I remember what it felt like to be dropped off in the morning that day. My brother’s caring face. Drinking the pre-surgery protocol apple juice on the way to the hospital. I remember what it felt like to walk alone in the semi-darkness of pre-dawn light into the hospital. To be screened over and over again for covid. To explain to someone who recognized me from work why I was there as a patient. To feel the jarring nature of those words.
I remember Minnie Mouse’s smiling face on the carry-on bag I’d borrowed from my oldest niece. She looked bright and happy. I felt scared and lonely, invisible behind my omnipresent mask dictated by covid. It had happened so fast I still felt shocked. My anxiety was running high.
I remember changing into a gown, now just another wrist-banded patient. I remember the cruel indignity of a pregnancy test, just before a surgery that could potentially take from me the ability to bear a child. I remember the vulnerability of having to tuck my phone and glasses into my luggage – my last connection to the outside, and my ability to see clearly gone. I remember the porter being a bit put out that I couldn’t walk like the other patient who was going to OR holding – but I couldn’t see – I couldn’t walk blindly with that porter across the hospital – I needed that wheelchair.
I remember the anesthesiologist coming to talk to me, putting in my IV. I remember telling him my great fear of waking up vomiting, that it had happened to me before, and I didn’t want to wake up vomiting and aggravate the pain of an abdominal incision.
I remember talking to the surgeon briefly, the nurses busily preparing and positioning me. I remember laying with my arms spread wide on the OR table, cruciform, and feeling Jesus closer to me than I’d ever experienced. Then… nothing.
I remember shuffling myself from the stretcher to the bed in my hospital room. Moving oh so cautiously, experimentally. I remember the kind aide or nurse who washed my body, as I lay somewhere between waking and sleeping, cleaning off the excess surgical disinfectant so I wouldn’t itch later. I remember the wondering – the desperate wondering of what had happened, of how much of me was missing. I remember asking the question – what happened – and an angry nurse shoving her papers at me for me to read in the dark room. I didn’t have my glasses yet, I couldn’t see, couldn’t understand.
I remember asking for a phone, or for my phone, but my bag hadn’t yet arrived on the unit. I just needed to speak to my family, to hear a familiar voice, to have someone tell me it was going to be okay, that I was loved, even with missing pieces.
I remember the midnight ECG because my anxiety had driven my heart rate up and the nurses and doctors were nervous. I remember the lights flashing on in the room at 3:30 am, a lab tech cheerily greeting my groggy self as she came to fulfil her role as vampire, and take some of my blood.
I remember the first walk, feeling faint. The second walk – okay, that’s better. I remember feeling a sense of commiseration for all the patients I’d ever dragged out of bed to walk after their cesarean sections.
I remember finally learning what pieces were missing – ovary, fallopian tube, appendix, omentum, a tumor on one side and a cyst from the other. I remember the ambiguity of the diagnosis – the we think it’s good but we’re not quite sure. I remember meeting the milestones, and my surgeon stopping in to say hi. I remember sitting and waiting, and waiting, and waiting for his fellow to make her second rounds. I remember the pleading way I asked to go home, having recognized that my anxiety was demanding a safe place, safe people, and the hospital under covid restrictions couldn’t provide that. I remember the relief when she conceded, the wait as she tracked down a prescription for me, the joy when, as evening arrived, I dressed and was rolled downstairs to meet my mom.
I remember hobbling into the pharmacy, waiting for my painkiller prescription to be filled. And I remember the relief of arriving at my brother and sister-in-law’s house, after their kids were in bed. I remember lifting my t-shirt to show them the lengthy bandage, hiding the incision that split my abdomen from top to bottom. I remember their caring words, and they way they worked with mom to settle me into bed. And then sleep, blessed sleep, interrupted only by the need to wake and take more pain meds. And relief from some of the anxiety.
Lisa From Canada 