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Show 167 They are putting me into the bed and they are listening as I teach them how to move me, not pulling on my contracted limbs, but letting me move myself instead. They are removing the telephone from this room, a room located at the quiet end of a long hallway. They have closed the door. Hy sits in the soft couch at the end of my bed and realizes that it opens out into a bed. Dr. Chappie had come shortly after my arrival, run the protocol, and left, all within an hour. The catheter has broken in at least one place. It is not even approximately connected and I have been receiving no Baclofen for quite some time. She does not know why Dr. Jessop had not been able to extract the Baclofen from the pump's access port. She had no such problem. Dr. Chappie has sent Dr. Howard, a neurosurgeon, to my room to examine me. There are no attending physicians, no residents, no interns. This hospital is not a teaching hospital. There is only him in this room with us. He is grasping my legs and attempting to pull them straight before I can warn him. His pulling causes my back to arch briefly. "Just relax," he is saying, attempting to pull my legs straight again. "Relax" is a word not found in the stiff-man dictionary. He is talking with me, cajoling me, attempting to distract my thoughts from his pulling but it is a painful pulling and causes my back to arch in a more prolonged spasm, independent of my desires to the contrary. My body snaps from the backward arching forward and my fisted hands strike the bed rails several times, bang, bang, bang, bang. It is not a startle that has initiated these spasms and they stop quickly enough. |