Yeah, I've Got Cancer. Lighten Up, Francis. It's Not Like I'm Going to Die or Anything: Part Two. Or Why A Week In the Hospital is Not the Dream Vacation You Were Hoping For

Before I get going, I'd like to thank everyone for their kind words and well wishes. It's been an amazing experience reading the comments and nice emails people have sent. I truly appreciate all of you and I'm very sorry I can't respond to each of you individually---I just don't have the energy yet. But I'm sure you understand.

Because that's why you're my devoted Cake Eater Readers, eh?

Anyway, moving away from the schmaltzy stuff before my menopausal emotional state reaches Defcon One, aka, "Full-On Meltdown" lets get to it. If you're interested in reading about my travails in the hospital, take the jump. If you're not, well, what the hell are you doing here? This blog, much like John Edwards campaign, has turned into an All Cancer-ALLTHEBLOODYTIME experience. Perhaps you'd rather go read about Obama's trip to Kenya instead?

Heh. Couldn't resist. I'll see all interested parties below the fold.

(Oh, I should probably include the disclaimer that some of what is below might be considered "graphic." I don't know what your tolerance for such things is, so if you're sensitive that way, by all means, skip reading the post.)

So, where was I? Ah, yes. The recovery room at the hospital. Or what they call "post-op." I wish I could say I had some breathtakingly dramatic moment when I figured out the cancer diagnosis, but no, it left my head the minute I put it down on the pillow and was replaced by a wish for some pain medicine. Then, when the pain got to be too much, I wished aloud and, magically, some fabulous fairy drifted down from on high and shot something into my IV. (This would be code for "I never saw it happen." Because we all know that's when the fairies appear). While the pain didn't go away, it at least dissipated enough for me to drift away into the ether again. The next time I woke up, well, it was time to go to my room.

When the husband's Grandma Nelson was still alive, she used to plan a trip to the local Super Wal-Mart like Eisenhower planned the invasion of Normandy---i's dotted, t's crossed and nothing was left to chance. She was a woman with a plan---and the reasoning for this plan was because she didn't want to get so tired when she walked around the place that she wouldn't have enough energy to get back out again. We pointed out to her that there were mechanical carts available for her to drive around the store and her reply was, "Oh, save those for the people who really need them. I'm not old enough yet." She said this when she was eighty-three years old. Now, there's nothing quite like being wheeled around when you're in bed. Even if you're in the hospital, and in pain, it, nonetheless, feels very sinful if you're capable of walking. When I was in the ER room, I could have raised my fat ass up off the bed and walked where I needed to and I suspect Grandma Nelson was frowning down on me from heaven for taking a wheeled bed from someone who could really use it. It would have hurt, but I could have done it. This, however, was another case entirely, and I don't think Grandma would have begrudged me the bed. I couldn't have pulled my fat ass up off that bed for all the tea in China. Not. Going. To. Happen. I could offer up several good excuses for this---major abdominal surgery, the aftereffects of anesthesia, the fact that I was drugged out of my skull---alas, however, I did not need excuses as the good people in charge were very happy to wheel me to the seventh floor of the hospital and the "Surgical Specialities" ward.

However, they were not quite so accomodating when it came to putting me into my new bed, and, not surprisingly, all the tea in China stayed in China.

This, they insisted, was something I had to do on my own. I had to slide over to the new bed, as opposed to them performing a lift and transfer motion with my body. It was much more comfortable, they promised. They told me I could do it. And I did. Somehow, I managed to shimmy over from one bed to another---and I let out the loudest yelp I could muster when I did so. Because I have never felt such pain in my life. Honestly. It felt like I was a raw steak slapped into a very hot pan. It was exhausting, too, this simple act most people could perform without a second thought. But not for me. I was winded when I got settled, but very, very freakin' happy I wouldn't have to move again for a while. Then the nurses buzzed around me like multi-colored bees in their bright scrubs to get my morphine machine set up and within a few minutes they put the button in my hand and helped me push down on it.

