sure it's a kidney stone. The next morning, this is confirmed by another full-gut CAT scan.

"We have two choices. We could admit you here for a few days and see if it works itself out. Or we could send you down to the Rocky View."

"Why there?"

"They have the urologists."

Oh. That's the modern hospital scene. A huge hospital with all the latest, with full research activity, attached to the friendly neighbourhood university, but all the urologists hang out somewhere else? What does this hospital handle and could I swap for that?

I don't relish giving up the IV to cross town, so we agree I'll stay at the Foothills. For three days I'm constantly served by warm, caring nurses and staff who are obviously overworked. Round the clock, I doze and drift. I haven't the mental focus to turn on the telly. For three days I'm fed lots of fluids, but nothing more solid than Jell-O. Three flavours a day. I'm reminded that I like Jell-O. Rich flavours, animated wigglies, deep colour. Goes particularly well with morphine.

I faithfully urinate through a strainer, hoping to trap the vile grit that's causing my pain. "There's rocks in that thar gold," I say to myself, but the mine yields not a nugget.

In the middle of the night -- probably around 7 p.m. -- I'm awakened by a bright-eyed young man sitting on my bed. The Angel of Death, I logically assume.

"I'm John Dushinski. Urologist at Rocky View. I've checked your records. You have a little kidney stone stuck in your urethra."

I'm slowly focusing on him.

"It should have come out by now. If it hasn't already, it probably won't. Here's what we'll do. We'll take you by ambulance tomorrow noon to the Rocky View. Then when I have a chance in the OR, I'll remove your stone. Here's the operation. We run a small telescope into your penis and up into the bladder. It will spot where the stone is. If it's small, we'll just grab it and pull it out for analysis. If it's big, we'll shatter it by laser and get all the pieces out. You'll be unconscious for the whole operation. You won't feel a thing. It'll take maybe half an hour. An hour later, you can go home if you want. And let's hope you don't get them again. Any questions?"

No questions. I thank him.

My first ambulance trip ever whisks me off to Urologists "R" Us. In the next bed, a geezer sleeps the long afternoon away, sawing happily, while I lie under the burgeoning pain, trying not to think about the operation.

The geezer awakens and starts calling out orders.

"Do you know where you are, dear?" the nurse asks him, warmly.

"Of course. I'm on a cruise."

"No, you're in the hospital. We'll be operating on you very soon. No more back pain."

"Isn't this a ship?"

"No, it's a hospital. Have you ever been on a cruise?"

"No. Is the boat over there?"

Another time he cries out, "I only want to show some compassion."

I look for a conspiratorial smile from the nurse as she passes, but there is none. The geezer has his dignity. Anyway, from where she sits, he and I are in the same boat in the same fog at the same point of our journey. There's no superiority here.

Finally, at about 6:30, I'm wheeled into the OR. I'm impressed at the space and the impressive array of equipment. No wonder all the urologists hang out here. That's sparkling expensive stuff, whatever it is. I wonder if David Cronenberg knows about this.

A thirtyish man leans over me: "Hi, I'm Dr. Ken. I'll be your anesthetist today." Everyone around is young and perky. I wonder why my operation will be administered by a bunch of cute cheerleaders. Do they alternate shifts between here and the Keg?

All these cute little girls' eyes are on me as I shift awkwardly from my wheely to the operating table. "You can keep your blankets on you," my surgeon suggests.

Suddenly, I catch myself praying. I haven't prayed for years. But now, without thinking, in the pressure of the moment, my mortal vulnerability ineluctable, I am praying, in silent but total fervour.

"Oh, please, God, don't let them start laughing at my penis until I'm unconscious."

"Here's some oxygen."

"It smells like rubber."

"You can wake up now. It's over. You're okay. We got it."

My blankets are in place. There is a God.

The geezer is being wheeled in as I out. "No oxygen! I hate oxygen!" But his salvation proceeds, willy-nilly.

   

Fiction: Grandfather

       “Jew! They say you’re smart.”

“Some do, some don’t.”

“I need some advice. Open the goddam door.”

Before the bearded old Jew could respond the Cossack kicked the door open, jamming his host against the wall. He strode in, his boots dropping piles of dark mud on the plank floor. The Cossack planted himself on the bench at the wooden table. 

“Do you expect me to talk when I’m dry?” he bellowed.

“Rivka, we have a guest. Perhaps we might offer him a little drink.” 

