20 Episodes of Wiping Your Own Bottom Lying Down, by Fran Levin
photo by Martha Dominguez de Gouveia,
1. Triaged
Wearing your yanked-down maroon trousers and pulled-up, black tunic, in the curtained-off cubicle in the hospital emergency ward—trembling with shock—with your dislocated swollen left foot pointing sideways, moaning, crying, wailing that this can’t be happening because it’s a bad dream, right?
2. Recovering
After you come round from surgery on your left ankle, watching the crisp shapes of the clock on the wall, the curtains, and the cupboard beside your bed rearrange themselves and reaffirm your life.
3. High
On the after-hit of morphine flowing through the drip into your right arm, blessing the pharmaceutical company that concocted this medication.
4. Heartened
On your left side, with your left hand clutching the side of the bed, celebrating the fact that you shifted yourself from lying prone and staring up at the monochrome, dotted ceiling in the orthopedic ward.
5. Regretful
With tears running down your face because you and your husband should have still been sitting in the concert hall in your vacation hotel, listening to a Beethoven symphony.
6. Furious
Cursing that darkened, sneaky flight of stairs near the bathroom, adding more money with every wipe of your hand to the lawsuit that you plan to file against the management.
7. Determined
Pressing your teeth together to stop yelps of pain escaping your mouth, as you raise your bottom and pull out the bed pan because you refuse to be catheterized and you don’t care about bothering the night shift nurse whenever you need to pee.
8. Startled
Wondering why your right leg hurts every time you move when it wasn’t injured, and what’s that thin, blue line around the foot?
9. Adapted
Renegotiating the left-hand-right-hand, left-cheek-right-cheek dance, with a second cast on your broken right ankle.
10. Wakeful
At 3:00 a.m, listening to the woman in the bed on your left moaning in her sleep, while your mind runs through the probabilities of infection, blood clots, and the fear that you will never walk properly again.
11. Liberated
With joyous release, first thing in the morning, before breakfast is served.
12. Sticky
On sweaty, crumpled sheets, wishing that the nurse had time to change them but forgiving her, because she is alone on the ward over the weekend.
13. Exposed
On a stretcher, in the ambulance parked on the side of the motorway, on the way back home, while your husband hands you tissues through the opened back doors, chuckling as you consider the view that passing motorists are getting of your private regions.
14. Repatriated
On top of your baby granddaughter’s disposable nappy-changing sheets, in the rented hospital bed in your living room, next to the side table of medications, bottled water and hand cream.
15. Efficient
Doing the adapted-for-home version of your bottom shuffle: turn onto right side, wipe, left side, wipe, throw the tissue into the plastic bag next to your bed.
16. Fragrant
Immersed in baby powder, perfume and pleasure, after the home carer has given you a tender bed-bath.
17. Mortified
By the sounds of your digestive system, because your friend is waiting in the kitchen for you to finish your business.
18. Damp
Peeling your right butt cheek away from the leak that dribbled onto the sheets, because your daughter bought you adult disposable pants instead of nappies.
19. Soothed
Inhaling whiffs of chamomile and citrus, which cleave to the cool touch of the intimate wet wipes.
20. Grateful
With wonder and awe that in spite of the fall, the smashed ankles, the surgery, the agony, and the mixture of pain killers, blood thinners, antibiotics and anesthesia, your body continues to chug and churn, digest and disgorge.
Fran Levin is a former Special Education teacher and staff mentor. Her nonfiction and poetry have appeared in BigCityLit, CafeLit UK, Spellbinder and other publications. She is presently working on a memoir of her teaching career. Now fully recovered from her accident, she practices yoga alongside her Swiss Shepherd dog in a home crammed with bead and art projects.