And with that push of morphine, I gained enough clarity for one single thought: those fuckers on ER would have lifted me over on the count of three. But these people? Noooooooooo.

With that, the clarity left and I was out of it again. It was was to be the first of many "tough love" lessons I would learn over the next week.

That night was a long one. I finally got to see the husband a little while later and I was worried when I saw him. He looked exhausted and scared and a bit like he'd been beaten up with a sack of oranges so you couldn't see the bruises. I've never seen him look so worried in all the time I've known him as I saw him look that night. It scared me a bit to know he could be so worried and that I'd made him so. Mr. H. was with him when he finally appeared in the room, and he looked worried, too, as he leaned against the wall next to my door. I waved hello to him as the husband came over and kissed me and held my hand in a way that signaled he was never going to let go if he had his way. Mr. H. told me later that the husband was terrified he would have to be the one to tell me what had happened, and that he could tell the husband was relieved when I told him I already knew. I wish I could say I remembered this bit, but I don't. I just remember the greeting. What I really remember from that night was watching the clock, wondering if ten minuted had passed, or if I'd just pushed down on the button in vain, because I couldn't feel significant pain relief, and ringing the nurse repeatedly for hot blankets, because, apparently, the one thing they don't have at this particular hospital are working heating pads.

The rest of the week I spent in the hospital is something of a blur now, which really isn't surprising given the amount of seriously good drugs I was on. It was filled with lots of little achievements, like being able to walk laps around the floor, getting off IV's, having catheters removed (yes, the one you're thinking of, and, yes, I know TMI TMI TMI, but also the one that was attached to a fanny pack of numbing medication that went directly to my incision), having one honking long bandage removed from my incision and being stunned at how my belly now resembled Frankenstein's head with the forty-one staples they used to put me back together. My biggest achievement, however, was when the bandage was removed and I got the first look at the incision. This may sound weird, but when I actually got a peek at it, I looked at the husband and said simply, "I win." The doctor, who was in the middle of trying to make sure he didn't rip out what was left of my pubic hair as he pulled away the tape, was a bit confused by this comment and stopped what he was doing. He looked at me, then looked at the husband, and the husband clarified that he'd had spleen surgery years before. The doctor smiled and went back to what he was doing. The husband made a comment about my weird sense of humor, but did not concede defeat. He said, "We'll see about that." We, of course, measured our respective abdominal scars when I got home and it turns out that I did indeed beat him---by two inches, and mine is nine and a half inches long if that gives you a clue as to how impressive the husband's is.

The week was also filled with setbacks, like when I became dehydrated, rejected my food and started puking this very verdant stuff up---seriously, it looked like pureed broccoli---which I found out later was bile. Somehow, I even managed to throw up the Body of Christ after I received the Eucharist from a roving EME. I don't exactly know how that works---one would think that there might be a little divine intervention on that front, ya dig, but alas, no. It came up just like everything else. So, I'm sorry, God. I didn't really mean to reject your Son, it just kind of happened. It wasn't a theological problem or anything---it was completely physical revulsion---er, that didn't sound so good. Anyway, after that, I had to go back on an IV, and it stayed in so long they actually had to stick me afresh because it had gone past its sell-by date. This is when it got frustrating. Oh, so, frustrating. Before, it was simply a matter of hoping to be released; after this setback it was a matter of me going past my sell-by date. I should have been home by then. Why wasn't I? Every morning we waited for the doctor to appear, to judge the results of the previous day, and it was frustrating to see if I could go home, only to be told they wanted to keep an eye on me for one more day. That if x, y, and z happened, maybe I'd get to go home the next day---and, of course, x, y and z were things I had very little control over. You'll either keep your food down or you won't. There's not a whole lot you can do about it in the meanwhile, eh?

