![\"LIT1\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/LIT1.jpg\")
\nHow did I know Salle 18 had treated TB patients long ago?
\nA faded \u201cspitting prohibited\u201d warning notice was on the wall.<\/p>\n
More than fifty years ago while studying as an exchange student at a French university, I suffered a serious head injury in a motorcycle accident. After a long time being sedated to quell my brain swelling, I awoke at night in \u201cSalle 18\u201d or ward eighteen. More than a month later I was allowed to leave my place in Deez-Wheat.<\/p>\n
This old 19th century\u2019s hospital\u2019s salles were separated by ceiling-tracked sheets. The children\u2019s ward was just down the way. Deez-Wheat had been a ward for consumption patients for many, many decades before sulfa drugs eliminated that deadly scourge.<\/p>\n
Life on the wards varied but the cure rate and the hospital\u2019s overall discharge rate exceeded 95+%. My ward\u2019s rates were lower. Those who stayed to convalesce more than a week might sit quietly in rocking chairs all day with only their thoughts for company because nurses and orderlies discouraged conversation and noise.<\/p>\n
\nHow did I know Salle 18 had treated TB patients long ago?
\nA faded \u201cspitting prohibited\u201d warning notice was on the wall.<\/p>\n
When you are forced to remain in a place like that for weeks on end with no discernable improvement or progress towards being discharged and with many other patients coming and leaving, you seem to be lost to all the world. I was warned by one older, gravelly voiced Salle 18 patient in coarse French to avoid feeling that I belonged to the place. His reasoning made sense: since half a world away from family with loved ones no longer seeming to care, you could easily fall into the trap to feel a close kinship and sympathy with all the lonely shadows among whom you dwelled.<\/p>\n
These are a few of the memories I have upon awakening from my fortnight long, drug stupor with a huge headache in what passed for an ICU at the end of a big hall.<\/p>\n
One last note: in-patient physical and occupational therapy was still way off in the future. That coupled with my enforced bed rest is why I had my fall.<\/p>\n
– Marlow<\/p>\n
—————-<\/p>\n
![\"LIT2\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/LIT2.jpg\")
\nFrench hospital ward bed in a former TB sanitarium<\/p>\n
Hell, where am I?
\nWhat is this darkness?
\nHell, where am I?
\nI’ve been here for how long?
\nWhen, if ever, am I ever gonna go home?<\/p>\n
They told me I was gone for fourteen days
\nI coulda been gone for more
\nOut of it in intensive care Salle 18
\nLyin’ still under dirty sheets
\nI was gone for all those days
\nBut I, was not all alone
\nI made friends with a few people
\nIn Salle 18’s deathly danger zone<\/p>\n
In my dreams did a lonely life unfold
\nI saw it repeat every day
\nSaw it until my mind almost did explode
\nSince I felt so far gone away<\/p>\n
Faded Polaroid shows I lost a lot of weight there
\nAnd I, I’m sure I needed some rest
\nSleeping didn’t come very easy
\nWith folks a-moaning and tubes sticking outta their chests
\nShoulda heard those down the way Salle 16 children
\nSome just a few years old
\nCrying for their mommas and just one of their play things
\nEspecially the ones the orderlies stole<\/p>\n
Saw many lonely lives unfold
\nI saw and heard it every day
\nSaw a few whose lives did implode
\nWhen they could take no more loneliness and pain<\/p>\n
I wanted to get out of there
\nI wanted to get out of there
\nI had to get outta of there
\nI had to get outta of there
\nThey din\u2019t let me out of there
\nThey din\u2019t let me out of there<\/p>\n
Missed that year\u2019s Thanksgiving
\nDon\u2019t recall much about Christmas or New Years, too
\nThose pills sure were powerful
\nMade my darkness complete allowing no sun of life to show through<\/p>\n
Saw many lonely lives unfold
\nI saw and heard it every day
\nSaw a few whose lives did implode
\nWhen they could take no more loneliness and pain<\/p>\n
It was time to go they said
\nDonned my cap and got my long coat still blood-stained red
\nThen I, I ran towards the exit hall
\nI felt myself stumbling
\nAnd onto Salle 18’s floor I did fall
\nI guess I couldn’t yet walk
\nSaid to myself this is very bad
\nAll I could do was listen to the French nurses talk
\nHeard orderlies comin’ for me
\nIt wasn\u2019t my time to be set free<\/p>\n
So, my lonely Salle 18 life once more did unfold
\nJust wanted them to leave me alone
\nI didn’t want to be there
\nDidn’t want them to poke, prod or touch me
\nDidn\u2019t want my lonely mind to explode<\/p>\n
\u200bCopyright \u00a9 2019 From My Isle Seat<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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