Stoned

 

"Whoso will sequester or distract his minde, let him hardily doe it, if he can, at what time his body is not well at ease..."

-- Michel de Montaigne, from Of Experience, chapter XIII, Florio translation

They lost my underpants. Somewhere between prep, surgery, and recovery, my last little shred of dignity -- or my big ol' man boxer-briefs actually -- were slipped off and put in a bag. Obviously I made it through the surgery. My drawers did not. It was some time before I missed them. Nothing to be done. I asked. No one knew. Apologies. And somewhere a custodian made a face, a decision, and away with my shorts. I could not get out of bed for quite a long while after my kidney stone was addressed. For most of that time restoring my modesty was the least of my worries, but a hospital gown can only do but so much, and then circumstances necessitated. I will spare the reader the details, but when I was to be discharged, I felt I could not decently do without. The ever resourceful duty nurse returned to my room with two options. The first was a large adult diaper seemingly made from a chef's toque and the wool of an entire sheep. The other option was an endearingly tiny pair of very light cotton underwear, presumably retrieved from a children's ward. And so I went home in the diaper.

"Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought, And not a thought but thinks on dignity." -- W. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Act III, Scene 1. 

I share an embarrassment to spare the reader worse. The gory details of my illness need not trouble us here. In Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes we find Johnson advising a friend who complained of the sorry state of his gut, "... do not be like the spider, man; and spin conversation thus incessantly out of thy own bowels." But it would be almost impossible to write about kidney stones even to the limited extent I intend without reference to perhaps the most famous sufferer in western literature, Michel de Montaigne (02/28/1533 - 09/13/1592). He was not alone. A stone, or rather the removal of a stone without anesthetic left Samuel Pepys sterile. (He kept the stone with him and showed it to other sufferers to give them courage that they might face the horror of such surgery. I suspect he also liked to show off a little down at the office. No question he was brave, remember, but he made the Royal Navy largely from his desk, rather than on deck. A stone could awe the toughest sea-dog if they understood the cost.) Authors from George Eliot to Asimov to the delightful Michael Perry in his Montaigne in Barn Boots: An Amateur Ambles Through Philosophy, they've all written of their trials with what Montaigne called, "gravier," id est gravel. But of all the many since, none wrote more bluntly or more famously of this affliction than Montaigne. 

Of Experience is Montaigne's great, galumphing, wander-where-he-will final essay in his third and final book of same. In it his kidneys figure, though they are not his subject. It is his summation, to the extent that he is much interested in conclusions. Not really his style or method. "In all this fine fricassee that I am scribbling here is nothing but a record of the essays of my life..." he writes, and so reinvents a genre; essai in French, essay in English, an attempt in either language. Philosophers tend to propositions and proofs. Montaigne knocks around in his library and basically wonders aloud. He's got more questions than answers. He looks to his books, but his subject is himself. In this he is the first really modern man. 

Quick example from Of Smells. It's the 16th century and bodies are still very much a mystery. Noses are interesting, and smells, and sneezing. "Do you ask me whence comes the custom of blessing those who sneeze?" Safe to say, nobody asked. "We produce three sorts of wind; that which comes from below is too foul; that which comes from the mouth implies some reproach of gluttony; the third is sneezing, and, because it comes from the head and is blameless, we give it this honorable greeting. Do not laugh at this conceit; it is, they say, Aristotle's." Now that might be Aquinas, though Aquinas would have been deeply shocked at the very idea of anyone laughing at either himself or Aristotle. Safe to say Montaigne laughed more than either philosopher and most often at himself. Montaigne had a nose for this sort of thing, and a deep devotion to his classical authors so there's going to be a bit of earthy Horace too, "My nose is quicker to scent a fetid sore or a rank arm pit, than a dog to smell out the hidden sow." He loves a quotation, does Michel, he is made of them, but his only real authority is in himself. "I am never the less a great lover of good smells, and as much abominate the ill ones, which I also scent at a greater distance, I think then other men." Poor man. Not an enviable sensitivity in the 16th century. Oh, and by the way? Venice stinks and Paris is filthy. He knows. He's been.

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne is perhaps chief among my household Gods. There are others I worship, and many I love, but none to whom I turn more often or with greater trust. Montaigne's Essays are my secular psalter. I keep them by my bed. He comforts me. He makes an unlikely bedfellow, I grant you. I would have little enough in common with this most famous philosopher and diplomat of the French Renaissance had he written any way other than he did. He is his subject and him I like. I like the way he thinks. I sympathize with what he feels. I appreciate his guidance. I am inspired by his attempts.

The night I went to the Emergency Room in agony I was not thinking of Montaigne. Had no idea what was wrong with me. Until I was finally given a sufficiently powerful dose of morphine I could not have spelled my own name let alone Montaigne's. When the doctor said, "You have an 8mm kidney stone," I didn't know if that was significant as I'd never had one before -- it was, by the way -- but I did think: "Montaigne's 'gravel!'"

No one likes being ill, but people do seem to want to talk about it. At a certain age people are as likely to be introduced by way of their diseases as they once were by their professions, we exchange prescription-lists like pleasantries, and symptoms are discussed with all the relish usually reserved for sports and politics. Health is now a topic even more general and more boring than it's absence. The progress of secular society has been such that I am now more shocked by a direct profession of faith than I am hopeful of avoiding unsolicited advice on my diet, my heart-rate, and or my footwear. (Soles to be saved?) "For me health means maintaining my accustomed state without disturbance," says Montaigne simply and I am with him.

