Twelve Years: The Heartbreaking Story of the Artist Formerly Known as Jack Butler

Recently, the wife and I celebrated 12 years of marital bliss, and boy were their fireworks. No, seriously, there were actual fireworks. We spent the evening watching the final round of a multi-jour pyrotechnic competition over the muddy waters of the Garonne River. With children in tow, this was not perhaps the most romantic of all getaways, but after 12 years it doesn’t take as much pageantry to keep the spark alive. It was a wonderful evening in the company of good friends which left me with only mild gastro-intestinal discomfort. On the heels of my dysenteric battle with whatever variety of avian influenza my wife brought home with her from the Orient, I seem to have managed to place a cherry on top of that sundae with a round of lively food poisoning. Two weeks or better clinging to or perched atop the toilet has me feeling lighter than I have in years. It was during one of these “thinking” sessions that things went from bad to worse.

We had only recently welcomed guests back into the Butler Hotel from the good ole USA when my stomach required another time out. When I emerged, another kilo or two thinner, I noted an alarming stabbing pain in my left arm followed by a complete loss of feeling in two of the fingers on my left hand. Soon the entirety of the inside of my left arm was numb. I advised the wife of said condition and assured her that I would be fine. Despite her concern and insistence on a trip to the Hospital, I remained adamant that all was well and that I didn’t require medical treatment. I remained adamant for a good 15 minutes anyway, and then I agreed that something seemed askew and medical treatment might be in order. By the time we reached the hospital the left side of my neck and left cheek were joining the party. Now certain of an untimely death at the hands of a stroke or cardiac episode, I become terribly homesick. Waiting in the triage area of 100 or so amputees and drowning victims, I began to regret our decision to seek medical attention. A single nurse bounced this way and that assessing patients. When finally she came round to me, the possibility that my symptoms could in fact lead to a complete system melt down meant that I was placed at the front of the queue.

Now, despite my continued support of the social health care system here in France, there is (as I have come to discover) a somewhat darker reality to face with regard to emergent care. While no one can dispute the tremendous cost and disproportionate availability of care in the US, I fall within the category of folks that can afford to pay for the services with all the fancy bells and whistles, so when it comes time to crack open my chest I would feel much more comfortable in the hands of the fine folks that have brought us the likes of Grey’s Anatomy and ER. If I had my pick between the two, I would choose Derek Shephard over Smelly Howser, MD (who, as it just so happened, was to provide me care on this particular evening). No, scratch that, I would actually rather have the actor Patrick Dempsey’s “pretend” practiced hands wielding the scalpel meant to crack open my chest, at least the last thoughts in my head before sudden death wouldn’t be: “Geez this guy smells bad”. Unfortunately, Smelly was my only option so I put myself in his possibly capable hands. He seemed absolutely giddy to have the opportunity to work on a REAL patient. “Smelly” was an intern and I am fairly certain the Hospital would not have been comfortable with him flying solo on a case, but since he was the only one in the hospital with a fair proficiency with my mother tongue he got called up to the “big leagues”. Besides, I was not a French national and likely not a great loss to the populace should my fragrant doctor blow the diagnosis.

