Speaking Chinese

Speaking Chinese

My twin brother, Scott, and I, started our college careers by enrolling at a small, rural 2 year junior college in northern Idaho.  This decision was more out of necessity than real choice.  Coming from a lower middle class family with 5 siblings, living on government cheese and lard and the spoils of fishing and hunting, and only limited prospects of college scholarships, reality often ends up staring you in the face.  This was followed by attending Idaho State University for the last two years of college.  ISU is nestled in the southeastern corner of Idaho, in Pocatello, a mid-sized rural farming college town.  The Viet Nam war was raging, the shoe-box draft lottery had just been instituted and how we performed, particularly in our final year of college, could determine how we spent our next 4 years of life.

Our senior year was about to start, so with the car loaded down with all the necessities of college life we had arrived mid-week before classes were to start so we could get settled in before our final push to graduation.

One of the great hurdles to graduation was to make sure that all of the required courseswere in hand.  The dreaded ‘required courses’.  Whodecides what is required?  How do theydecided?  Why do theythink theyknow what we need?

Well, ugh, to our dismay, we discovered we both needed to meet a language requirement.  A hurried thumb through the college catalog and there it was, a course in French, designed for non-language majors.  French, a romance language, along the line of Latin, that we had taken in high school from the infamous Mrs. Fee – by the way I have yet to have someone speak Latin to me even though I was told I had to have it to go into medicine.  We decided to try to tackle French – as a team it couldn’t be that hard – could it ??

It was a Friday, the last weekend before classes were to start.  As I remember it was a beautiful, warm, cloudless, late summer day.  The day started quite uneventfully.  Late in the afternoon, out to the local play field we went to join some of our friends from our residence hall – Nichols Hall – a dorm that housed upper level college students (gracious not co-ed in those days). It was to be a friendly game of flag football.  I can remember the smell of freshly mown grass and the koosh of it underfoot.  I mused myself with remembering an encouraging little riff that was frequently chanted from the bleachers while sitting at our high school football games : “blood, blood, blood makes the grass grow, blood, blood, blood makes the grass grow”.  When caught up in the excitement of competition one often misses messages from somewhere in the universe about things to come.

Hmmm …, flag football, what an interesting concept. A supposed non-contact sport designed to let everyday football playing want-a-bees believe they are college football stars. Looking back, it would be interesting to run an audit of hospital emergency rooms that service college campuses and compare the number of injuries related to ‘flag football’ versus those sustained during NCAA college football games.

The gladiators gathered on the playfield, milled around a bit renewing old acquaintances.  Am not sure how the teams were eventually chosen but as often happens in those ‘catch-up’ kind of games, all of a sudden there were two teams staring at each other ready for battle.  You know I never really have liked football – this may be when that dislike was first born.

Well, let the games begin, and did they ever.  Can’t actually remember many specifics of the game. Do remember a lot of pushing, shoving, tripping, “no you didn’ts” and “yes you dids” laced liberally with what I will only mention here as language rooted in the farming and mining life from which we all came.  My dad would have been so proud, he would have understood every last phrase.

Hey, where does the Chinese bit in the title of this missive come in anyway ???  Just have patience and imagine you are looking in to the glow of a campfire with your family tribe gathered around you and a story-teller in the middle of the group passing on heroic legends of times past.

Back to the story –

At some point in the contest I remember being lined up across from a very large guy from Alaska, not sure why the Alaska part has stuck with me so vividly but I certainly was struck by how large he was. He didn’t look particularly happy with how the game was going and at one point I thought I saw a small smear of blood along one forearm.  Hmm, I remember thinking, I must stay away from that guy.  Just hope our quarterback is a fast, wiry sort if this guy gets past me, which I was absolutely sure he would.  Come to find out, ‘past’ was the wrong adverb – over .., through … might be better word choices (I think these are adverbs, they certainly are not gerunds)..

The ball was snapped and the next thing in my memory is writhing on the ground thinking that my left hand had been torn from my lower arm.  I think if it had been torn off there would have been less pain then with it still firmly attached at the wrist.  The pain was so intense a battle ensued as to which was going to fail first, my bladder, my colon, or my esophageal sphincter as I threw up.  I was to find out later that the wrist had been broken in several places.

