When Scarlett was born, she was jaundiced, which meant we had to stay at Mount Sinai for far too many days while she screamed under the lights.
While my name was on the list for a private room (and I did eventually get one the last night we were there), I spent my entire stay with a series of moms and babies, each of whom was dumber than the last. I’m talking about the moms, but I do wonder how those kids are faring in SK. Seriously.
The worst was a mom who had a giant entourage that spent her entire stay eating Burger King and sounding like extras from Jersey Shore. While Chad and I tried to get some sleep, we were forced to listen to some of the most inane conversations I’ve ever been privy to. To wit:
“Did you hear Tony was arrested?”
“No way. Where’d you hear that?”
“From Marie. She heard it from Pauly, who heard it from Angela, who heard it from Donnie who heard it from Ronnie.”
“For real? You really heard that through the grapevine.”
“I know. It’s kind of like the song: ‘That’s the sound of the men working on the chain gang.’”
It took everything within me not to suffocate myself with a pillow.
Today, I was transported back in time to Toronto, circa May 2005 when my mom’s ‘quad’ room, which was sitting at ‘duo’ capacity (remember Olga? She asked me to change her bedpan today) got a third.
Warning bell number one: the nursing staff had to remove the fourth bed to accommodate her guests.
Warning bell number two: her guests consisted of no fewer than 20 men, women and children, each of whom had either a hacking cough, runny nose, PigPen-style cigarette haze, silkscreened shirt with a wolf on it or any combination of the above.
Warning bell number three: this snippet of conversation—“The model had a gun instead of a leg, and she lifted it and shot at the audience.”
Despite pulling the paper thin curtain around my mom’s bed to hide our eyerolls and rage, it didn’t really help. I think my mom was serious when she said she didn’t need the biopsy and would be fine to go home.
The minute I saw the nurse, I grabbed her, pointed at the par-tay in the next bed and said: “This sucks.”
How was my mom, who is going to get her deflated lung cut into tomorrow supposed to get a wink of sleep tonight with Annie Oakely and her gun-limbed fan club?
The nurse said she was on it. She knows, without a doubt, that any patient stuck sharing a room with this crew would request euthanasia, so she was sussing out a private room for them. Not fair (i.e. my mom should get a private room as she’s a model patient), but I understand.
Less than an hour later, all that was left was a film of Cheeto dust and an Eau Du Craven A.
Since then, no fewer than 10 ADDITIONAL guests have stopped by looking for Granny.
The good news is that our grumbling about this freakish family was able to replace our worry about tomorrow’s surgery. Thanks, morons!
The biopsy is scheduled for tomorrow at 2:00 Saskatoon time. I’ll update when I can.
And now, for your listening pleasure…
kp