Personal Review: Painful Plastic By David Derber

I continued to watch and listen, hearing doctors yelling for anodynes to relieve any sort of pain a patient was feeling, and residents running like animals trying to find something to ease the pain, like anesthesia. I began to get tired of all the crazy in the operating room, so I decided to head to the waiting room, where all sorts of people come trying to find answers to relieve their pain. Usually, the people who sit in the waiting room don’t have any sort of life threatening disease, even though they think they do. I sat on an open chair next to a table. On the table was a book titled, “The Book of Pathology”, with the subtitle “All You’ll Ever Need to Know About Disease”. I flipped through, and after about a minute of trying to read, I realized a book on the cause and effects of disease wasn’t the most interesting subject for a 15-year-old. I picked up a gossip magazine and decided that this was the more interesting choice of reading. Reading in awe of the breakup between Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, I began to hear someone talking. The only person near me was a man with a puppet on his hand that was sleeping. I went back to reading, thinking nothing of it. A minute later I heard someone talking but still, the only person next to me was the man with a

At last, the bell finally rung, and I was headed home to get my gear. Hastily packing because lessons began at approximately 4:30, with about an hour drive. I hopped in the car next to Carolyn with minimal excitement. My nerves began to set in. I sat back and attempted to relax while we traveled past Delaware onto Earlville. Watching cars and fields pass by aided me to relieve some stress. I quickly forgot where I was going and why. Time flew by in that red Ford Escape. The trip from Manchester to Asbury seemed to only take fifteen minutes instead of forty five. We arrived far too soon, yet we were still late.

He started to lay back and jumped when the nurse picked her perky attitude up. “But, we will have a nurse right by you at all times until you are ready to leave.” She sat next to him and read the clipboard she was holding. “And that nurse is me!” Dave was about to laugh when there was a knock at the door, before opening. A man in a blue lab coat walked in. “Hello, Mr. Walker. How’re you feeling?” Dave nodded. “Kind of… fuzzy.” He replied. The doctor smiled and told him how he had suffered a mild stroke. Also that they would keep him there for a few days for surveillance. The nurse patted his arm and they left.

he AIDS hospice reeked from disease and neglect. On my first day there, after an hour of "training," I met Paul, a tall, emaciated, forty-year-old AIDS victim who was recovering from a stroke that had severely affected his speech. I took him to General Hospital for a long-overdue appointment. It had been weeks since he had been outside. After waiting for two and a half hours, he was called in and then needed to wait another two hours for his prescription. Hungry, I suggested we go and get some lunch. At first Paul resisted; he didn’t want to accept the lunch offer. Estranged from his family and seemingly ignored by his friends, he wasn’t used to anyone being kind to him — even though I was only talking about a Big Mac. When it arrived, Paul took his first bite. Suddenly, his face lit up with the biggest, most radiant smile. He was on top of the world because somebody bought him a hamburger. Amazing. So little bought so much. While elated that I had literally made Paul’s day, the neglect and emotional isolation from which he suffered disgusted me. This was a harsh side of medicine I had not seen before. Right then and there, I wondered, "Do I really want to go into medicine?"

It’s a struggle to get out of bed sometimes, I often just sit there struggling to comprehend the sequence of events which have taken place over the past year. I mean, I’m used to this now, its normal to me, but the fact that this has happened and that I am now ‘disabled’ as people would put it is hard to get my head around. And every time I look down I’m reminded of the pain and the struggle I faced, it’s a physical scar which links me to my grueling past, a physical and emotional journey.

Jackie and I were now halfway to where Mike’s car wreck took place, on Highway 46. The accident must have been pretty bad because it was reported on the news, a rare case, I thought to myself. I prayed Mike was going to be ok. The drive felt like it was taking hours to get to the scene . I could feel the tension in the car growing. The fact that one of our closest friends could be gravely injured was a slug shot from a shotgun into our chests. Jackie was still distressed as she drove; tears dripped from her eyes like droplets from a cool water bottle on a hot day.

I vividly remember that chilly night in March as I walked out of Fifer, the building my father now calls home, for the first time. I had goosebumps, but they were not from the cold I felt hit my skin. Instead, they were from the sickness in my stomach. As I got in the car, I began to cry and had to stop myself from running back inside. My entire world had turned upside-down. How could I go home without my father? How could I leave him in a nursing home, a place where he was too young and mentally fit to be confined? I had to fight the feeling that he didn’t belong. I had to remind myself of why he chose to be there, and I hated it.

“Right this way,” the nurse ahead of me was prompting me to a brightly lit hall that was completely foreign to me. I couldn’t help but be terrified by the sights and sounds around me: people chattering, machines methodically beeping, gurneys rushing past. It was my first time in a hospital and my eyes frantically searched each room looking for any trace of my father. She stopped suddenly and I turned to the bed in front of me but I could not comprehend what I saw. At such a young age, I idolized my father; I had never seen him so vulnerable. Seeing him laying in a hospital bed unconscious, surrounded by wires and tubes was like witnessing Superman encounter kryptonite. My dad’s car accident not only made him a quadriplegic, but also crippled

We arrived at our destination… so I took my headphones out, and I put my iPhone away. I stepped off of the bus to see a large brick school building with some bricks missing and multiple cracked windows illuminated by light bulbs glowing brightly in classrooms full of innocent children. I began walking to the entrance of the school, trying to avoid the large cracks in the sidewalk that were filled with ice on this bitter December day. Snow was falling and the bitter cold and my new surroundings were shaking me to the core.

When the Weeping Willow trees became abundant around every sector of the car, I knew we were getting close. Once we passed the bridge by the small, grass bank called Cypher Beach, I could barely sit still in the front seat of my grandparents truck because I knew we were about to arrive. There I sat, waiting anxiously with my size ten feet smashed into a size seven foot box because if I removed them, I affected my grandfather's ability to drive and my grandmother’s ability to sit and look pretty. Even though the flip of the coin always caused me to sit in the front, compared to the comfy back where the other four children sat, it was all worth it when we arrived to our destination. The destination was just up the road, where we turned right

Glancing to the clock, I made note that it was barely past three o’clock and yet here I was planted in bed. I hated being ill, especially living alone. Although I have much support from my sister and her husband, I still spent most of the morning alone. I was not surprised by my illness, I had been grieving more and more as the days came. My entire state of mind had begun to strip away what little patience and avoidance I had. I had stopped eating for several days, my

Of all the things too hear the doctor say, why Addison’s Disease. I felt numb. I didn’t know if I should cry or run. I was confused, again I asked why then I asked how. I was angry for a moment but it later

The plastic chairs worn from from use. The chorus of of coughs and wheezes. The smell of antiseptic didn’t cover up the years of pain and suffering in the hospital. All my legs wanted to do was run. I could see the pain behind her eyes, she wasn’t the same Abby I knew. The Abby I knew was happy and brought a smile to my face. The nurse had told me not to cry or burst out or yell, so my only option was to run. I backed away. I could see the pain in her eyes grew with each step I took back. Then I began to run. I didn’t look away quick enough to see one single tear running down her

They week had flown by when I realized that today was Friday, as well as the last day of band camp. On this occasion, I did my very best, and pushed myself past the limit. I stayed on the field for a complete hour. By that time, I was limp from nausea, and couldn’t move my arms. Chris ran with me inside, and of course, the nurse wasn’t there. My vision blurred as Chris rushed around for my medicine; breathing became a task that required conscience effort, and I had to focus. I barely felt the medicine travel down my throat. I tried to cling onto consciousness, but it slipped away into oblivion.

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