Category: diary

Two things hospitals do that you would think they wouldn’t

[broken ankle]

I’m not saying there isn’t lots of evidence that many or even
most of the staffs of the hospitals I’ve been in are
intelligent, caring, dedicated people. But these seem like
issues that someone like that would be able to fix.

My most recent stay was overnight after surgery for a broken
ankle, and my previous stays have not involved a lot of bedpans,
but they have all involved surgeons who think they’ve told me
things.

Surgeon’s and communication

This one I’m sure is common, because it’s happened every time
I’ve had general anaesthesia. Apparently, when you’re coming out
of it, there’s a period when you look awake, but you don’t really
remember anything that happens then.

This is when surgeons all come over and tell you how the
surgery went.

The nurses all know about this problem, so if you think of it,
and can ask the nurse who was there when the surgeon told you
stuff, she can tell you what you want to know.

Unfortunately, this most recent time, I didn’t think to ask
until I was in my room, and the nurse there said that she thought
it had gone well, but I’d have to ask the doctor for more
details.

Bedpans

I had to use one all night, because they wouldn’t let me get up
until I was cleared by Physical Therapy.

The bedpans are the right size for someone with a normal
bladder who is evacuating some of what they have drunk. They are
way too small for someone who’s getting iv fluids.

Bigos

If you have keiłbasa, sauerkraut, and mushrooms, you can make bigos. Put them in a pot and simmer until you want to eat them. I sometimes do this in a frying pan for only a few minutes, and call it lazy man’s bigos.
The story is that the hunters left a cauldron of this simmering, and when they caught anything, they added it to the pot.
Above is my grandmother’s recipe, which she contributed to her church cookbook. You notice she adds quite a few things to the basic recipe. The apples are good, and when I have it, I usually use cider instead of the wine and beef broth in her recipe. Notice that she also used cabbage in addition to the sauerkraut.

Spine-chilling cadences from the King’s Singers

[King's Singers]

Worlds Colliding: Renaissance Heavyweights, June 12, 8pm,
Jordan Hall, Boston

I had a favorite note on this concert. This occasionally
happens when I’m playing or singing — altos especially tend to
end up with mostly boring parts, with one note that changes the
whole harmonic landscape. But I don’t remember it happening in
a performance I was just listening to before.

In this case, it was at the very end
of the Schütz
Das
ist je gewißlich wahr. As you can see, just before the
resolution to the A major chord at the end, the top line hits
the already established “A” harmony with a “B”.

[Amen]

Most experienced singers and instrumentalists can make that
final chord “ring” on a good day. But this one “rang” on that
dissonant note. It sent chills up my spine. I asked a number
of very experienced musicians who were at the concert if they’d
noticed it, and none of them had.

There are a lot of similar cadences in the repertoire they were
performing, and I listened to see if it would happen again. The
Josquin Baisez Moi
had two of them near the end, and they almost had
that effect on the first one, and didn’t have it at all on the
second one.

So I don’t know whether this was something they try to do
consciously and only succeed some of the time, or just a strange
effect of the acoustics of Jordan Hall, or even that seat (N20) with
that arrangement of performers in Jordan Hall. But it was
definitely worth the price of the ticket.

The concert as a whole was good but the program was less
tightly focused than I’ve sometimes heard from the King’s
Singers. The commentary from the stage tended to border on the
sophomoric, as if they’d spent a little too much time playing to
college audiences. In general, I think BEMF should not let groups
get away with “greatest hits” programs as much as they do. I
thought
the same thing when the Hilliard Ensemble played in
2013 as well.