There's nothing quite like wanting to get better, doing all the things you're supposed to do and doing them with gusto and still not getting what you want. I can't begrudge the doctors---they just didn't want to send me home only to have me wind back up in the ER a day later. I have no issues with that. It's just that, well, have you ever tried to get well in a hospital? It's practically impossible. Getting well requires decent food and lots of rest---and neither are easy to come by in a hospital. When you try to sleep, the nurses or nurses' assistants wake you up to check your vital signs or to give you medication. People knock and bring in food, or they want to see if you're ready to take a shower so they can change the linen, or as was the case on one day, you have an RN in training and she's overzealous about "being available." Lady, if I need you, I know where the call bell is, eh? Go AWAY! Just don't disappear when I need the drugs, ya dig? Then I'll really be pissed.. I know they're just doing their job. Really and truly I do know this. And they did a fabulous job taking care of me. I just wished they wouldn't come in at four in the morning---just when I'd finally managed to drift off. By the following Wednesday night, almost a week after the surgery, my parents had just driven in from Omaha, and it all became a bit too much for me. I'd had it and started to bawl in the middle of Lost. This was the one where Hurley found the van and professed his need for "a win." I could relate. At this stage, I was holding steady, but I needed a win. I needed to get the hell out of that place. I honestly felt it was holding my recovery back.

But for that, I needed to be able to eat, and I've never felt less of an urge to eat as I did at that stage of the game.

The scary thing about the surgery---besides the surgery itself---was that they had to transfuse me twice during it. I was on the operating table for five hours, so I don't suppose this should be all that surprising in the scheme of things, but when the technician took a sample of my blood before the surgery, for typing and crossing, she'd used the words, "if they need it" rather casually. Like it probably wasn't going to happen. But it did. Twice. Because of this I was anemic. The doctor told me on Wednesday that my crit was at eight---and if it didn't improve by my eating and keeping the food down, and it dropped to a seven and half, I would have to be transfused again. He asked me if I'd had a problem with anemia in the past and I nodded and he said that this was common with such people. Great. Just what I needed: more pressure exerted over things I had no control over.

So, the problem was this: how do you eat when you have no appetite? You wouldn't think it wouldn't be such a big task, would you? Particularly not when you think about how many times a day the average prosperous, office working human nibbles on a piece of candy, or a donut, or those peanut butter and cheese crackers they sell in the vendo machines when they're not hungry. We eat all the freakin' time and we generally don't need to. How do you muster up the energy and desire to eat? It's like having to remind yourself to breathe---a natural instinct you were born with has just up and disappeared. What do you do? It's a bizarre situation to find yourself in. I couldn't even watch food shows on tee vee because they made me nauseous---and do you have any idea how many freakin' cooking shows are on television these days?

What to do? Well, if you're me, you force feed yourself. I can't tell you how tough this was. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were delivered, and I sat there and stared at the trays that were placed before me each time, dreading the process. I knew what was on each one. Broth, jello, a carton of milk and, maybe if I was lucky, some sort of processed ice cream dessert. I had chicken broth for breakfast, beef broth for lunch and vegetable broth for dinner. And after I stared at it for a while, sighing at the inevitability of it all, I got down to business and started spooning up what I could get down, praying it would stay down. When I was done, I would breathe a sigh of relief when the husband would put the tray on the other side of the room, out of sight. Then I'd go and do laps around the floor, to deal with the inevitable gas buildup that was making me even more miserable, but which I will spare you, my devoted Cake Eater Readers, the resulting tales in an attempt at being decent. (Suffice it to say, the resumption of biological functions were a BIG deal on the surgical specialties floor. I thought the nurses were going to erupt in a round of applause when I managed to fart for the first time. Seriously.) When I reached the end of the floor, I'd stare out of the big picture window for a few moments before I turned and resumed walking. I could see the world from there, whereas the view from my bed only showed sky. It appeared that everything was moving along quite nicely without me. Cars went places. People waited for buses and crossed the street into the hospital. They went into my OB-GYN's office, which was directly across the street from the hospital. I could also see the mall from these windows and I could see people parking and walking into Macy's, to go shopping, and it made me wonder how often I'd driven by the hospital without ever once giving a thought to the people stuck inside it. It made me think about how careless and cavalier I'd been with my health, how much I'd taken it for granted that I would always be healthy enough to do whatever I wanted. Now, I wasn't healthy and I envied those people going into the mall, to buy stuff they probably didn't need, on credit cards that were probably close to being maxed out. Oh, I envied them. I was green with it. They were leading lives and I was walking the floor of a hospital---more like shuffling---my feet encased in booties with texturized grips so I wouldn't slip, bent over because I couldn't stand up straight with the pain, my IV stand acting as a walker. I wanted out. I wanted to be better. Home would make me better. I was sure of it. So, I swallowed the broth when I didn't want to. I ate the fake ice cream. I drank a lot of fluids.

