Art and Medicine

This is one of two so-called "shell huts" in Lower Grosvenor Gardens, a park near Victoria Station that I walked through on my way to the hospital yesterday morning. They are quirky little buildings decorated with shells from France and Britain, and a site called "The Londonphile" has an article about their unusual history. I thought they were perhaps Victorian, because the Victorians loved their shells (remember the shell grotto in Margate?) but they were actually built in 1952 when the gardens were re-landscaped after World War II.

One of them is used to store garden tools, and I saw a gardener working from it, but apparently the one above is kept locked.

I also walked through Upper Grosvenor Gardens, an adjacent park that features this sculpture, "Lioness and Lesser Kudu" by Jonathan Kenworthy. It's a relatively recent installation, from June 2000.

The hospital where I went for my capsule endoscopy was right behind Buckingham Palace on Grosvenor Place. I couldn't see the palace -- only the well-fortified walls topped with barbed wire encircling its trees and gardens. I was there at 8:30 a.m., ready to get this thing over with.

I was taken for a preliminary CT scan, to make sure the test capsule was no longer in my system (it wasn't, and I told them that, but whatever) and then given the real thing by a nurse. It really is a little miracle of science, a half-clear capsule with blinking lights inside. I was surprised by the lights, but of course it would need some kind of light source. After all, it's dark in there. So while I went about my day, that capsule was strobing away and my innards were partying like it was 1999!

I had to wear a padded belt and shoulder harness for the unit receiving the transmitted images from the capsule. It was comfortable enough at first, and the image recorder was no larger than a Walk-Man (if you remember those). After swallowing the capsule I had to walk up and down a hallway for a while, to get my gut moving and set the capsule traveling on its way.

The hallway was decorated with these bright artworks by Leon Polk Smith from 1968 and 1973. I'd never heard of him but I guess he was known for these sorts of hard-edged, colorful graphic images.

They're very '60s, and therefore I like them.

I know you're all wondering whether I was able to watch the progress of the capsule. I saw some initial images, because the recorder had a display screen and the nurse activated it to make sure the capsule was moving along. I could see inside my stomach and the beginning of my small intestine, but honestly it didn't look like much -- just a pink-beige tunnel. The screen didn't stay on, and I was scared to try to push any buttons to activate it later, so that was the only time I saw any pictures.

I was sent home around 11 a.m. My jacket covered the recording unit, so I wore it home on the tube with no problem. The rest of the day I spent lounging around the house, because I wasn't supposed to do a lot of bending or stooping. I couldn't eat until just after 2 p.m., and even then only a tuna sandwich thoughtfully provided by the hospital. (Hospital food at home -- yum! Yes, that was sarcasm.)

In the afternoon I watched "Fortune and Men's Eyes," a 1971 movie about prison life with gay themes. I'd read about it somewhere and it sounded interesting as a sort of cultural time-capsule, which it was.

But by this time I was feeling pretty terrible. The thing about capsule endoscopy is that it disrupts life for about 72 hours -- my diet the preceding two days had been bland and then liquid, and even after my tuna fish "snack" at 2 p.m. I felt like hell. (I wasn't able to have any coffee yesterday, probably my chief complaint.) It's much less invasive than a colonoscopy, and capable of seeing more, but man, including prep time it takes forever to complete.

Finally, around 6 p.m., I could eat normally. Hallelujah! And at 9 p.m. I could take off that infernal belt, which I had slowly come to despise.

Today I have to take the recording unit back to the hospital and then, assuming this all shows no abnormalities -- which I won't know immediately -- I will be glad to get on with my life!

You may be wondering about my friend the spider from the previous post. Last night when we went to bed it was tucked up next to a wooden molding by the window. I looked up a couple of times during the night and it was still there, which enabled me to sleep soundly, but this morning it was gone. It's a harmless house spider (Tegenaria) but I'd still rather not touch it and I hope it has disappeared for good into some dark hidey-hole.