October 24th, 2012

Got up early.  Early surgery. 

The whole morning blurred into motions, actions- getting to the hospital, checking in, going into the pre-operation room, a very tall woman with a key card opened up double doors into the rooms.  I was one of the first in there, got a corner room. 

I was told that only one person could be in the room with me, as they were small rooms.  I chose Steve.  I felt guilty about it, but Steve was the one I wanted there.  Steve has this brilliant ability to make intense situations feel more normal.  He has a social instinct that I admire a lot.  I remember the times he went with me to see my grandmother in the hospital.  I’d get so tongue-tied, but he would talk.  He would talk about normal things, things that took it away from the situation, and so would be a huge relief.

That’s a big part of why I wanted him there.  Although, its not like we could pretend something else was happening. 

There were bags for my clothes and shoes, and I put on a hospital gown and those socks with the gripper bits on the bottom.  There was a place to attach some sort of tube on the hospital gown, and I don’t know if it was a surgery thing, or a way to keep one warm.  The pictograms showed some sort of blowing air hookup. 

Anyway, Steve was there, and the pre-op nurse showed up, going over details.  That’s when I first learned the number system for pain.  And I also started the repetitive question- the simple name and birthday, so simple, but turned out to be such a grounding thing to do all the way through.  I thought it was annoying in the beginning, because I had to repeat it over and over again.

Some switch outs.  My mother in there for a bit, Steve in there, and the nurse and the anesthesiologist.  Never my father.  I believe we contrabanded both my mother and Steve in there.

It was an unending beginning.  Like this beginning.  I was hysterically social, coming up with jokes, and beaming and smiling- doing my best to cover up the terror that was leaking out of everything.  I had to pee every five minutes, and then try to resituate myself in the bed. 

The anesthesiologist was going to be there, monitoring me for the whole thing.  I never knew that, never knew exactly what an anesthesiologist does.  He was warm, human, and it put me at ease a bit.  He also told me that the moment they get ready to take me to the operating room, he’d inject me with something… that’s right- the IV was already set up at that point.

The time came.  I don’t know if I was ready or not.  He injected the stuff, and by the time the bed was mobile and going down the hall, I wasn’t feeling anything bad.  Fuzzy, fuzzy, fuzzy good. 

I was wheeled into the Operating room, which, I believe was one of those observatories… not sure exactly what they’re called, but I didn’t see people really.  I saw some lights close to me, and round object set up high, and I have a vague recollection of maybe counting down.  And that’s it.

When I was young, hell, even to this day, I have this memory that I push at.  It’s a memory of just dark.  Maybe its all just made up, but even from a small age, I believed that it was something to do with before I was born.  Whenever I pushed at it, to try to make sense of it, I’d get this feeling, deep down in my gut, like butterflies or anxiety, but deeper, and more… I don’t know… more subtle.

I try to nudge a the dark time that happened here, and the same feeling occurs.  No real images or memory.  Just dark.

And then conversation.

It sounded like an argument.  Three women in intense tones, and who knows, they might have just been bitching about something.  “O.R.” was mentioned.  And I thought it had something to do with me.

Although I was still pretty far away at that point.  It took me awhile to be able to do anything but listen.  It’s hilarious to think of all of the hospital scenes about people waking up from surgery- about blurry light, and then pop!  Awake. 

No.  I was hearing things for awhile, not putting anything together, still feeling… you know, that’s the thing.  It was one of those few times in my life where I wasn’t trying.  I wasn’t pushing myself to wake up, to get coherent.  I was just letting things be as they were.  And, hell, I probably couldn’t have enough anything to muster up some sort of fight or whatever.  It wasn’t about that.  It was about ease.

And then the edge of pain started to hit.  My neck started as uncomfortable, but then a creeping crick of pain in the back.  No incision pain, just probably how they had my neck placed to better get at the thyroid.

With the pain came my voice.  Barely audible, hoarse, but someone immediately noticed and came over to me.

Debbie.  Damn was she good.  She of course asked me the questions about name and birthday, and I don’t even know if I answered correctly.  I guess she spent all of the time on the computer right next to me, and did everything I asked.  I could not get my neck comfortable, and I don’t know how many times she got another pillow, or moved things around, or got another pillow, or a different pillow.  Not to mention ice shavings, and pain meds.  Oh, the pain meds.  Who knows how many opiates I was on.