Now you have to understand how my behavior at this moment was so atypical of a member of the Ross family.  You were never supposed to behave in any way that would embarrass another member of the family publically.  Well, there was a Ross, writhing around on the ground, even worse one who was actually making moaning noises – curses of all curses – bringing shame to the clan.  But something was different about this incident.  Somehow Scott recognized that something clearly was very wrong.  However, in an attempt to save a little face for the family rather than true concern for my well-bing, he sprinted over, quickly gathered me up and stuffed me into our 1957 silver and white Chevy to get me out of the site of the general public.  We then had time to consider our next move.  Mine was to continue to battle to maintain control of my bodily functions, he, on the other hand knew that I actually needed some serious medical attention.

Off we went to the Bannock Memorial Hospital emergency room to be seen by a doctor who provided care to students attending ISU. My next memory was laying on a hospital gurney, what the actual room looked like escapes me but the smell of a hospital was pervasive.   I also remember excruciating pain in my left elbow. To my side was a male nurse who apparently had already started an IV.  At the foot of the gurney stood an elderly bespeckled Asian, glasses half way down his nose, I presumed my doctor, a man of Chinese extraction.  “How you feel?” he said in broken English.  “Oh my god this hurts like sh**” I gasped.  “Give him more, give him more med-cine” he directed the nurse.  Obviously, I had already been getting some pain meds but was unaware of that.  I presume now that I was getting IV morphine. This same exact exchange occurred several more times, “it still hurts like sh**’, “give him more med-cine”, the whole time it felt like the nurse was simply injecting water into my veins and keeping the good stuff for himself.

Coming to the end of his patience with me the doctors finally said said, “We get started, can’t wait longer”.  Those were the days when fractures were set manually and plaster casts were the standard of care, no fancy pins and plates placed surgically with the aid of anesthesia – the really good stuff – to fix fractures.

The nurse sat me up, and, at that very moment, the final inhibitory neuron left standing in my brain, after who knows how much morphine had been given, failed and all of a sudden I was able to speak impeccable Chinese.  Who needs a silly, formal, French class to meet some mandatory graduation requirement.  Amazing as well is how several milligrams of morphine is capable of doing in seconds what it takes a PhD in language studies a whole year to do.  I was now a native Chinese speaker.   And it didn’t end there.  Now what could be better, I was not only able to help my doctor, the man caring for my broken bones and broken spirit, by speaking his native language, after all he must be an immigrant just listen to how he speaks.

For the next 45 minutes – Chinese doctor speaking English, drug induce insane college student speaking his own version of Chinese.  With nearly every exchange another voice, presumably my brother saying things like: “For God’s sake Brian stop that!”, “What the hell are you saying”,  “Oh my God I am getting out of here” – these phrases interspersed by the male nurse saying –  “What is going on here anyway?”.

I must say, at the time, I had little awareness that this type of behavior had had, in any way a noticeable effect on my doctor.  It wasn’t until the next morning when the fog of morphine lifted that I realized that there I sat, in my dorm room, with a cast from the tip of my fingers to deep into my arm pit, weighing just under 25 pounds.  The cast was clearly 15 pounds heavier than any cast that would have been needed for such a fracture.  I had the pleasure of lugging that cast around for the first 12 weeks of my senior year.   This penalty was amplified by the fact that my left hand was my dominant hand requiring me to take notes with my non-dominant hand.  Remember these were the days before lap-top computers or ipads.

Well forty-five years come and go.  I transform from a rural kid with only a dream of becoming a doctor into now, a famous physician and university professor, a man of extensive education and decorum.  I am the husband to Sue, a woman that possesses nearly half of the universe’s allotment of unconditional love, and the father of Christopher, who unfortunately has inherited many of my skills at being politically incorrect at the most unfortunate of times.

Both Sue and Christopher have patiently, so patiently put up again and again with my reliving the story of the mystical way in which I was able to master the whole of the Chinese language.  Not surprisingly, with each retelling of the story, to a person, all of my unsuspecting audience members could easily see me acting just that very way in the emergency room.

