i was prepared for what would come out as a result of drinking the Fleet bowel-cleansing solution, but i was not at all prepared for how it would go in. how could 1.5 ounces be so difficult to down? it took 3 gulps from the tiny bottle, and between each gulp i struggled not to heave it back up. 1.5 ounces at 4 PM, then 1.5 ounces at 7 PM. the 'regular' decidedly worse tasting than the 'lemon'. an hour after the first tiny plastic flask i felt the warning drop and gurgle in my gut. my ass then began to behave like a Super Soaker water gun. for hours. because the Fleet had been whisked off the shelves that day due to abuse as a means of weight loss, i thought i'd do a Before & After weigh-in. However, my digital scale hadn't survived being flung onto the back porch during one cleaning frenzy, then left out there in the cold. my decision, based on the taste (imagine gulping sea water - but worse - viscous as motor oil), was that anyone who would drink this stuff to lose weight was in need of serious psychological intervention.
i hyper-hydrated myself, knowing i would have nothing in my gut again for 24 hours, insuring that i wouldn't be thirsty in the morning when i was allowed nothing at all pre-op (surery was at 1 PM). mom, jo, and jen accompanied me to the hospital.
"like Steel Magnolias" jennifer said.
but didn't shelby die, i thought?
they had a scoreboard like you'd see at the racetrack in the waiting area. your person's name would change colors as they changed positions from pre-op, to op, to post-op. i found that kind of cool, not that anyone was sticking around to watch my name move around the scoreboard.
soon jennifer declared that she was "gonna roll" because she was too antsy to stay 20 more minutes. i lay there in my Oprah-sized hospital johnnie pulling rings off my Fleet-shrunken fingers and putting all 4 into a felt bag, pulling the neck tightly before handing it off to mom, keeper of the rings. i thought about just leaving them at home that morning as i removed my earrings and necklace, but mom wanted to be "keeper of the rings" so i could have them back after surgery, so i let her. the nurses covered me in oven-heated flannel blankets until i was a white mummy, rehydrated through an IV. there seemed to be a nurse for everything, then came the anesthesiologist and my doctor, suzy silverstein. suddenly there was a whole lot going on. the clock had apparently hit 1:00.
as they unclocked the wheels of the hospital bed i watched mom and jo begin to rise with their goodbyes. suddenly mom was screaming and sobbing, eyes squeezed tightly shut. she fell back into her chair gasping "my thumb, my thumb, i hurt my thumb". everyone medical seemed to momentarily forget about me in the unfolding drama. you see, mom had fallen several days earlier and jammed her thumb. apparently, while pushing herself out of her chair sans thumb brace, she proceeded to snap, perhaps break, something. i bellowed at her to take her rings off, for chrissakes, her hand was going to swell, and fast. nurses whizzed a wheelchair over and despite mom's inisistence that she'd be fine, they were having none of it. she was rolled off to the ER as i was rolled off to the OR. i watched the ceiling roll by and tried to apologize and explain the the hysteria before the hysterectomy. and then we were in the cold Operating Room. what was the big hurry? everything was happening so fast. all i remember is the anesthesiologist somehow mentioned the comedian joel mchale, The Soup on the E! channel, and his appearance at the Hukelau as we scuttled my butt onto the operating table. then i felt a burn in my wrist at the IV site and i raised my hand, staring at it as if it were an alien object. my last words were a joyful cry of "i love Spaghetti Cat!" (search youtube.com if you don't know what Spaghetti Cat is).
it's nice that you can't remember the length of time surgery takes or the position they had you in (i'm pretty sure i was in the charming legs-up stirrup position, though they weren't heading in that way), only that you're glad you shaved your legs and trimmed your bikini area. i'm too proud to go into surgery or a massage all hairy. i cannot tell you about the surgery because although i was there, i was not really there. only that there was a cool da Vinci robot machine involved.
my post-op moans seemed to please the nurses who mumbled something about morphine. then dr. silverstein's head bobbled and wavered in my sight-line, mumbling something about the surgery and an ovary. if they were unintelligible i can imagine how unintelligible i was. why do they even bother talking to you in Recovery? it's a complete waste of a conversation. please . . . talk to me when i am not stupefied. i didn't really feel any pain that i recall, maybe something in the middle of my body, and i have no idea how i got from Recovery to my room in Maternity.
