Like a Dog with a Bad Case of Mange

I have quite a hairy chest. Normally this basic fact of my anatomy does not cause any problems. Quite the reverse.

However, when you are in hospital for electrocardiography, stress and echo tests, a thick rug is something of a disadvantage. To accommodate the multiple electrodes involved in today’s fun at St. Mary’s Hospital, my chest and ankles have been shaved. Patches of pale white skin have emerged from the forest of golden red hairs for the first time since puberty. There is no getting away from it, I look like a dog with a bad case of mange.

Any man should know better than to expect sympathy from the women in his life when it comes to the issue of shaving. Having once let a girlfriend wax one of my legs, I have some small sense of hair removal hell. Despite this, itching breasts seems like an unfair indignity to heap on a man who has already had to spend his morning running half-naked on a treadmill while several nurses look on.

Within our own Haunted Internal Darks

If you define a phobia as an irrational terror of a simple thing, my extreme dread at having to set foot in a hospital is not phobic. The terror is not irrational. Hospitals are cemented in my mind as places of death and unquiet ghosts. The arena in which monsters called heart failure; leukaemia and age pummel those you love with unrestrained cruelty.

My fear began young. Dragged behind Aunt Vilma for a visit as her mother’s body imploded under the terrible gravity of cancer. We saw her lying in bed, loosened flesh folded over fragile bones, skin tainted by the chemical smell I will forever associate with chemotherapy. Even at the five, I knew she would not get better, would never leave hospital.

The next year, unable to breath, I was pulled on a trolley through the midnight corridors of Southend General. Held down on my back, I saw a new disorientating landscape of white ceilings and bright lights rush above me. Plastic sheets and doors parted with emergency crash, punctuating the journey. My mother let go of my hand, unable either to keep up with the dash or to follow where I was going. The panic grew.

I was not scared because I was ill, because each breath was weaker, the oxygen consumed by the fire in my lungs. I was scared because I was in hospital and this was where bad things happened. Where despite whatever promises were made, you might never get to go home. Even the outside of Southend General engendered alarm in my brain. If the building was a good place why was it painted with a multi-storey mural of snake or dragon? It was obviously a site of monstrous happenings.

Life of course has a way of providing evidence for your inner fears. The thermoplastic of the universe will flow into shapes manifested from within our own haunted internal darks. The expected, dreaded outcome too often becomes reality.

This has meant my relationship with hospitals retains the same dynamics of fear it had in childhood. They induce terror. Bad things happen there. This is why, as pain cracks across my chest denying me all hope of sleep, I will not do the sensible thing and go to the hospital.

Around St. Mary’s in a Wheelchair

There is no need to go into details, but I am currently unable to walk without the aid of a stick. My system flooded with analgesics from the hospital, the throbbing is tolerable. However, there will be no psychogeographic walking, cooking or vertical fun for at least 10 days.

This morning, as Surreal Girl pushed me in around St. Mary’s in a wheelchair, visions of Luke Haines crowded my mind. I would not want anyone to think I had jumped from a wall to get out of my upcoming journey to Australia. Nor would I plunge onto concrete to make myself so twisted with pain I could generate words as menacing as those found on After Murder Park. Yet as I faced the prospect of spending the next two months in plaster, I knew there are those who would have made such links.

Hospitals present a landscape of terror for me. Their architecture always seems designed to concentrate a sense of mortality, the walls between life and oblivion become paper thin. Recursive corridors with fractal linoleum are guaranteed routes to dread. Everywhere is filled with a cloying tang of disinfectant and the constant wheeze of machinery.

Today the fear was held at bay. Not since my mother would accompany me as the gurney was wheeled from the ER room to the oxygen tent during childhood asthma attacks has anyone been there with me. For the first time in years, there was someone to hold my hand. I will always love her for that.