A most unseemly converstaion

Aug 30., 2004 0 Comments

Keli’s parents took Bailey with them to San Francisco for the day yesterday and Keli and I decided to go to Ihop for breakfast. We put our names on da list and while we were waiting to be seated an elderly lady and her friend came in and sat down next to us in the waiting area. One of the ladies was in a motorized wheelchair and she looked to be in rather good spirits despite the tracheotomy and (pardon my ignorance but I don’t know what its called) the “tracheotomy tube” sticking out of her neck.

We’ve all been there before and had the unpleasant feeling of seeing someone with some sort of feature about them that you try not to look at because you don’t want to be seen looking, but yet, you want to look just out of curiosity. So instead you sit there trying to look like you don’t notice that feature about the but you know all along that they know that you’re trying not to look in order to not make them feel awkward.

In any case, there we sat, Keli and I making idle chit-chat when the very nice lady looked at me and asked “Did it hurt when you got your lip ring?” Now let me stop this train of thought right there.

How the hell do you answer this? I found myself having a super fast soliloquy in my head about this same question. Here is a lady, looking to be in her mid to late 50s who has obviously had some health problems. Her left hand was turned, palm up, and was sort of limp on her lap but she had some control of her arm and wrist which was evident when we spoke. She was very pleasant and didnt’ sound as though she had the tracheotomy due to years of cigarette smoking which left me wondering what exactly happened to this poor woman. But how do you look at a lady who has a tube sticking out of her throat, with a limp hand, in a wheelechair and tell her how much your lip hurt when it was pierced?

What did I do? I told her the truth. I sat there, looking in her face when I spoke but also glancing down at her Tracheotomy to see the end turn blue when she exhaled and turn white when she inhaled and told her that it hurt a lot. Much more than I expected. She then proceeded to tell me about her son and his tales of woe about getting his belly-button ring caught on a part of a car and ripped out. It was like in a movie, when they show a character “zoning out” but you hear some muffled talking at them. Anyways, it was a very strange and uncomfortable situation. Mostly because, how do you describe pain and discomfort to someone confined to a wheelchair, lacking the use of their left hand and breathing through a tracheotomy? Even if they did voluntarily ask you.