yes, you read right. they put me in Maternity. i knew that was the plan beforehand so i wasn't surprised, but the irony continued to amuse me for my entire stay. i didn't have the huge swanky birthing room the mothers had (i later discovered) but a strange, sort of air-locked room with 2 doors to enter. enter the first, wash your hands thoroughly please, then enter the second. it was as if i was contagious, but i wasn't, and no one really had to wash. the room was dim when i came to and it was almost larger than the rooms on regular floors that bob had to share with 3 other men. sure, i was pleased with my good private room fortune, but the inequity wasn't lost on me. birthing gets a lot more room than dying.
jo came to see me with a pot of blossoming red tulips as she headed back to boston, telling me all the ER action and explaining how mom was too exhausted to return to the hospital, which was fine because i too was exhausted. we tested the buttons on the bed, raising it and turning on the TV which played the "Serenity Channel" (as bob called it during his hospital days) - scenes of orchids and snow covered mountains, deserts and sea, teamed with serene music. it was peaceful. on the other hand, my catheter was annoying the hell out of me. luckily, they have a pill for that. i could have had the nurse pull it out for the night but i decided i didn't want to risk fainting on one of what would no doubt be many trips to the bathroom. the catheter had the last laugh, however. during one 'vitals check' i felt something wet. tubes had somehow come apart during one of my slow rolls in sleep and the top of my white circulation tights was wet and yellow. i got a new johnnie, new pad under my butt, but she just towel dried the very un-chic thigh-high i had to wear as tubes of air massaged my legs to prevent clots. at the time (the middle of the night) that was acceptable. in the morning it wasn't.
the night was an endless parade of blood pressure monitors, O2 and heart rate stats, temperature taking. it seemed as if i'd barely fallen asleep when someone was there again. the nurses would write their names on the board as they changed shifts but i remembered none of them, only their personalities. night - tiny, dark and compassionate, her replacement big, blonde and very businesslike, next one very chipper but not terribly bright. another smelling of old lady perfume that hung in the air till i waved a Glamour magazine around to dispell it with something by Giorgio Armani or Calvin Klein instead. i remember convincing the compassionate little night nurse to bring me some toast even though i was supposed to only have clear liquids like Jell-O and soup. when she left the room i snuck a couple pieces of American cheese in saran wrap out of my pink bag of must-have items. as soon as the toast was on my tray i unwrapped the cheese and savored my first real food in almost 2 days. i felt quite brilliant having planned this sneaky treat and for dessert i sucked on a candy cane from my christmas tree. it was great. i even had a bendy straw in my water cup.
itching began that night and i complained of it repeatedly. my face felt as though it was crawling with bugs. i'd begin to doze off and my lip would itch. i'd scratch. almost asleep and the tip of my nose would itch and i'd scratch. my whole head would itch and i'd scratch madly, like a flea-ridden caveman. the nurse explained it away as something they'd used in the IV drugs and gave me a benadryl. but the benadryl offered no relief. every 4 hours i was allowed 2 percocets and i took one or both religiously for pain, never thinking twice. itch, itch, itch. in the morning my belly button began to itch too and the nurse said "oh good, that's a sign of healing!" but wasn't it too soon for that? i have a fast metabolism, fast digestive system, but could i actually heal that fast? (later i would google percocet and discover one possible side effect is itching, and my incisional itching was really the percolation of hives - a reaction against the bandages!)
from prior experience with laparoscopic surgery i knew to expect gas pain. no, not the kind in your bowels. this kind stems from being pumped with gas to create a coloseum inside my belly so the surgical tools had room to do their jobs. try as they might to suck it back out, some of the gas stays and wreaks more havoc on the body than the incisions ever do. it even works its way up as high as your shoulders. mostly you feel as if the tire of a monster truck just rolled over your abdomen. my gas bubble was a nasty one this time. it felt huge and i could hear it as i changed position in bed. it glugged and gurgled, changing positions with me. i was a human lava lamp.eventually it decided to take up residence for several days just under my diaphragm, making every breath a shallow one until i took in a big heaving painful breath every so often and let it out with a loud sigh. my cat mattie died last june of lung problems that made it hard for him to breathe. his every breath became strained and heavy and finally i knew what his last days must have felt like. and it made me cry. mine would eventually be relieved. his never was. i didn't like the oxygen tube in my nose either. not only was it pesky, slipping out of place, it reminded me too unpleasantly of bob's reliance in his last days on such an oxygen tube. finally the nurse let me breathe on my own as long as my O2 stats remained acceptable.