The wife rubbed her hands clean on her blue dotted apron and brought from the one cupboard a nearly full bottle of schnapps with two glasses. She set them down on the table before her husband, who had placed himself on the bench on the other side to the guest’s. When she started to pour the Cossack ripped the bottle from her hands.

“Here, I’ll do that. I didn’t think Jews were supposed to drink. It better not be poisoned. You go first.”

He poured a shot for his host, watched as he took a sip and swallowed, then pulled a long swig himself straight from the bottle. With his arm he brushed his glass off the table, across the room to the floor, where to the old Jew’s surprised relief it did not break.

The Cossack was a large man, six feet without his boots, heavy set, with hands that could rip the head off a chicken or choke a dog. He already wore the stench of  rough booze to which the Jew’s peach schnapps could only add a delicate inflection. After a second long draught he slammed the bottle on the table and – without releasing his grip on it – began.   

“I want to marry the mayor Ivanovich’s daughter. Not the old one, with the bad leg, the second. Malya. Hips on her -- she could deliver a bull.”

“Does she want to marry you?”

“Who cares? Her father doesn’t want me. That’s my problem.”

“Oh? You’re a strong, good-looking man. You have the most secure job in the shtetl. So why doesn’t he?”

“He’s a pig’s arse-hole, that’s why.”

“What’s his explanation?”

The Cossack drew another swig from the bottle. “Aach, he’s made up some stupid reasons, they’re not worth a fart in a windstorm.”

“Such as what?  He wants to marry off the older one first?”

“That’s part of it. She has a couple suitors, the crippled boy who cleans up the tavern and the drooler. But their parents wont accept Ivanovich’s dowry. They say she’s damaged goods. She was raped. They want more money before they give him their son. They want twice his last offer and he doesn’t want to pay, the cheap son of a bitch.”

“Olga was raped? I never knew.” Sadly, he glanced over to Rivka as if to ask if she knew. Rivka stuck her gaze on the pot she was scrubbing.

“Yeah, three, four months ago. She’s pregnant, too, everybody knows.”

“Do we know who’s the father?”

“Yes and no. There were four of us.  We were drinking when we came home on furlough. I was looking for Malya, we came across Olga in the field, the other boys jumped her. I joined in at the end. It could’ve been any one of us. Even me. Sure, I came in last, but my balls make the others look like walnuts.” To prove his point he took a double swig from the jug. 

“I see your problem,” the Jew said in his soft, creaking voice. “Is marrying off Olga the mayor’s only concern? If she marries would he have you for Malya?”

“Of course. He couldn’t afford to hold out for anybody else. Anyway, somebody else around here makes a move on her, I’d smear his bones on the floor like butter on a fresh loaf. I’ve made that known pretty clear around here.”

“Has he offered a suitable dowry for Malya?”

“The same as for Olga. But man to man, here, don’t tell anyone, but I don’t need his goddam dowry. Money I have. With that big ass on her, tits that could suckle a pig’s whole litter – and those hips? I’d grab her with a kopeck for a dowry.”

“Maybe there’s your solution, then. Go to the mayor and tell him this. If he gives you Malya you will be happy to help out his family. You would let him add her dowry to what he’s offered for Olga. That way she can get married before the poor momzer arrives. The family’s honour is preserved, the older daughter marries first, and you get your Malya.” 

      With a chuckle in his eye the old man added: “If you have a double wedding he could even save a little more. I wish you a happy, fertile marriage and a long, healthy life together.”

“Well, goddam!” the Coasack blurted, then drained the last of the bottle. “You’re right. That solves everything. I can see why people say you’re so smart. You’re a Jew so you know how the world works, don’t you? “

“Glad to be of help. I wish you luck. As my people say, Zoll zein mit mozzle.”

The Cossack planted both palms flat on the table and hoisted himself off the bench.   

“I suppose you expect me to thank you. Maybe you want I should give you something. Goddam Jews, I’ll sure give you something.”

With that he grabbed the schnapps bottle and in a sweep of his arm smashed it down on the old man’s forehead. The Jew slumped to the table, bleeding from the splinters. While Rivka rushed to him the Cosasck strode to the door and out to the howling night towards the fancy home of his new family.   

     

Fiction: On the A List

The Author was coming for dinner. She had come from the East to give a reading at our modest local literary festival. 

As soon as we saw her name on the program we phoned her… her husband, really, because him I knew rather better through our academic conferences. Though my wife had not, I had met her and the occasion had not diminished the respect her considerable literary reputation had embedded in us both.

  She would be delighted to come. In fact, the prospect of a warm, homey evening with new friends made almost bearable the prospect of yet another flight, yet another signing, yet another inspired soar through her natively silent prose. She would be delighted.