In Of Experience he assures me all the best people get kidney stones, "since by preference it attacks the great, its essence partakes of nobility and dignity". We might better assume that peasants ate less and exercised more, but unlike most men of his class and time Montaigne probably knew this, as his eccentric father had put him out to be raised by simple people until he was four, that the boy might be drawn "close to the people, and to the life conditions of the people, who need our help."  The reader of Montaigne learns quickly not to presume too much the direction of his mind.

I won't attempt to summarize his famous essay. Read it. Suffice it to say he surprises, even about his kidney stones. He says that his mind tells him that his suffering is for his own good, "that I have the stone; that buildings of my age must naturally suffer some leakage," etc. He accepts his illness, as he embraces life, for what it may teach him and what he may learn of himself because of it. Who doesn't like a bit of flattery, for example, "It is a pleasure to hear people say of you: 'there is real strength, there is real endurance.'"  "We must learn to endure what we cannot avoid," he tells me, but not as Johnson might have said this, meaning that we should suffer for our sins and in uncertain hope of the resurrection, but rather in order that we might live. Both essayists had wit and a rather dark vision of life -- so appealing to a reader on his way out of middle age -- but Montaigne's is the readier, and his motto, ''Que sçay-je?"  -- What do I know? -- might be my own. Hell, Montaigne even expresses a kind of sympathy for the stone: "The stone is often no less attached to life than you. We see men with whom it has continued from their childhood to their extreme old age, and if they had not deserted it, it was ready to accompany them still further. You kill it more often than it kills you; and even if it put before you the image of approaching death, would it not be a kind service to a man of such an age to bring him to meditate upon his end?"

I can't say that I've been brought to meditation, but I have certainly been thinking of my ends in many senses since I was released from the hospital. (Some words are ugly enough without context: "stint," for instance, and "diverticulosis.") By my count I've actually been close to death just twice in my life, once when choking and the other from a burst appendix. In the first case I felt it. The second time a surgeon told me after the fact, going so far as to explain that I had indeed "died on us a couple times, there." Very shocking to hear in one's thirties, though even then I remember thinking, "let it be like that when it happens, not like that piece of beef that tried to kill me." Montaigne was roughly my age now when he died at 59. He had faced death in nearly every likelihood of his time, from disease to war to robbery. When he'd finished his Essays, he was all but done and probably knew it. I have no such sense of my own death, but neither do I anymore discount the possibility. Friends die, and family, and all around me people grow alarmingly old, me not least. Montaigne gives me resolution, if not courage. I've seen good deaths and dying hard and I fancy I am not afraid of the thing itself, but I am of how lonely even the best must be. I would not be so alone if I can help it, while I can help it. And I do not like to think Montaigne alone at his hour. Of course there was a priest. Montaigne could not speak. I hope he was remembering his books. I hope he remembered something at least apt, bless him. 

It is interesting how eager I was for company when I was hospitalized, even when I was in agony and no little ashamed to hear myself moan. I could not have visitors. I was alone. My beloved husband, A. brought me a book. Bless him too. More usually when I am sick I would rather shut the door. Bodies can be embarrassing, particularly our own. When I feel mine has failed me, or I it, I prefer to see to myself if I can. Do not look at me! Leave me to my misery and my Montaigne, though it wasn't Montaigne my husband brought me in the hospital. Didn't matter. I had something to read. In the emergency room and after my need was practical; what I wanted was help, relief, hope of recovery, morphine. Consolation, even pity had an uncharacteristic appeal as well. There is no company so welcome to the seriously ill as an efficient nurse, even one without morphine. A good nurse is good company, however small the conversation. (Conversely no intrusion feels quite so mean as that which interrupts a rare hour of rest at three in the morning just to "check your vitals." Am I not already tethered to machines for that very purpose? Clearly, I am not dead. Go away. Of course my blood pressure is "elevated" when awakened from my first sound sleep in twenty four hours! That blood will keep where it is until morning, you capricious harpy. I fear I was rude, and normally I am a good patient, if not so patient as Montaigne.) 

"Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of healing." Wendell Berry tells us, "Conviviality is healing." So if dying is inevitably to be left eventually alone, and illness isolating even in a crowded room (remember those?), getting better, even the first suggestion that one may, requires other people. Whatever and however one feels in that moment, one must have confirmation, witness. Simple as a nurse to say, "your color's better," or ask after one's returning appetite, as one might a child. "You liked that applesauce, didn't you?"

And other people, the awareness of other people, requires if not dignity at least convention and some semblance of respectability. At a minimum one requires underpants. In E. M. Forster's novel, Howards End I remember he suggested -- tongue firmly in cheek -- that in the age of Democracy, gentility required an umbrella. As an American, I make no claim to gentility. I had no need of an umbrella. Could the janitor not have spared me my underwear?

Absurdity my author understood, and appreciated. "We are not so full of evil as inanity." It is a lesson we need now, is it not? In an age so much preoccupied with dignity and station, Montaigne came to see our ridiculousness as something like our saving grace. Again, a very modern thought. If we would not be fools we must admit the silliness of our circumstances, accept the fragility of our bodies, our mortality, ourselves. We must make the best of things, laugh at what what is risible, endure what we cannot pass. Put on the diaper. Make the duty nurse laugh. Get home.

"Things are not bad in themselves, but our cowardice makes them so." 

In the emergency room I was frightened and in pain and pathetic. I pissed blood and groaned and wept. I know, I know, the stone wasn't bad, it just was, a senseless, brute thing. You're right, Michel. You aren't always, but you are more often than not, more than me. I will think about it. I will read that bit again. I will make an attempt. And you know, mon cher et mort ami, now I think of it, perhaps I wasn't brave until I put on the diaper. That's something, anyway, isn't it? 

And as always, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, I am glad of the company.