Soon enough, I was strapped up to a machine that looked more likely to cause a sudden and painful death to someone who had just walked the “green mile” than render any useful medial information. Smelly asked politely that I close my eyes while the machine did its thing. I can only assume the reason for this is that he didn’t want me to see him hopelessly trying to jumpstart the equipment by flipping every conceivable knob and switch he could find only to realize the damned thing was unplugged. Nonetheless, I was pleased to oblige since the cloud of body odor escaping from beneath his lab coat was making my eyes burn while my tear ducts worked a double shift to keep flames from consuming my pupils.  When a read-out was finally forthcoming, he pondered my EKG ribbon for an uncomfortably long period of time. He flipped it upside down and back again in an effort to make sense of it all. Eyeing me suspiciously, he was able to determine that since I wasn’t actually dead yet after all the time spent examining the test results, he could in fact rule out a stroke or major cardiac event. His diagnosis was that I had pinched a nerve in my neck and the best way to confirm a neurologic diagnosis such as this would be a good set of chest films. "I never went to medical school, but I don't think nerves are actually visible on an X-ray Dr. Howser".  Still, in came a team of white coated technicians to wheel me down to X-ray in my dirty dressing gown and dirtier hospital bed. I swear the last guy to have worn it must have been in some sort of beachside accident as I found myself covered in sand by the end of the evening. Once at the doors of the X-ray lab, my orderlies looked at one another and in unison abandoned me in the hallway. I sat there on my gurney in the hallway for a fair amount of time, watching people come and go before a very curt older gentlemen came by and unlocked the X-ray suite and wheeled me in. He asked if I could stand and placed me in front of the antiquated x-ray machine that I swear to God looked more like a Kodak instamatic camera than an actual piece of medical equipment. Once the picture was taken, I resumed my post in my sandbox and was wheeled back outside. Orderlies once again appeared and wheeled me in the direction of the room from which I originally came.

It is important to note that on both trips down the corridor I felt more like I was at the carnival than the hospital. Like a good round of bumper cars (dodge em’s as they call the in the UK), they managed to jam my cart into everything within sight including an elderly lady who appeared to be bleeding rather profusely but receiving far less attention than I. As we approached “my” room, it was clear that it was now occupied by other tenants, so I was simply left once more in a hallway out in front of the nurse’s station. I was in good company though. Like a series of aircraft waiting to taxi at an airport, several of my fellow patients were lined up in the hallway in varying states of unconsciousness. The lady closest to me appeared to be a burn victim. As I awaited . . . well . . . whatever was supposed to happen next, my lovely bride appeared at my bedside. Soon enough, Smelly did return and gave me a handful of pills which I gleefully consumed even though I had not the slightest clue what was in them. Pain killers I guess, but to be honest they could have been sugar pills for all I know. Just as well though, not once had I ever really described my discomfort as “pain”. Anyway, my rookie doctor said I was free to go and described my less than dire situation to my wife. We parted with a friendly hand shake and he told my wife to go wait for me in the waiting room down the hall. We shook hands and he departed. I sat there for some time waiting for my clothes to be returned to me. Unfortunately, no one ever came. No one even managed to let down my bedside so I could get out of my sandbox. Eventually Smelly returned and asked where my wife had gone. I told him that she had done as instructed and when he last left me, so had she.

Smelly seemed dismayed by this as apparently it was her responsibility to obtain my clothing, which to my surprise had been with me the whole time in a trash sack beneath my bed. He told me to follow him (again without letting down my bedside), so I scrambled off the end of the bed, attempting to keep hold of my garbage sack full of clothes and the back of my open gown so that my bare ass wouldn’t be visible to the entire world. He paced this way and that looking for a place that I might change. Eventually he landed upon a janitor’s closet and closed the door behind me. I flipped on the light and saw that I wasn’t the only one to have used this as a dressing room based upon the discarded robe and empty trash sack on the floor. I added mine to the pile along with my dignity and self-respect, then joined my wife for an unceremonious exit. This didn’t cost anything of course, and for once I felt as though I got what I paid for. On our way home we stopped at McDonalds to be sure that if I didn’t make it through the night, we would be certain that it was the result of thoroughly clogged arteries.

Fortunately, morning arrived and I was there to see it, so I once more resume my post as the co-head of this household. No, I shouldn’t say that. Had the prior night’s adventure proven to be serious, my family would have been lost without me. How do I know? It is really quite simple. When I changed my profession I also unwittingly changed my name. You may refer to me as my family does: Mr. Hey W. My. My middle name is “where’s” for those that haven’t sorted it out just yet. I am not longer Jack, Dad, or any of the other millions of things I have been called in my life. I am now simply the keeper of lost things and the guide by which all is found. If I were to die tomorrow, none of them would make it to the funeral because they wouldn’t be able to find the car keys. Until next time. R.