Of course we invited our a-list. One couple was artists, both very successful. The other was a Ceylonese couple, he an accomplished novelist and academic, she an esteemed child psychologist. We rose to some recommended wines.  We bought her latest novel. We read it.

The dinner was at the end of her visit. She had her hotel room for an extra night so I attended her reading, picked her up at her room an hour later and drove her home, where my wife had spent the day dicing and preparing.

“My God, I was just awful,” she said, as she blew into my passenger seat. “And those questions! So inane. It must be awful for you here.”

I dutifully started at the top. “No, you were terrific. Vivacious. You created the sense you were moving through your material for the first time. Discovering your words, thinking, feeling them for the first time. I think that’s remarkable.”

“You’re sweet to say that but I don’t believe it for a moment. So how are you?”

“Not bad, but the winter….”

“Are you writing anything?”

“I’ve been toying with a short memoir but mainly editing for the reissue of my old book on….”

“Wonderful! I have the germ for my next novel. But, to be frank, when I’m reading and touring I just can’t switch gears into writing. Dickens may have been able to, but I can’t and I can’t think of anyone else who could either. Separate parts of the brain, I suppose. I’ll be so relieved when the dust around my last book has finally settled and I can curl up with my new one.”

She was gracious when I showed her into her house and introduced Franny.   

“What a wonderful table you’ve set, and just for me. You really needn’t have gone to such trouble. But I do appreciate it. I’m sorry you had to miss my reading. Perhaps your Jake will fill you in how positively bathetic it all was.”

“Don’t listen to her. She was terrific. But the guy who asked the first question? Of course, it was that lunatic who always begins with ‘I am 68 years old and have visited 47 countries.’”

“Oh, him. He goes to everything. And he’s always first at the mike for the questions.”

“My plan is one day to squeak in past him and begin with ‘I am 48 years old and have visited 118 countries, mostly through my stamp collection.’”

She laughed and sipped her martini. The martini was one of Franny’s several excellences. Of course she had planned the seating arrangement as carefully as the hors d’oeuvres. The Author was planted between the male artist and my novelist colleague. Clearly she was an old hand at this. She made a point to spend the same amount of time conversing with each before leaning across to their wives.  

“So you’re a colleague of Jake’s?”

“Yes, but in a different faculty. My PhD is in English Literature but my appointment is in the Faculty of Management.”

“But Jake said you were a novelist. Why on earth would you go to management!”

“That is where the vacancy was when I applied.  My situation has gone quite well, though. I teach writing, composition, some ethics courses, and my colleagues in the Faculty quite respect my difference.”

“You must be a better man than I am, Gunga Din. I would go mad in Management.” 

“I believe you underestimate your adaptability.”

“And what have you written?”

“A few novels about cultural tensions in India and Ceylon. I doubt that you’ve heard of them.”

“And you’re the artist.”

“So I’m told.”

“What’s your chosen medium?”

“I’m primarily a painter, though I have also done prints and, of course, drawings. I have had some commissions for installations in the US and South America.”

“Fascinating. Art and writing, you know, we’re all about the same things really, aren’t we? I mean, we both create our little imaginary worlds in which people will, we hope, lose themselves to find themselves.”

“I suppose, yes.”

“And do you make a living at that?”

My friend was about to explain that he also has a senior position teaching at the art school but I cut him off.

“I’m surprised you don’t know his work. He did that massive trompe l’oeil building on King Street in Toronto, you know, the wall full of false windows?”

“Oh, that! Of course. You did that! And what kind of art do you make?” She had turned to his wife, a quiet blonde woman whose artistic reputation was only slightly less than her husband’s.  and who tended to be excessively recessive.

“I’ve done a few murals, though nothing on that scale. I also teach at the art school.” 

“If you have time tomorrow,” I added, “before your flight, she has a very good mural on 17^th Avenue here.” But the author had moved on.

“I forget, dear, did Jake tell me you’re an artist too? Or just another of those academics?”

“No,” she replied warily. “I’m in child psychology.”

Franny slipped in quickly: “Ranna heads the psychology department at the Children’s Hospital here.”

At this the author dropped her cutlery firmly beside her plate. “My, how wonderful,” she said, for once genuinely impressed. “That must give you all kinds of material to write about.”

“No, in fact, I don’t write. I leave all that to my husband. And to you. I just work with the children.” 

