Power Port

Friday, July 24, 2009

Power Port

My Dad often brags about being "hermetically sealed." As in: never been operated on. The parts inside his body stay inside. The rest of the world stays outside.

This is an exaggeration, because blood has been drawn from him on occasion. But it's a life-affirming fiction for him, and one he uses to stupefy others.

For instance, one doctor looked at a mole on the side of his torso and recommended having it removed. Dad said, "It's holding an important part on the inside. If I take it off, something will fall out."

I am now guilty of gross violation of this "hermetically sealed" standard. It's not enough that I went bionic in October by having a plate screwed to my leg. Now, I'm sporting a Power Port.

Yes. It's really called that.

My very own valve. Stuff can be shot in. Stuff can be sucked out. I do not know what the Power Port has over a regular port, but I'm glad I got the best, baby.

And I like what having a port says to the world: "I see the coming year and the liters of fluid that will be pumped into my body and I am so OK with it, that I'm going to have a valve installed. So bring it on. It's never been easier to flood my system with drugs than it is right now."

My shoulder is still very sore from the procedure, and it's swollen, despite a lot of ice packs. But I'm betting that the discomfort now will be outweighed by the convenience and pain-savings of later when I don't have a nurse poking me with needles.

This latest episode has been very helpful in identifying something that has been a little troubling so far: this whole warrior language. Specifically, that many people refer to me (and others in my position) as warriors.

I know that people say it with the best of intentions, and my beef is not personal. I am not bothered by the people. I am just uncomfortable with the title.

Why? Because most of my appointments have been in an Army hospital. The day of my surgery, I saw a guy in the waiting room wearing a prosthetic foot.

And Mayfield mentioned that he was briefly assisting with an operation on a guy who'd take a round to his hip while in Afghanistan.

And the soldier in the pre-op bay across from me had the following words tattooed on his forearm: EXPECT NO MERCY.

These people are warriors. These people volunteered to serve their country, they fought a battle they didn't have to fight, and, we hope, they killed some of the enemies of our country.

I did not volunteer for cancer.

I don't have a choice about whether to fight it.

When the cancer cells die, it won't be because I fought them, it'll be because I let one doctor cut them out of me and let another shoot poison into my port.

My role in this is to try to function as well as I can while my body takes hit after hit after hit. And it seems that wearing the title "warrior" lessens a term of respect we all hold in high regard for warriors in uniform.

You may not agree with me, but you can understand my discomfort, right?

***

But then came this last procedure, and I learned something about why we want to use the term "warrior" to describe a person like me.

The day before the procedure, I had to go to the pre-op offices and do labs and paperwork.

The nurse who met with me was a little Filipino woman. She started talking and I recognized her at once. When I came out of my surgery a month ago, the nurse attending me kept talking, talking, talking, asking me question after pestering question even though I had a mask on and couldn't speak well through it.

She was right in my ear. So loud and so annoying, I kept thinking, "Make this woman shut up."

When it was time to send me off to ICU, she told me where I was going and that it had been a pleasure taking care of me and she grabbed my hand. I felt so bad, having thought such mean things towards her, that I squeezed her hand back. You know, to end on a good note. And I didn't mention her in my "Etherized" post because she had meant well. No need to defame her.

Here she was, across the desk from me, telling me that I seemed familiar. Ah yes. "You have surgery one month ago!" Uh huh. I recognized her voice, I told her. And smiled.

She checked the paperwork, and my surgery came back to her. I could see it in her face. Then she started sighing, "Oh. . . Oh. . .right. How you doing now? You OK?"

I nodded. Wanted her to get on with the pre-op run-down.

"Any breast cancer in your family?" she asked. This wasn't what she needed to ask for the form. I told her, "Nope."

"You so young! 34! You take hormones?"

I shook my head. This is a no-no. Trying to find the "cause" of someone's cancer. You'd be surprised how this pisses cancer patients off.  "No," I amplified, to save her more questions, "No hormones, no drugs of any kind, no smoking, I nursed my babies and I'm not obese."

There. All the categories that would have increased my odds of developing cancer. And I beat the odds anyway.

Then she said, "No, you very thin. Very pretty. . ." and she let that trail off and that's when I realized it: This was pity. She was pitying me.

Then she said, with her pitying voice, "How old are your babies?"

Ugh! Asking about my children? Of course I started crying. Damn. It's much easier to leave my kids out of this as much as possible.

So then, having made me cry, she stepped into the compassionate nurse role and said this and that about treatment and everything would be OK and blah, blah, blah. All coated in pity.

This is when I realized that people use the warrior metaphor because we recognize that warriors are not pitied. They are admired and encouraged. But they are in a position of power, which is strength, and not powerlessness, which we pity.

Yeah, given a choice between being called a warrior and a boo-hoo-for-Amy chorus, I'll risk disrespecting real warriors and wear their title.

In the meantime, let's try to think of a title that does what "warrior" does, but is, in fact, a better description of what I'm actually doing:

I'm permitting onslaught to by body in order to save that body,

and I'm doing it in faith that God permits only His best plans for me, regardless of how good or bad they look to my eyes

and I'm trying to conduct all the things I can control in such a way that when the cancer is all gone and I remain, my life and the lives of those around me will somehow be better off for the experience.

What shall we call a person who does that?