Hospital staff is the happiest when the patient says they are having bowel movements.
What makes hospitals happiest is when the patient says he is having bowel movements. Hospitals really don’t like it when your bowels are not moving and they give you medication that causes diarrhea and you ask them to please stop and you promise in pleading tones that your bowels will move soon, they really will, and then, finally, they do move, and everyone cheers up.
Rushdie, Salman. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder (p. 66). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Rushdie’s writing, at least in Knife, is plain spoken and to the point to the extent that some of his sentences and paragraphs make me laugh with knowing recognition of what experience he is articulating.
Having spent 08/23/23 - 02/03/24 within a hospital or in orthopedic rehab, the staff’s seeming preoccupation with my pain level and bowel movements seemed to be the topic of frequent staff inquiries every couple of hours for over 5 months.
In the hospital I was in leg braces from my upper thighs to my ankles at full extension as well as on huge doses of IV antibiotics. My bowel sensations were a constant worry to me because of my fear of not being able to control them and either needing a bed pan or to defecate in my adult diapers which, in either case, required staff assistance with the going and with the cleaning up afterwards.
At first, being modest and ashamed for such intimate ministrations, I severely restricted my food intake not wanting to provide fodder for the cannon. I lost 60 lbs. which I needed to lose anyway, but after I lost the weight people would comment on my change in appearance, congratulate me, and ask how I had done it. I think to myself, “You don’t really want to know.” But now you do, and when Rushdie mentioned this in his memoir that hospital staff are happiest when the patient is moving their bowels, it made me laugh.
It’s one of those things that you might not think is funny unless you have been there. You ever been there?