Old/New World Discourse: Of broken noses and appreciating Israeli medical care

So what if we plan? We're not in control of the universe, nor will we ever be. In fact, we never had that power.

For some reason, nevertheless, I had figured that when Computer Cowboy returned to Israel, last week, after a much too exciting trip to India (see: Appreciating Husbands who Travel to India, Dec. 07, 2008), life would quiet in my home. Consider that in spite of everything, the children are learning to take turns having crises. Instead, my plans for serenity were tossed when Boy-Getting-Taller broke his nose.

In Israel (see: "Urgent Care," Feb. 27, 2007), medicine is a means to an ends. Doctoring, here, is always about healing and is sometimes about prevention. Rarely, in this Old World, are the bodily arts about avoiding litigation.

To that end, although my son broke his nose on a Wednesday, whereas he did get triaged at an acute care facility that night, he didn't receive an appointment with an ortholaryngologist until Thursday and didn't have a spot on a hospital roster, to get his snout fixed, until the following Tuesday. The professional Israelis who supported him throughout the week were of the collective opinion, hemorrhages and acute pain aside, that the kid ought to relax and to trust the process.

Better acculturated to this society's predilections than is either of his parents, the kid was fine with the medics' viewpoint (nonetheless, according to one sister, he "milked" my husband and me for leniencies concomitant to awaiting restoration). Even so, both his dad and I continued to admire his ability, B'ayan Tov, to face (no pun intended) pain.

Raised in a home in which pharmaceuticals are eschewed (BH, his mother home-birthed most of his siblings and his father passed kidney stones without surgery), where herbal medicines frequently stew on our kitchen counters (the disservice to the kids is that they will go out into the world seeking dried twigs of licorice, fresh dandelion leaves, and many forms of hot peppers at the same time as their peers merely plunk down shekels in drugstores), and where we weigh fever, activity level, and appetite against bothering a health assistant, our teen declined the urgent care doc's offer of pain relief. If you asked the boy about his rationale, though, he'd claim that he needed nothing because he is "a tough martial artist."

Yet, Friday, a day after his second assessment, that same kiddo asked me if it was okay for him to take another tab of acetaminophen. I answered him that he could take a few doses per day, spaced according to the directions on the label. He shrugged in response and "proudly" told me that he hadn't had a hit since Thursday.

In balance, when our family welcomed the Shabbat Queen, we also continued to find ourselves having to pay attention to our reigning prince. Computer Cowboy and I excused him from trash duties, from clearing dishes and from much more. I suspect that my partner was still enamored with the CD he had been given, along with the hospital admission forms, and the like, which showed the break in our son's beak (Computer Cowboy's source code is used, among other things, for imaging technology). As for me, I know I took advantage of the situation to spoil the kid for rarely, any more, do I get to pamper my big guy. 

Sunday found my husband back at work, spending his coffee hour conferring with one of his corporation's consulting physicians. The two of them, as he later narrated, nearly sang out about how nice the picture was of our child's injury. The doc even went so far as to point out, to my husband, the lucidness with which the various tissues, constituting our son's nose, showed up in the scan (people get their thrills in all sorts of ways).

Meanwhile, our child was continuing to mull over whether he wanted to live with a minor facial deviation or not and whether he wanted to suddenly, but profoundly, chemically compromise his pain. He chose, a second, and a third time, to have his nose fixed, but not to abruptly drug up.

Monday, and a tiny bit of early Tuesday morning, found my husband playing the infamous Israeli "Bureaucracy's Lines" game at several points in the city. If you're an Old Worlder, I needn't explain. If you are from the New World, imagine any government queue in which you've stood and quadruple your memory of your experienced frustration.

At last, only one half hour past the time of our appointment (remarkable by local standards), our boy was prone on a hospital table with a lytocane-drenched swab up his proboscis. Again, a care provider had given him a choice; our teen had opted for a local rather than a general. BH, he considers himself Israeli.

Local anesthesia, though, is not necessarily a dream and a smile, especially when administered to nerve-rich regions of the face. As such, those medicines are usually preceded by topicals (think dentist office). Usually, one doesn't look at the vehicle by which the topical is going into one's maw, or, in this case, into one's nose. However, our son, Computer Cowboy, and I, all saw the length of the intended needle that Boy-Getting-Taller's nurse was nonchalantly filling.

Neither parent was too surprised when, during the span in which the returned doctor checked the area-numbing, but not pain-deterring, topical, our child opted to forgo those many inches of pointed, steel alloy. In brief, when the doc explained to our kid that the realignment would hurt a lot, but would take some number of seconds countable only in single digits and that the lytocane-delivering needle, too, would hurt a lot, and would take entire minutes to be effective, our kid requested the direct approach.

Our boy's bravery aside, I wish I could say that neither Computer Cowboy nor I winced when we heard (the kid was surrounded by a bevy of nurses, medical students and the like, so we couldn't actual see what was going on) the pieces of our son's bone being forced back into place. The best I can offer is that our grimaces must have been remarkable.

While we waited for clearance for Boy-Getting-Taller's discharge, my husband brought him fresh orange juice (our teen boy hadn't eaten in more than twelve hours since we had to plan for the general anesthesia contingency, too). I gave him acupressure for the pain radiating to one of his ears and to the back of his head. The juice made him smile. The acupressure worked, too; Boy-getting-taller brusquely remembered that teens, in public areas, ought not to allow themselves to be coddled by their moms.

My husband was given the plastic cup to throw away and I was told stop applying pain relief. My husband and I smiled to each other; our child was on the road to recovery!

One of the other ear, nose and throat docs, a woman of roughly my age, with whom I had been chatting before Boy-Getting-Taller's repair, stopped in the waiting room to admire her colleague's work. She also gave my husband and me instructions for the "care and feeding" of a freshly fixed nose. That health provider suggested that we buy our child steak (he liked that idea) and double his chores (he didn't like that idea, but wasn't surprised given the reported experiences of his brother, the head-splitting-open Boy-Who-Needs-Books. Again, see "Urgent Care").

When we were finally able to pack our eldest son into a car and to drive him home, we delighted that he complained about being bored and hungry. Despite the fact he opted out of returning to yeshiva that day, he was already busily espousing his thoughts on Israeli-style medicine. According to Boy-Getting-Taller's sagacity, health care, in the Old World, "isn't fancy, but it is very practical."