in the morning dr. silverstein came in with photos of my insides. the ovary that was normal looked like the sickly one to me. the one that looked like an egg turned out to be the sickly one, twice the size it was supposed to be, and the one they had to remove. the other one remains in there, suspended somehow. lonesome, but trucking on, keeping me hormonal. she showed me my uterus, which looked like any glistening organ, as you might expect. she explained that it was tipped over so badly it must have caused me back pains. days later she would tell me that one fibroid inside was the size of a golf ball and inside it was so riddled with adenomyosis that it "must have caused me a lot of pain". yes....that would be why i had it removed.
old scars from old surgeries. my liver. fascinating stuff. the only thing that made me vaguely weak in the knees were the black gristle burn marks of the cauterizing tool. "this is your cervix cauterized shut," she said, and i decided that was just about enough. organs OK, burned organs not so OK. i guess doctors get real happy when things go well, although i think if i were a doctor i'd find it a lot more exciting when things go wrong. she was quite cheery with her little photo album of my guts in hand. after looking at my 4 incision sites she decided i looked OK. standing up i had a very unsightly, saggy balloon swelling on the left and complained that i was lumpy. she assured me that the swelling would go away, after all that was the biggest incision, through which everything had been sucked out. it deserved to look a little traumatized. i decided this must be what it feels like to be stabbed in the gut. you can literally feel its path inside.
dr. silverstein was all set to let me go home until she heard i had no one to go home to. she knew bob had died 2 years ago but assumed i had someone who could stay with me. i did not. so she declared i'd have another night's stay in the hospital in my nice private room courtesy of health insurance (hey, if you get one for something coming out of your uterus, why not also get one for your uterus coming out altogether?) besides, i was not in any condition to go home if you asked me. insurance companies kick people out of the hospital too quickly these days to save themselves money. i was in pain, i was not terribly steady on my feet, there was no one to make sure i got to the bathroom without fainting - one more day wouldn't hurt. so i got to keep my super sterile isolation room and get served 3 squares a day. the menu seemed so glamorous. you mean i don't have to circle just one item? i can have as many things as i want? but i found the kitchen staff was quite literal. if you forgot to circle butter, you got no butter even if you'd ordered an english muffin and it would seem sensible that you'd also want butter.
mom came to visit the first morning looking angry at the world, waving her big thumb splint around and describing how swollen her hand was, how she had to remove her rings as i'd predicted. i lay quietly, holding my belly. "oh! give me my rings!" i said and she extracted the purple felt bag from her purse. i dumped the contents into my white linen lap. only 3 rings fell. i looked into the bag, shook it again. nothing else came out. where was bob's gold wedding band? "that's all you gave me," mom insisted. "i don't remember 4 rings." i tried not to panic. i especially didn't need her panicking. my voice, however, was strained and insistent - i had 4 rings, bob's was missing. she explained that she'd taken her own rings off in the Emergency Room and put them in the bag along with mine, dumped them all out on the bed at home later, then tossed her own rings into her jewelry box. "i don't remember seeing any gold band." i called Security to search Pre-Op, the OR and the ER, all the while knowing fat chance they'd find anything. if the ring had been in my lap when i went into the OR it was now in the bowels of the hospital laundry, lost to me forever. in this economy anyone who found it was unlikely to turn it in to Lost & Found. mom left in a worse mood than she'd arrived in, telling me "you have no idea how upset i will be if i lost bob's wedding ring!"
