If you have to change your surgical dressings, which are on your abdomen, it is, generally speaking, a good thing when you can curse in a language no one else in your building understands. Dutch? No, the elderly Indonesian lady in the front apartment speaks that. Indonesian is out for the same reason, and any variation of Chinese is out of the question too; there are six people who are ethnically Chinese in the apartment building. German and Yiddish share too many characteristics with Dutch for comfort, and I'm not sure but there may be a Philippino somewhere here as well.
And there was a Lebanese once.
Fortunately there's always Hindustani; the foulest language on earth.
It takes an hour, and will leave you exhausted.
Traumatized muscle groups.
The process is simple. Go into the bathroom, and after performing more rigorous personal ablutions than were possible at the hospital, sit on the edge of the tub/shower facility with scissors, cotton bandage material, paper towels, and a bottle of whiskey on the crapper seat in front of you.
The same whiskey you use to deep-clean briar smoking pipes is fine, no need to go out and buy another bottle.
[Whiskey = Disinfectant.]
Splash some on whiskey a paper towel, and carefully swab all around the wounds. Then dab with another paper towel to dry, and tape twice folded-over cotton bandage material over the wounds, making sure at least an inch all around the incisions are covered and protected.
It's good exercise, I recommend it.
Everything from 'bhain' (sister, but used "creatively") to 'zad', as in 'haram zada', one of Narendra Damodardas Modi's affectionate nicknames. Bakri (goat) and ulu da putara (son of an owl) also came into play. Soors, dalals, and churails.
Plus gandha jaraja, a fortuitous combo of Hindi and Bengali.
Cursing can be VERY comforting.
If anybody had heard me, they probably wondered at the onesidedness of the conversation. If they had come in, they would have looked at the naked goat and seen the whiskey bottle, and thought: "poor old dingus has finally gone off the deep end; we knew he would, eventually."
Oh, I also trimmed my beard. So when dressed I actually look quite presentable.
Not naked, though. Not with abdominal blotchiness, unnaturally smooth areas, traces of flexible tape glue, oedema, and post-operative bruising.
Bacchanalian dancing is out of the question.
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THE ADDENDUM AT TEA
Tea time, as regular readers know, is very important to me. But instead of going to one of my regular places I gave it a miss today. I just ...
3 comments:
That sounds painful.
Glad to hear a bottle of whisky was nearby. Get well soon.
M
Times like this make me recall the excellent, (and seemingly out-of-favor) W. Somerset Maugham, my favorite author in my teenage years: perhaps he still is...
"Dying is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it."
Not to suggest you are dying.
Your death would make my world a slightly dimmer place, and I for one will not tolerate such nonsense.
No attention of passing on just as yet. There is still too much to do, too many people whose eventual graves I wish to piss upon when their time comes, and too many tins of good pipe tobacco to enjoy.
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