Read Online The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Scott Stambach
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tatters of an Eastern Bloc economy, every penny counts.
When you live in a place where nothing changes, even morbid change is entertaining. Thus, one of my favorite activities is guessing three-monthers before med day. One of the few things I pride myself on is how good I am at this game. In fact, until a month ago, I had correctly called every new three-monther over the last fifty months.
The more spiritually inclined nurses have argued that my radiation poisoning gave me psychic powers pertaining to death, but I reject this because it would violate the Three Tenets of Ivanism (see below). The simple truth is that after seventeen years of watching kids die slowly, I have gotten good at picking up all the telltale signs. Every disease has its own classic omens, a fingerprint of mortality. For example, the leading cause of death here at the asylum is thyroid cancer. When a thyroid kid is still a six-monther, he looks just like any other cancer patient (i.e., bald-headed, pale, thin, frequent trips to the restroom, a bit spaceyâalso known as chemo brain). But when he becomes a three-monther, you can expect an onslaught of much more interesting symptoms. I got so good at recognizing these symptoms that Nurse Natalya once asked me to create a diagnostic assessment document (DAD) for the other nurses, in the hopes that it would streamline care and also make me feel useful. Here are a few sample pages (as you can see, in another life I would have made an excellent diagnostician):
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A thyroid kid is a three-monther if he/she exhibits four of the following five symptoms:
       (1) His/her neck swells up so big it looks like the kid swallowed a rabbit, which then became lodged in his/her throat.
       (2) It takes him/her thirty minutes or more to get through a single bite of food.
       (3) When he/she asks for an injection of Aloxi and it sounds like his/her vocal cords have been replaced by an Apple Computerâstyle voice generator.
       (4) He/she keeps the entire hospital up all night coughing.
       (5) His/her ordinary breathing sounds like a fat kid after walking ten flights of stairs.
Â
A leukemia kid is a three-monther if he/she exhibits any five of the following six symptoms:
       (1) His/her smile looks like he/she flossed with barbed wire.
       (2) Every one of his/her standard white hospital T-shirts is stained with blood from daily nosebleeds and eye bleeds.
       (3) His/her bones ache too much to walk.
       (4) He/she begins to resemble Olive Oyl from famed American cartoon Popeye .
       (5) He/she stops showing up to breakfast hour, lunch hour, and dinner hour.
       (6) He/she begins sleeping through his/her favorite Russian TV shows.
Â
A Marfan syndrome kid is a three-monther (more like three-dayer) if any of the following events take place:
       (1) His/her heart stops, he/she has a heart attack, or his/her heart otherwise explodes.
       (2) He/she is blind.
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An amyotrophic lateral sclerosis * kid is a three-monther when:
       (1) His/her face becomes droopier than mine, and
       (2) He/she is poor (for some reason the rich ones seem to hang around longer).
Â
A diabetes kid is a three-monther if:
       (1) Two or more of his/her appendages have been amputated, and
       (2) He/she is blind.
These are just the diseases that have names. Thereâs an abundance of maladies that make their way through the halls of our hospital that stump the best in the medical profession. â Still, Iâm clairvoyant when it comes to these blokesâ three-monther status. After a
When you live in a place where nothing changes, even morbid change is entertaining. Thus, one of my favorite activities is guessing three-monthers before med day. One of the few things I pride myself on is how good I am at this game. In fact, until a month ago, I had correctly called every new three-monther over the last fifty months.
The more spiritually inclined nurses have argued that my radiation poisoning gave me psychic powers pertaining to death, but I reject this because it would violate the Three Tenets of Ivanism (see below). The simple truth is that after seventeen years of watching kids die slowly, I have gotten good at picking up all the telltale signs. Every disease has its own classic omens, a fingerprint of mortality. For example, the leading cause of death here at the asylum is thyroid cancer. When a thyroid kid is still a six-monther, he looks just like any other cancer patient (i.e., bald-headed, pale, thin, frequent trips to the restroom, a bit spaceyâalso known as chemo brain). But when he becomes a three-monther, you can expect an onslaught of much more interesting symptoms. I got so good at recognizing these symptoms that Nurse Natalya once asked me to create a diagnostic assessment document (DAD) for the other nurses, in the hopes that it would streamline care and also make me feel useful. Here are a few sample pages (as you can see, in another life I would have made an excellent diagnostician):
Â
A thyroid kid is a three-monther if he/she exhibits four of the following five symptoms:
       (1) His/her neck swells up so big it looks like the kid swallowed a rabbit, which then became lodged in his/her throat.
       (2) It takes him/her thirty minutes or more to get through a single bite of food.
       (3) When he/she asks for an injection of Aloxi and it sounds like his/her vocal cords have been replaced by an Apple Computerâstyle voice generator.
       (4) He/she keeps the entire hospital up all night coughing.
       (5) His/her ordinary breathing sounds like a fat kid after walking ten flights of stairs.
Â
A leukemia kid is a three-monther if he/she exhibits any five of the following six symptoms:
       (1) His/her smile looks like he/she flossed with barbed wire.
       (2) Every one of his/her standard white hospital T-shirts is stained with blood from daily nosebleeds and eye bleeds.
       (3) His/her bones ache too much to walk.
       (4) He/she begins to resemble Olive Oyl from famed American cartoon Popeye .
       (5) He/she stops showing up to breakfast hour, lunch hour, and dinner hour.
       (6) He/she begins sleeping through his/her favorite Russian TV shows.
Â
A Marfan syndrome kid is a three-monther (more like three-dayer) if any of the following events take place:
       (1) His/her heart stops, he/she has a heart attack, or his/her heart otherwise explodes.
       (2) He/she is blind.
Â
An amyotrophic lateral sclerosis * kid is a three-monther when:
       (1) His/her face becomes droopier than mine, and
       (2) He/she is poor (for some reason the rich ones seem to hang around longer).
Â
A diabetes kid is a three-monther if:
       (1) Two or more of his/her appendages have been amputated, and
       (2) He/she is blind.
These are just the diseases that have names. Thereâs an abundance of maladies that make their way through the halls of our hospital that stump the best in the medical profession. â Still, Iâm clairvoyant when it comes to these blokesâ three-monther status. After a
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