It was the summer of 2009.  With the advent of smart phones, an Iphone occupied a prominent position on my belt secure in its leather carrying case.  After years of wear and tear, the case eventually ran its course and so off to the AT& T store I went searching for the perfect replacement.  There it was. A cool new phone carrier that hooked to your belt into which the phone would quickly and easily snap, what a clever idea.  No more trying to fish the phone out of a small leather carrier – just unsnap and go. After little to no convincing I walked out of the store with the new carrier and phone firmly attached to my belt.

Next stop, Bartell Drug store to pick up a few odds and ends.  Cruising the toothpaste and toothbrush aisle toward the back of the store, near the pharmacy, my concentration was broken by the sound of several shelves of personal hygiene products being scraped from their appointed places and cascading onto the floor.  Amongst the strewn pile of dental care products was a young Chinese man, approximate age 25, in the throws of a grand mal seizure.  Dr. Ross to the rescue.  Kneeling down, I positioned him on his side, assured myself that his airway was clear, checked that there were no signs of head injury, unlikely as he had done a slow slump to the ground as the seizure started, and finally cleared the area around him to make sure he was safe.  This required a fair bit of crawling around on the floor.

At that moment, a shadow cast over me. Looking down at me was a middle aged nicely dressed professional appearing man.  A bit hesitantly he introduced himself as a doctor from a local hospital, a virologist.  Smiling, I replied, saying that I was an anesthesiologist.  With that he retreated several steps, a look of relief came across his face and he said, “wow nice, maybe you should take care of him then”.   As the seizure continued he offered a small bit of medical advice, “couldn’t you just go back to the pharmacy and get something to stop this?”  I reassured him that seizures were often self-limiting and that the pharmacy would probably need a prescription before they would give me anything anyway.

A small crowd had started to gather and off in the distance I heard the faint sound of a siren. I presumed someone had called for a Medic Unit and that actual help was on its way.  I then went about the task of trying to find out more about this unfortunate young man.  With several Bartell employees looking on I search his wrists, pockets and wallet for identification as well as medical alert cards or bracelets.  Alas, the only identification to be had was a name tag, much like those one receives at a conference or meeting.  On it printed in bold letters was, Wey Yin Yang.  The seizures had ended and the young man was just beginning to arouse. Calling out his name, Way Yin, several times, I received only muffled noises in response.

In short order, and to my relief, three young paramedics arrived. I transferred as much information as I knew about the young man – the length of the seizure, lack of injuries associated with his fall, that his airway had remained clear the whole time with no evidence of vomiting, and finally standing, knees sore after groveling around on the floor for the prior 10 minutes, I asked if I might leave.  Given permission, I was off to finish my shopping, aglow in the heady feeling that, yes, I had just save yet another person’s life.  As I retreated I heard the paramedic trying to elicit responses from the young man by saying, “Wayne, Wayne, can you hear me” all the while remembering his name was Wey Yin and that Wayne might not be a name he would likely respond to.

Several minutes later, walking past the scene, but separated by an aisle of flu medications, I looked over and saw a paramedic talking on a phone.  I slowed and listened as the paramedic was telling someone on the other end that they were calling on Wey Yin’s phone and were calling folks that might know something about the young man.  By the way the paramedic was speaking it was clear the person they were speaking too was quite confused by the call.  The paramedic repeated several times, “no this is Wey Yin Yang’s phone, … no he is Chinese, … no I am sure he is Chinese and he is speaking Chinese to me right now, … he is clearly speaking Chinese”.

I went on my way, checked out at the cashier, and then decided to call my wife Sue and tell her about my heroic deed.  Reaching down I found only an empty phone carrier on my belt – no phone.  How could that be?  I had just bought the coolest of cool snap in phone carriers.  What could have happened to my phone?  Suddenly the previous scene I had just witnessed became crystal clear. Slowly making my way back to Wey Yin’s side I was able to get the attention of the paramedic on the phone who appeared to be continuing to struggle with the caller.  I leaned in close to his ear and suggested that the phone he had may in fact not be Wey Yin’s, but instead, was mine.  He paused, looked at the phone, slowly handed it to me and said, “you may be right, she does seem awfully confused”.

I was to find out only later that at that very moment, on the other end of the phone, Sue was turning to Chris in a bit of a panic and was saying to him, “oh my God we have to get to Bartells, your dad must have had a stroke because he is speaking Chinese again”.