Surgery Part I

This is a new post, written about a day I have so far managed not to write about.  These are memories I have and am glad to have.  I don't try to push them away when they surface.  Some of them are kind of funny, even. 

I think I haven't written them down yet because that day, that event, was so big.  I felt as though I couldn't do a competent job of it. 

I've decided just to go for it, incompetently. 

***

The day before the surgery was dreadful.  Both hard in itself and full of dread for what was coming. 

I was still recovering from the sugar reaction the night before.  I was so dehydrated and my stomach was a knot that didn't want to re-hydrate.

We went to the hospital for the pre-op appointment that included talking to doctors and nurses at 4 different desks (or so) and answer health questions, one of which was, "How would you rate your health today?" 

Well, aside from the 8cm tumor in my chest. . . 

***

One was a male nurse who gave the pre-op instructions.  No eating or drinking after midnight, and so forth.  He gave me a heavy-duty plastic bag with built-in handles pre-loaded with supplies I'd need.

Specifically, it included 2 sponges and 2 iodine packets, which I was to use that night and the morning of to "wash the surgical area." 

I showered twice, just hours apart, and did my home-bound duty.

Boy, did that feel like a creepy ceremony.

***

Those bags, by the way, are still in use, as liners in two of our waste baskets.

What?  It's hard to come by a nice, heavy, small plastic bag like that.

***

There was a lady there for her own pre-op appointment who came over to talk with me.  Maybe she guessed--woman as young as I, no apparent broken bones, could be breast cancer.  Maybe she'd been eavesdropping.

She was in her 40's, and she launched into her story about being diagnosed and then under-going double-breast-removal at age 18. 

And "There's life after mastectomy"--I hate that word--and "I married my best friend who helped me through it all" and "my brother shaved his head to be bald along with me" and on and on, including comments on her reconstruction and current physique.

She was grotesque.  She was haggard, and her teeth were bad, and her hair was long and stringy, and she was very overweight and she sounded like a chain-smoker with a constant hackle in the back of her throat. 

I just smiled the whole time she was talking and then thanked her when she was done.

It was all I could do not to start crying, thereby incurring more of her comfort.

***

David and Helen arrived into town by the early evening.  They had been through their own harrowing surgery a few months before as Helen's life was saved by a double-organ transfer.

They came to be here for me.  They came to sit with Bryan in the hospital.  I can imagine that theirs was a crappy drive across Kansas.

***

They told me to call Dr. Mayfield and ask for "something to help me sleep." 

You can do that?  Ask your surgeon for drugs?

They saw how agitated I was, and having had experience with drugs themselves. . .  

Mayfield obliged, of course.  I fell asleep by midnight with the Ambien.  And woke at 3:00.  Guess it helped a little.

***

I talked to my family that night on the phone, as I'm fairly certain my Dad had kind of sent out a, "Call Amy, this is a hard moment after all" kind of siren. 

I was glad to talk with them.

But they knew and I knew that it didn't help.  Some valleys are just lonesome.  Some things just can't be helped and that's why they suck.  They just suck, and that's that.

***

A certain person I shall not name called at 5:30 AM, having not calculated the time change. 

Bryan ended up talking with this person, who had called mainly to give the council, "Don't do this surgery."

So.  While I don't think it would have been possible to be helpful, I realized that it is possible to be unhelpful.

***

I was so thirsty.  So thirsty.  Hungry, too. 

Couldn't do anything about that. 

(I learned from a later surgery that, actually, it is OK to drink a glass of plain water, but that they declare a ban on everything because they can't trust patients to take only plain water.

Sheesh.

Again: unhelpful.)

***

Mom was staying with us then, to help with the kids, to be my Mommy. 

She was up early, too.  I told her I just hated thinking about it. 

It was so much dread. 

She said, "Well, let's not think about it, then.  Let's watch an episode of Seinfeld!"

(Bryan had bought be the complete box set a week earlier.)

So that's what we did.  A few episodes, in fact.  Very helpful.

***

And then it was time to leave for the hospital.  David and Helen came to our house first so they could come through the gate with us on base. 

And we left. 

By the time I was in the car, I felt an odd sense of relief.  In less than 12 hours, the deed will be done.  And the only thing I know for certain is that God has brought me to these next 12 hours.

***

I didn't have any kind of concern that I wouldn't survive the surgery.  I wasn't at all nervous about that. 

But I did have a sinus infection at that time.  I had forgotten tissue and so resorted to blowing my nose into a spare diaper we had in the glove compartment.

The infection had been around for a week or so.  I had asked Mayfield about it a few days earlier--e.g. should we delay the surgery because of this infection?

"Because of a sinus infection?  No, Amy, we're curing cancer here. . ."

But they pumped me full of antibiotics--standard course for serious surgery--and I woke up with clear sinuses!

***

David, Helen, her service dog, BroJean and I got to the drab waiting room and found the TV's on, blaring about the death of Michael Jackson. 

This news overshadowed the other national story of the cap n' trade vote, which, at the time, felt like a big deal to a lot of people who had not just been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Bryan pulled out some reading material, his summer issue of Backyard Poultry.  David thought this was hysterical. 

It hadn't occurred to me until he started laughing that Bryan reading a chicken husbandry magazine as he sat in the waiting room during his wife's breast removal surgery was kind of funny.

***

I think this is about half of the story.  I'm calling a time out.  Maybe you need it, too.