Ambulate

On the 6th Floor at St Peters Hospital the patients are recovering from surgery. They come back to their rooms and they moan. They have had their abdomens opened or had many incisions and colons sliced and reconnected. They are bloated and miserable.
They are also learning: You learn that you can live without some of your colon. You learn that you never want to eat again. The men learn what it’s like to feel pregnant, to have constant heartburn and bloating and that everyone—every single person--wants to know if you have passed gas and if you have had a bowel movement today.

Oh the indignities.
But then they say you must ambulate. The solution and the only solution to the pain, misery, bloat is to ambulate. They get around to saying “you need to walk” but on the board near your bed it says “Today’s Goal: Ambulate”.

The patients are gowned and draped in smocks with small prints, tired at neck and back, all looking very patient-like, no individual identity they go out to the halls to ambulate. They are attached to IV poles, they are wired and tethered and they cling to the IV pole like Moses holding his staff. They ambulate to the end of the corridor, they ambulate to the elevators, and staff ignores them, walks around them and moves to one side. The patients see each other and nod or smile. In the beginning there is little small talk. The patients with family visiting each have a walker—a family member or friend who walks with them. It’s like having one of those ponies that accompany the thoroughbreds onto the race track. Each patient has a companion (stable pony) walking beside them. Perhaps this is their pacer horse: The one who keeps the thoroughbred/patient calm, who is a quiet presence.

Most of the patients don’t have the strength to walk and talk, they feel so miserable, full of gas, bloated, pain at belly and chest, but the company of one who walks beside them matters. There is another person there, another presence. Part of this role is to be the one who says, “Come on and walk.”

Walk at least five minutes each hour, take up your bed and walk, walk to solve your problems, walk off your troubles, walk your pain away. Walk and it’s a new day; walk and pass that gas.