   

Fiction: Sunday Evenin Comin Down

On a July Waterton weekend we lucked into Soulfest 09 at Twin Butte, which is a general store with a bar and a Mexican kitchen. It was a big boozeup with bar bands all day. A field full of campers, RVs and tents attested to the draw.

When we came for dinner Sunday night the crowd had dwindled to a small group of bikers, ranchers, biker molls, a few tourists. A truckload of Hutterite men hovered around while one of them went for a jug, then they drove off. 

We’re inside eating excellent Mexican. A small wreck of a man, old and frail enough to be Willie Nelson’s daddy, stumbles in and barely makes it to a bench against the wall. He looks like he’s dying. But he manages to croak aloud a couple times  “A Kokanee. I said I want a Kokanee.” Served, he subsides so we forget him. 

After eating we go outside and linger to hear the current band. It’s pretty good, working through credible renditions of country and rock songs. The setting sun casts a different light and shade on each face in the audience. It’s like a Fellini party’s-over scene. 

And there sitting front center on guitar is that wreck. He still looks dead but he’s singing and plucking and I decide he’s still alive because he’s plugged into the song. The band is good and I conclude that you don’t have to be really good in music to be really good. The song elevates the singer. Thus reaffirmed and having had a warm Corona myself I sing along.

Then our wreck swings into “Gee it’s good to be back home again.” In the midst of a verse he breaks down. We chime in to help but he drops again. One of the women backup informs us “This is a tough song for him. It’s personal.” The old wreck recovers, keeps playing, tries another verse or two then breaks down, sobbing. Both women onstage gather round to comfort him.  The band keeps the beat going till he recovers, well enough to play, but any lyric dissolves him again. 

“Let him sing one about beer and titties,” a biker gal suggests from the house. “That works every time.” 

The wreck pulls himself together long enough to say: “I got a grandson last week. Jayce. Four pounds six ounces. He’s going to take over from me.”

The cheers and clapping from the audience help him back and the band rolls into another number.

The moment was magic. When’s the last time you heard a singer who meant his song?

The Party

The first two notes set the tone. A discordant reprise of “Jerusalem,” the hymn that accompanies so many screen exposures of British culture, alerts us to the social satire to follow. 

  The visual narrative starts and ends on the same shot. In black and white, the raging harridan Janet aims a gun at the audience. The violence and classic black and white evoke two cinematic contexts, the classic monster movie and British social realism of the 60s. There be monsters here. 

The title points two ways. Most obviously, Janet and Bill are throwing a dinner party to celebrate her appointment as Labour shadow minister of Health (always a harbinger of disease, social or psychological). Also, the friends and the celebration are rooted in the Labour party, which April declares “your entirely rotten and useless opposition party.” 

She, a cynical American, trusts direct and violent action over parliamentary democracy. Her boyfriend Gottfried mouths New Age cliches — “Western medicine is voodoo.… Change is good.” — that infuriate her, to the point she declares “This is our last supper.””

Another friend — “wanker banker” Tom — works in a Tory profession. He is a coke-head wreck not just because his wife is leaving him but because he still carries some recidivist Leftism: “No money is clean. It all comes through the system and into your pockets. Your grubby little pockets!” He brings a gun to the party.

But the group as a whole shares a liberal politic as rooted — and as brittle — as their current relationships. 

Whether we take “party” in the social or political sense, the drama is the same: a close-knit group disintegrates from its betrayals, infidelities, and faltering sensitivity to each other.  The lesbian couple is similarly shaken when Martha’s uncovered past disturbs Jinny and Martha draws back from the triplets Jinny is carrying for them.  

The film bristles with a whip-smart, black comic script. Yet the two central figures don’t say much. Janet’s long-supportive professor husband Bill stares in a drunken stupor until he’s knocked unconscious — which hardly alters his expression. In a prophetic early line, he says “Yes, yes, and I'm Bill, I think. Well, I used to be.” By film’s end nobody will be what they assumed they were. 

The film’s most pervasive force is the character we don’t see — Maryanne, who’s Tom’s wife and the two-edged sword that cleaves Janet’s marriage — and probably career, if she pulls that trigger.  

  April in particular blows through the dialogue like an acrid spring breeze. She dismisses her husband with "Prick an aromatherapist and you'll find a fascist” — though he’s far from his Nazi forbears. April deflates feminine sentimentality: “Babies, excuse me Jinny, Martha, babies get born every day in extremely large numbers to the point of endangering the planet and all our futures.” But she still punctuates the heaviest concerns with a dash of formulaic political advice: “You’ll have to do something about your hair.” She dismisses Martha as “a first class lesbian and a second rate thinker. Must be all those Women's Studies.” Martha admits to “Specializing in domestic labour gender differentiation in American utopianism.”
     No Utopianism in this film’s England, though. Just avatars of contemporary culture discovering each others’ vulnerabilities as their world crumbles around them. One bright spot, though: April may keep Gottfried, for as she sees the other relationships theirs suddenly seems relatively healthy.   

