Rethinking Socialism and the Price of Gas

DEATH IN VENICE? SICK IN VENICE!
We are into the third year of our three year honey moon in Europe, etc, when Marilyn is called back to the States for family matters. I wait five weeks for her in A-Dam with our loving Dirty Dutch family. When she gets back, we take off the end of November for Italy to finish off that out door art musso. We cut across Germany, and arrive in Venice after the tourists have departed, park our van and set out to see this city. Italy is expensive. Gas is over $4.80 a gallon in U.S. currency. We are on a very limited income, restricted to about $30 a day. We camp, cook for ourselves and do laundry by hand, but it gives us two and a half years on the road through the cradle of western civilization.

The sight seeing lasts exactly one day. On the return trip by water taxi, my dwarf says she just doesn’t feel well. I wake to find her very ill and sporting a black tongue! She had thought it was her appendix but by the time I woke, she was sure it was a kidney infection. Kidney! My inner voice screams. I use German at the info center to the camp and find out there is any excellent hospital in Mestra, the large industrial center out side of Venice’s pollution zone. I pull into the ER area and three attendants come forth, take one look at Marilyn’s tongue and rush her in. I fill out the forms, and I am asked if we have eaten any sea food. Humm? Nope to that. This stay is going to last nine days! And the memories? A life time.

When I can see her, she’s in a ward with a bunch of women dying from various forms of cancer: kidney cancer, bladder cancer. She doesn't have cancer, but one kidney has entirely shut down. She was about ten hours away from needing dialysis when we got to the hospital. So now she is in a room with old women who are attached to tubes. Some talk. Some moan. We do not speak Italian but manage with Spanish which even the nurses say is "sympatico."

There’s ten beds, ten windows, five night stands, and ten straight backed chairs. I sit and she sleeps. Then in comes the drugs and the guy who gives them is announces that he is called “ The Barbarian.” He was. He used inhumane methods for administering drugs by injection. Marilyn is getting four shots a day. When her one hip becomes ulcerated, he alternates buttocks, but his method reminds me of a dive bomber. He rubs some fluid on the spot, reaches under a pile of towels, takes up a huge syringe and plunges it to the hilt. Then he slams the shot in, rips the thing out, wipes the spot and moves on. And by the way, they are still using reusable syringes! These are the thick kind that need to be properly sterilized. Wow! In six days Marilyn has ulcers on both hips and screams with each dose!

Then there’s the food. A rolling steam cart delivered by nuns. UGH! It’s mostly a one dish affair, a mystery dish which is accompanied by bread you can not eat. The patients place it on the widows for the birds, throw it to the winged beggars who come daily for the sacrifice, but The Barbarian snitches on them and the Mother Superior is infuriated! The birds love it and then go into mad protests when the meals cease. In the mean time my Dwarf is undergoing all sorts of testing, daily visits from a doc, and round the clock nursing care. Other medications and etc. etc. Oh yes, the chief doctor has almost daily consultations with us, but he only speaks to me. Marilyn might be an American, but she’s a woman! He places her care in his hands and my judgement. I LOVE It! He doesn’t know it but he dies the second she can rise up! My Dwarf slowly recovers but her hips are getting worse and The Barbarian consents to shoot her in the arms. When the doctor finally learns of the abscesses, he relegates her to pills.

There’s my side of this. It’s dropping into the low 30's each night and I’m sleeping in the van in the parking lot. Our sleeping bag would keep me warm at the North Pole, so that’s not a hardship. My routine is: crawl out at first light, go in and use the bathroom, then head for her room. Once the place is scrubbed and breakfast is fed, I am told to use the shower room, so I can clean up while the doctors make rounds and the patients are in their rooms. And when I get back, they give me what they get for breakfast. This is much better than the stuff Marilyn gets. Oh, I’ve begun bringing her food from outside. I usually sit all day until she falls asleep and then I roam. I walked the city, which is modern and just row after row of high rises and offices. Oh, there are adult movies everywhere! It looks like the entire male population spends their three hour lunch hours in these from the mobs who charge out and rush back into the Italian version of Stalin Cake sky scrapers.

The day she is released I go to the bank and get wads of Lira. I’ve got the American Express card at the ready. The final chat with the doctor is funny. He tells us about all the stupid women who are dying from cancer because they weren’t intelligent enough to read. I make Marilyn remain silent. Then I ask the key question. ‘ Where do I pay the bill?’

He gazes in rapt amused amazement for a second and then asks me if we have bought any petrol in Italy. We nod. ‘ Well, then you’ve paid your bill,’ he mutters as he hands us a prescription paper to be filled as we leave.

I’m trying to force Marilyn to skip the goodbyes and get a head start, since I know this joker is joking. But he isn’t! They copy our passports, fill the prescriptions and wave goodbye! I flee the city at top speed, glancing in the rear view to see when the police start to arrest us. Nothing! Absolutely nada! I figured they would bill our insurance. Nope! Maybe we’d be held trying to leave the joint. Nope! This is a case when socialism is not such a dirty word. When it saves the life of someone you love, you rethink your termanology. Who the hell can still resist National Medical care after this? Republican stalwarts!

It’s very cold. Venice is out. Marilyn is too weak to sight see and her hips are so bad she has to sit on a doughnut for the next three months. I decide we are going to Sicily where it’s warm and sunny and she can get her strength back. That’s another travail. Suspect the worst. It begins that way, but as usual, the worst mistakes and the most horrible days always become the best or at least the most lasting memories. That’s how Sicily was!