"how upset you'll be??"
after she left i let myself go. i let the panic and sobbing overtake me and took a klonopin, snuck in along with the American cheese. i waited for the phone to ring and the words "i found it!" 45 minutes, an hour, then 2 hours passed. nothing. i cried even harder. she couldn't find it and she was too afraid to tell me so. i was too afraid to call her and hear those words, already too overwhelmed with my own loss to deal with her hysteria, because it would not be pretty. eventually the phone rang and mom blithely said "hi, how are you?" what the fuck? i didn't want to hear hi how are you, i wanted to hear i found it or i didn't find it. "did you find my ring?" i asked and she answered "oh yes, i just knew you were drifting off to sleep when i left so i didn't want to call and wake you." call and wake me? i'd been unable to sleep for 2 hours, tormented by the idea of bob's wedding ring lost forever! but she had it, tossed in her jewelry box with her own gold jewelry, and would bring it over later.
when she returned with my rings she was a different person. who is this person and what did you do with my real mother? she was cheerful, the perfect hospital visitor, bearing a box of chocolates and magazines for me. insisting that i have all the extras i was entitled to, like the cranberry juice and pudding they had in the ward's kitchen. well OK. so we stocked up on loot in the form of food as i put each ring back on its proper unswollen finger. as far as i was concerned, the return of bob's ring was no less a miracle than the I Love You balloon christmas morning. earlier i tried to convince myself that it was just a material thing, a piece of metal, paling in importance to other things like love and memories. and i told myself he rarely wore it anyway because of the kind of work he did. wasn't it more important that i had the engagement and wedding bands he gave me? but no matter how buddhist i tried to be about it, i knew its loss would have devastated me and i surely never could have dealt with my mother's sobbing guilt on top of it.
in the evening i wandered alone through the corridors of Maternity. they had pretty wallpaper and elegant, dim, ambient hall lighting. it was spacious and many of the rooms were empty, their beds twice the size of mine. i imagined that dying patients on the 2nd floor might have liked one of those empty suites. i scarcely heard the squalling of any newborns. in a way it reminded me of the vast empty hotel in the movie 'The Shining' as i sat in the dark looking out the Solarium windows at the snow falling outside. i could practically see the strange little psychic boy pedaling his Big Wheel through the halls, the scary twins, the elevator doors opening and dumping blood. "redrum, redrum". bored, i posted my impressions in my Facebook status. they even had a computer up there.
a little old nurse (i later found out she was only 2 years older than me!) asked me at some point if i was farting yet. i stared at her, aghast. farting? is that official nurse-speak? i hardly wanted to admit to that. "farting's good!" she announced happily, "we like to know if you're having a little toot, let's us know your bowels are starting to work again, though nothing will probably come out for about 4 days." she was right. nothing did. i went from the Fleet blast to complete asshole withholding. i counted how many meals i put into my belly and worried . . . 6 meals and nothing coming out. just how much could i put in without this becoming a problem?
after dr. silverstein deemed me OK to go home, but required me to stay anyway, the nurses seemed almost to forget my presence. after all, i was the oddball 'extra', not a new mommy. i was in the Restricted air-locked room with 2 doors, i was easy to forget. i felt guilty pressing the Nurse button on my bed so i would pad out into the hall instead in my sticky-bottomed socks to ask "wasn't i supposed to get my percocet an hour ago?" i didn't want to seem like a drug addict, but this did hurt! the surgery may have been hip and state of the art, but it had left several holes in my belly and i was minus a uterus and one ovary. i spent some time wondering what happened now in there . . . were the other organs happy they could stretch out and take some of that empty space? would my bladder now be able to expand to impressive size and allow me more time between bathroom visits? i drink so much water, this would be a good thing. or is there just an empty space in there now? i sat reading the pamphlet on the "supracervical hysterectomy" i'd had - it had been, apparently, robotically performed using the da Vinci System. i began to word association. da Vinci System, da Vinci Code (being a snob, i never read it, having read Holy Blood, Holy Grail already). V - symbol for the sacred feminine. my initial was V and i had just gotten rid of my "sacred feminine". the pamphlet explained that the woman might feel a sadness, a feeling perhaps of being less of a woman. a sense of loss for her uterus.
i snorted and tossed the pamphet on my tray table. loss? i'm still the sacred feminine without that thing and can't imagine i will ever miss it.
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