Meditation Park

The title gives pause. No reference is made to a “Meditation Park.” That could be the greenery through which the Chinese women run their aerobic jog and where Maria watches and is confronted by her husband Bing’s mistress. But in a cafe scene the women discuss a higher reality, the spiritual world before which our mundane existence is just an illusion. That scene roots the title.

The film presents several scenes of daily life advancing into such a higher reality. They usually depict a situation of earnest conflict giving way to a spirit of community, harmony, higher understanding. 

The most obvious involves neighbour Gabriel. At first he is disruptive and selfish, undermining the Chinese women by stealing their parking clients and undercutting their rates. When Maria helps him escape the cops (and a $5k fine, Canadian but still…) she shows him the error of his ways and converts enemy to friend. Their bond deepens when his invalid wife dies. At the end he’s jogging with the Chinese leaders through that park.

The fair-like block party is an image of the neighbourhood transcending its differences to discover an overriding new harmony. The soundless disco is a double metaphor. When the characters dance to a seemingly unheard music they embody the life attuned to a higher reality. Their separate earphones confirm they are separated individuals but bonded by an unseen harmony.  The makes this temporary amusement park a kind of meditation park. 

So, too, the film’s two most moving and revealing scenes: intimate exchanges between separated women. In the first Maria’s banished son’s fiancee drops in for an unexpected visit. The women thaw the ice their men have left stiff between them. 

In the second Maria is visited in the park by her husband’s mistress, who apologizes for having lured him away and explains the loneliness and despair that drove her into that adultery. Maria forgives her — and even asks her to take him back, to make him and her own life less miserable. The girl properly declines. 

Here as in the family reunion at the unseen wedding, an antagonism yields to a new harmony.  

 Bing has himself undergone a process of revelation. He has banished his son in anger at his loss of face when the son missed the community dinner. When his mistress dumps him, Bing explodes in drunken rage. He despairs at the loss of his romantic future. He numbly offers his wife the escape he planned with his mistress. But in ordering Maria to miss their son’s marriage Bing tries to reaffirm his autocratic authority. But she has discovered independence, through higher values than his domestic tyranny. 

The father may not have gone to his son’s wedding, but when he stands alone and humbled before the wall of family photos and he feels the pain at his daughter’s revolt against his dominance the film leaves the promise of possibly his discovery of values higher than his own vanity too. 

This is a superb film. It’s striking for the way its family of mixed marriages reveals a post-racist community. Race is not an issue here, though the clash of petty egos persists. 
     The characters are all finely detailed, flawed but sympathetic, glamour less and real. Director Shum brilliantly realizes their socio-economic milieu in the finely-detailed sets. But the heart of the film is those two scenes between the women — and a powerful, insightful heart it is. 

On Body and Soul

The film opens and closes on nature, specifically, the rich, frozen world in which a stag pursues a doe. We learn that setting, which seems to be our physical world, is the dream that the two central characters are independently having. At the end, as the humans have transcended their respective isolation the two deer disappear from the scene. Nature thaws when the lovers connect.

The body in the title is represented in the uncompromising harshness of the abattoir. So too the central figures’ limitations, Endre with his crippled left arm, Maria with her Asberger’s withdrawal from touch and connection. 

The soul is represented by the dream-world of the deer. Endre and Maria are found to be dreaming the same dream — the same deer, their tentative interchange, the same frigid setting. The soul is the insubstantial, dream-like reality to which the body aspires and fulfills itself in discovering. Rarely has the body-soul conundrum been so dramatically posited.

Despite the other-worldliness of the two characters sharing a dream, this is a kind of madcap romance, where two initially antagonistic characters stumble into love. 

But the romantic far outweighs the comic, given the fleshy gore of the slaughterhouse and the poignancy of both flawed, struggling lovers. Conventional romance, the coarser “reality,” is rather represented by Endre’s unappealing colleague, who chafes under suspicion of his wife’s infidelities, and the swaggering, studly new worker.   
     When Maria and Endre finally make love there is an intensity, fulfilment and triumph that is always missing in more graphic representations. Both lovers struggle to break through their respective shells and self denials to connect.