This is the paradox of the whole thing.  The moments I started to become clear, and pain was under control, becoming less disjointed, less confused.  I started to feel more and more wonderful.  All of the edges were soft, fantastic.  I was fantastic.  I wasn’t worrying about a thing.  I was so filled with light,a nd happy at that time. 

Joyful.  I can count the times on one hand where I have been joyful.  And I cry now just to think about how pure that time was for me.  And yes, it was probably the drugs, but in the end, does it fucking matter?

I was so responsive to Debbie, and she was just doing her job.  I remember she had brown curly hair, frizzy, which gave more to the floating feeling.  Laugh lines.  She called me “a delight.”  And she was as well.  they were taking me up to my room, I was stable enough to leave, and I reached out my hand, and we kind of fumbled touching hands.  A touch, though.

I was radiant.  Every person I passed by I stared at, beaming, and every person smiled back at me.

And then I got to my room.  Bed lined up straight at the TV, perpendicular to the door and the window.  I wanted the window.  So, when the nurses came in, I simply asked them to turn my bed so I was facing the window.  It wasn’t how the room was set up, but they did it without thinking about it.

I had two nurses.  Two male nurses.  If I had one female nurse, chances are she wouldn’t have been as amenable to moving my bed around.

Paul and Ricardo were a dynamic duo- they were the best situation for me to start recovering.  They were like two sides to the masculinity coin.  One was like an anarchist Moby with glasses and a beard, tattoos and slight of build like ahipster.  The other was relaxed in that self confident way uber-masculin guys are- so self assured, real, he reminded me of pro-baseball player.  He was damned good.  And continued to have to leave, because of a woman down the hall.  He was the only one in the building who could speak Mandarin.

Setting me up in the room, the numbers system, basic stuff.  It was quite a bit of time before I realized no one had told my family that I was up here.  So, I mentioned it, and they got it working.

Then things started to blend into each other.  The uber joyful radiant stage was ending, and leaving me with pain and an increasing nausea.  Anti-nausea meds, more pain pills, and back to something. 

I had moved my bed, so the seating was not so great anymore.  Steve took the comfortable seat that could be unfolded into a bed.  My mother took the other chair, and my father leaned against the windowsill.

I do remember intitially speaking so levelly about all of my hopes and possibilities, so excited, so whatever, and then just drifting off and falling asleep.  Steve stayed with me a lot of the rest of the day.  So much talking to him about positive things, in any other instance I would get frustrated because he didn’t agree or disagree, but for then I didn’t care.

I was obsessed with something so simple.  I wanted to build.  It was so clear to me.  TO build, to build, just to make a strong foundation, and build off of it.

The only other things that happened that night were the head nurse on duty was so fucking Nurse Ratchett, she wanted to know why my bag was on the ground, as if I could bend over and get it out of her way, and she wanted to know why I wasn’t up and walking yet, like I was some sort of fucking lazy bum, and better just cut it out.  But, hell, her bitchiness got me up and moving.  I might hate her to this day, but it pushed me to get going. 

That, and, well, the incision.  It was stitched up, except for a drain tube, which looked like they popped a white balloon animal, and cut asection from the resulting balloon.  This was draining into gauze secured around my neck.  Secured until I started actually moving.  So, the whole night was spent watching another piece of gauze fall to the floor, and pressing the call button while the liquid oozed out of the tube and onto my chest and gown.  I ended up just putting a washrag there while I was lying down.

This all might be interesting, and it might not.  Its more about me taking myself through this again- looking at what I wrote, and remembering.

What I remember is that even after surgery, I felt in better health than I am now.  Of course, then, it was only half my thyroid, and they still had to do the biopsy to see if it actually was cancer.  So, in the grand scheme of things, there was a lump that wasn’t there anymore.  I was free from it. 

I was free.

I was free from action, free from doing anything but being there in the moment, getting better, staring out at the window, where I could see my favorite thing to look at- trees in fog.  Blue and green and hints of gold and dark, dark brown.  Just stared and stared and stared until I couldn’t see it anymore.

I was unstuck from the world.  Until Nurse Ratchett came along.  Then I walked to the end of the hallway, and looked out the window- Sunset highway, overlooking Cedar Hills.  Our first apartment was over there, just beyond some trees.

I can’t believe how idealized this is coming out.  Nausea was intense.  Pain spiked.  But if I had a chance to go back to these moments, I would.

I wasn’t worrying about being a selfish brat.  I wasn’t trying so hard.  I was just being.  It was the only time during this whole process where I just allowed myself to be.