Surgery

—From CB—

Last Thursday, the day of my getting cut open.

I’ve had an inguinal hernia, right side, for about a year. I’ve put up with the inconvenience of wearing a truss in the expectation that I might die before having to spend a week in the goddamned hospital, but it was getting worse and I showed no signs of immediate death, beyond having trouble with balance and slowing down on my typing speed. I was greatly relieved, in my advance talk with the surgeon, that it could be done as an outpatient procedure, although I was startled when he said that they held the incision together with glue. But times change.

In preparation: the night before, I couldn’t have any alcohol. Okay. And the next morning, no food. I could have black coffee, but that lacked an appeal. So I checked the email and news and Facebook, and took my antibacterial shower. The day before, Elizabeth picked up my anticipatory pain prescription and a recommended bar of soap, and popped in the door with, “I’m back with your soap and your dope!”

Now I have to fill two hours before getting carted to the hospital to wait and to wait. I’ll spend the time writing, of course, perhaps reading the new New Yorker or listening to my audiobook, and trying to keep my mind off food. It does no good to let the mind wander to starving refugees: they too must be thinking of food, and they can’t listen to an audiobook.

I hear a sound like a meow, and I think something’s wrong with my breathing. Then I see one of our cats walk by. Perhaps it’s an out-of-body experience. I’m rattled.

But I shouldn’t be. This will be an outpatient procedure, the surgeon is highly recommended, and I’ve had much more serious damage. I’ll be home by late afternoon and can eat. Yet I’m rattled by a meow. I’m a cockroach scuttling across the counter for cover, bent on survival. I want to ask the cat, in those haunting lyrics from The Medium, “Was it you? Was it you?” But I’d never hit the high notes.

My whole life is blaring back. Our two years in South Carolina. There, they weren’t called roaches, they were palmetto bugs, and they were huge. They wouldn’t have to scuttle for cover; they could just stand and fight like Stonewall Jackson. And one summer, moss grew in the wax on our dinner table, regardless of their stomping. Those were our formative years.

So today I get driven to the hospital. After the ID checks and the check-in, to make sure I’m who I say I am, I’m sat in a chair and carted back to a bed. The same questions I’ve been asked a dozen times, and then it’s time for inserts. The thin shaky nurse has some trouble finding a vein, but at last she does, “a little pinch,” and I’m free to read—an article about ethics, another on spy operations in Norway, lots of chatter from nurses outside the drawn curtain (“So we were going up to Oregon, but…”).

At last, after two or three hours, the surgeon appears (“It’s not going to be long now. Any questions?”), and soon they wheel me away. At the surgery, someone holds a mask to my face (“Breathe deep.”), and I’m out. I wake up. It’s done, and I missed it all. They wheel me back.

Tubes out, and they ask me to pee in a urinal (“We need to make sure that everything’s working.”). I can’t, having just peed before surgery, but it’s possible that things are not working. They give me a sheet of post-op instruction, instruct me that if I haven’t peed till bed-time to come back to the ER. They remove the IV, I dress, and they summon Elizabeth by cellphone to drive up front. I’m hustled into a wheelchair and carted to the door. She’s brought me an egg salad sandwich, and I gobble it.

#

At various stages, I recall the surgery on the other side of my groin when I was sixteen or so. It put me in the hospital for a week, and here I was out in six hours. Medical science has improved a lot, or at least it’s speeded up. What hasn’t changed is the boredom of endless waiting.

Which means I have no excuse. I hereby rejoin the human race, for whatever that’s worth, and all its moral dilemmas, its crimes, its comedy. And after drinking a cupful of water, I even pee.

#

The experience? Surely not a joy in the hours of waiting, the pain of the “little pinch,” or the next day’s discomfort, even though it was eased by Acetaminophen and didn’t require the heavier dosage of an opioid prescribed if needed. It wasn’t even in the relief that came from the repair, as the area was still swollen and I had to protect it from the cat’s feet, which pay no mind to the advances of humankind. Yes, I do look forward to a life without discomfort till the next thing waiting in line says, “Me now!”

But I joy in the tiny advance of human skill. Surely we haven’t advanced much in preventing people getting blown up, or preserving the planet, or avoiding massive exploitation, even in waiting two months for an appointment. But just the joy of getting repaired after a blow-out: car tires and then me.

I have to celebrate my luck. Other friends have died of colon cancer; others have had breasts removed; others have dropped dead of sudden stroke. I’m still alive, for whatever good I can do. Not much, but some. I’ll try.

20th, I get up at five a.m. to stumble to the bathroom. It still works. On the way back to bed, I totter against the wall, and my wife asks, “Are you okay?” I mumble something reassuring. I feel blest for having someone to ask me Are you okay? and to make the morning coffee. Later, drinking the coffee, I thank her for all the added things she does for my nursing care—perhaps it comes from the fact that my son was a nurse for a while, and I doubt he got thanked much. Maybe the larger paycheck now (for software) makes up for that—we don’t thank people much if they’re getting paid, even if it’s something sorely needed. I need to remind myself, on the follow-up visit, to thank the surgeon.

###