OCR Text |
Show 261 Good-Bye Dr. Howard, is standing at the foot of my bed. Dr. Chappie and Dr. Emerson have been conferring with him off and on for some time now but it is only now that he has come to see me. I do not remember how many weeks I have been in the overdose and underdose cycle but I have been without breath and bagged at least fourteen times. I am just coming out of yet another overdose cycle. "The dura is tough, normally," he is saying, "but yours has been so very compromised." He is listing the numbers of catheter replacements I have had. And the obvious surgical errors that he had seen months ago, when he repaired what he could of the dura. "And then there were the Baclofen injections," I am adding, recalling the invented protocol at the teaching hospital. "The what?" he is asking. His eyebrows remain raised as I explain the many times the dura was perforated by the long needle to inject the Baclofen directly into the spinal fluid. His hands fall to his side and remain still there as I tell him about our invented troubleshooting protocol at the teaching hospital because they would not listen to me and learn about the proper protocol. I thought he knew this months ago. |