Saturday, July 2, 2022

18 movies in 18 sessions in the Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber


I was very ill at the end of February with hemorrhaging from the bladder - ended up five days in the hospital while they flushed out my poor shredding bladder- the most miserable medical procedure I've ever endured.  

There's no cure for this;  it's the result of long term radiation damage from the cancer treatment from thirteen years ago.  That radiation killed the cancer, but it did a job on the neighboring organs too.

Anyway, the doctors recommended this hyperbaric oxygen treatment, which I can get at the Wound Care Center in Frederick.  Two hours a day, five days a week, for eight weeks.   While in this 100% oxygen environment, the patient can't  wear glasses, hearing aids, or anything else, and can't bring a book or anything in.  Also, I am not allowed to sleep - they want you awake to be able to report any pain or other body changes.  It's very carefully monitored.

So what do we patients get to do for two hours?  Watch DVDs!  Not a bad deal; there's a very large collection of DVDs from which to choose.  Not a heavy intellectual film among them.

So, for the last eighteen days, I have watched:

1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

2. The Bourne Identity

3. Raiders of the lost Ark

4. Sleepless in Seattle

5. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

6. Moonstruck

7. Legally Blonde

8. In the Line of Fire

9. Catch Me if you can

10. Four Weddings and a Funeral

11. Gran Torino

12. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

13. Patriot Games

14. Mama Mia

15. Star Wars 1: the Phantom Menace

16. The Da Vinci Code

17. The King's Speech

18.  Big   ( Tom Hanks)


For some reason, all this movie viewing has made me want to go back a reread Walker Percy's existential novel The Moviegoer, which I read in one of my graduate classes at Johns Hopkins University back in 1977.


I have found an audiobook of it  - a podcast.  Hoping to start listening and reflecting on it soon.