Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, December 27, 1993 TAG: 9312280042
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Erma Bombeck
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
(In this first of two parts, Erma describes how two people who are uncomfortable with illness learn to cope when the other is sick.)
Excerpted from "A Marriage Made in Heaven . . . or Too Tired for an Affair" (HarperCollins, 1993)
Some people are born to be pillow fluffers and soup pushers. Their touch can bring temperatures down to normal. They can run and fetch with the loyalty of a cocker spaniel. To a sick person, it's like being in the hands of Allstate.
Other people regard illness as an annoying news bulletin during the Super Bowl or a numbness like when your parents come home early when you're throwing a party.
Mixed marriages between a sympathizer and an intolerant are not uncommon. Compassion is not necessarily a gender thing. Normally, one mate will take and the other will give.
In our marriage, neither of us liked to watch people throw up. We didn't know how to deal with our own illnesses - let alone anyone else's. It was something our mothers had always done for us.
If I announced that my eyes felt like round razor blades, my throat was parched, my lips were cracked, and I was burning with fever and I wanted my husband to remarry when I was gone, he would look at me and say, "Let me get this straight. What you are really saying is that you want me to pick up the cleaning."
I was no better. If I suggested he see a doctor and he turned macho-martyr on me, I'd say, "Fine, you are going to die. Just tell me what weight of motor oil you use in the car before you go."
Instead of heaping love and concern on one another, we both tended to indemnify ourselves of any blame for the illness. He would say, "Well, you finally got your cold, didn't you?" (Like I shopped for it.)
I don't know if it was the stress of being married or if my warranties were expiring. Whatever it was, during the first few years of wedded bliss, we discovered I was put together like a cheap Japanese watch.
First, it was my tonsils.
"You mean you still have them?" asked my husband.
"What do you think I do, grow them? Of course I still have them and they have to come out."
"You are going to be the oldest person in the pediatric ward."
A month or so later, I came down with the mumps. My cheeks were so heavy we tied them up with a large bandana.
Bill wasn't as compassionate as he was puzzled. "Why would you wait until you were married to have mumps?"
"I thought it would make the time go faster," I said icily.
By the time I got the word from my dentist that my teeth had to be straightened, his patience was running out.
"People like you should come with a warranty," he said.
"And people like you don't deserve a wife. You should have married a toaster!"
"All I know," he countered, "is that you need more repairs than our '38 Plymouth."
A few months later when I landed in the hospital with a kidney infection, I overheard Bill telling my father, "I have to take my hat off to you. You sure knew when to unload her."
My dad just smiled. "Look upon it as an investment, son."
The first serious illness we had to face occurred one day when Bill decided to install a humidifier. I personally would not have tried to install a 900-pound piece of equipment lying flat on my back and pushing it with my feet, but there are some people who won't listen.
As I stood over his body, which lay flat on the floor like a welcome mat, I said, "I knew you wouldn't rest until you slipped a disk."
The major problem with a bad back is that it's as common as dirt. Everyone either has one, had one, is going to have one, knew someone who had one, or took someone to lunch who has one.
The second major problem is that everyone has a cure to make it go away.
Sleep with a teddy bear between your knees.
Sleep on a vibrating bed of river rock.
Have a member of your family sneak up behind you and surprise you with the Heimlich maneuver.
Go to this great doctor who unfortunately died two years ago.
Bill's doctor recommended traction. I rented a harness to buckle up around his hips and attached the pulleys to two Super Kem-Tone paint cans filled with cement that dangled over the foot of the bed.
"Are you going to be all right?" I asked as I pulled a sweater out of the closet.
"Why?" he moaned.
"Because I'm off to the mall. If you have to go to the bathroom, tell me now."
I cared about him. It's just that people who strain their backs are never doing anything to benefit mankind when they do it. It is always triggered by something stupid like lifting a car or the corner of a building or something equally dumb.
Being sensitive to one another's needs is not easy. A few years after Bill's bout with a slipped disk, I lifted a rather large flower pot one day. Two days later, I said to him as he passed the bedroom door, "Hi there. Did I ever tell you how bad I felt for you when you had your disk problem?"
"No," he said.
"I really felt terrible. You seemed to be so helpless and I know you were in a lot of pain."
"Why are you bringing this up now?" he asked cautiously.
"Because I can't lift the toilet seat lid. I hate to ask, but while you're bent down, could you possibly get my glasses and turn over my bedroom slipper that's on its back?"
"Did I tell you? Man was never meant to walk upright."
"I haven't walked upright in two days," I said. "You didn't notice me crawling under the table in the kitchen?"
"Everyone has back problems," he said. "It's like the common cold."
"Except mine is different," I said. "It's hard to describe, but I'll try. You know how a toaster looks when it clocks off and is cooling down and the heat just sorta keeps sliding down on all those little coils?"
He stared at me without speaking.
"Other times it's not burning so much as it is a dull pain. You know like you're sitting at an Ohio State football game on a cold, hard bleacher for three hours and it's 10 degrees below, and you look around for someone who can carry you to the car in that chair-locked position because there isn't a way in this world you can stand?"
"I get the idea," he said.
"No, wait! You know what it's like to roll over on a pit bull that you startle out of a sound sleep? That's it!"
As we moved from one malady to another during our marriage, we seemed to get a handle on what was expected of us. All he wanted from me was his prescription filled and a dark room with the door shut. When I was on my back, I could expect to be served the only dish he cooked - a plate of fried potatoes and onions, stirred with a paring knife, with a peanut butter-and-banana sandwich on the side.
Over the years, we got rather good at comforting one another. Illness has to be one of the tests of a marriage. That's why they put it in the marriage vows. Everyone sorta glides over it, but it's important. For the first time, you are caught naked with your pretenses down. (Not to mention makeupless.) You are vulnerable and you are dependent. Neither of you married to have the other partner "take care of you." You were supposed to be a team. And now you are being seen in a compromising scene with your head hung into a toilet bowl at 2 a.m. while another person stands over you, taking away any shred of modesty or mystique you have left.
My friends, who had babies, said that not only would I develop compassion after I had my first child, I would say goodbye to modesty. They told stories of how they had entered the hospital with weights in the hems of their maternity tops and requested two sheets at the gynecologist's office.
After they delivered, all that changed. A stream of men they had never seen before whipped in and out of their hospital rooms like they were whirling in revolving doors. Male doctors surveyed their bare chests with stethoscopes and threw back the sheets to "take a look at what we have here." They thumped, probed, squeezed, and pushed on every part of their bodies. They interrupted their baths to inquire about their irregularities and watched them struggle with hospital gowns that were too small to set a cocktail glass on.
I didn't believe any of this.
Of course that was before I delivered my first child and bared my bosom to a doctor in the hall to ask, "I'm nursing. Does this look normal to you?" only to have a nurse tell me he was a telephone repairman.
Tuesday in Part 2, Bombeck writes about an episode in her marriage that still causes pain: her miscarriage.) Reprinted with Permission of Harpercollins Publishers Universal Press Syndicate
by CNB