And then, on Thursday morning---a week after my surgery---the doctor showed me the keys to the kingdom: if, said he of the last name that is synonymous with the word pain, I managed to keep my breakfast and my lunch down, I could get out of there. Of course, however, there was a catch. It wasn't broth being served up this time, but actual food. They were also going to lock off my IV, so that my sole source of nourishment was going to have happen the old fashioned way. But, for once, that was cool. I was up for the challenge. And a challenge was forming. You see, a blizzard---and honest to God blizzard with horizontal snow---was starting and I didn't want to get stuck in the hospital, with no doctors around to release me. Dr. Pain was off to Vegas that afternoon, or so he'd announced, and if all went well, another doctor would have to sign the papers. The husband and I looked out the window at the swirling snow and said simultaneously, "Good luck with that." The poor guy obviously wanted to get out of town because he knew the exact time his flight took off and announced it to us, like we cared. He was optimistic, though, and then shot off to tell the nurses' station what was up.

I started to get keyed up, even though I knew it was bad move. I couldn't help myself. This was the closest we'd actually been to getting out of hospital hell. I couldn't think about getting out, but, even more, I couldn't bear to steel myself for the disappointment of not being released. I simply refused to think about it. They delivered a stack of menus for the rest of the day and for the next, and I flat-out refused to fill out the ones for Thursday dinner and Friday. I wouldn't do it. It would jinx the whole thing. I was sure of it. Then breakfast---a steaming bowl of cream of wheat---arrived and I managed to get a bit of it down, even though they did not provide nearly enough sugar or cream to make it palatable. I drank the milk. I had a cup of tea. When I was done, I pushed it aside and took a walk. And I managed to keep it down. Ok, so it looked like one problem was solved---the puking---while the other---the loss of appetite---was still in full force. You obviously cannot win them all. The husband went home to get cleaned up and shovel the rapidly accumulating snow and then my mother arrived and we did laps together. I took a nap---or at least tried to. Mom went back to the hotel room. I waved off the nurses' assistant who tried to get me to take a shower, because, if it all worked out the way I cunningly had it planned, I could shower at home. And what's more---I could possibly shave at home. I had some serious armpit hair going and it was bugging the hell out of me. I might have even appealed to a Frenchman if I hadn't also looked like a bedraggled carcass at that stage---but who knows, they might like bedraggled carcasses with an overabundance of armpit hair. Lunch arrived: fruit salads galore. (I'd gone a little crazy with the ordering, figuring there had to be some fruit I could keep down and I wanted a wide variety available.) So, I ate some grapes. I drank some milk. I had some pineapple. I ate some lettuce. And while this would not have served to fully feed a two-year-old, because I managed to keep it down, it was enough to get me out of the freakin' hospital.

Hallelujah.

We packed up dying flower arrangements and our scant possessions. I walked around the hospital room, in a happy fog, unable to figure out what I needed to do first and do it in an energy conserving manner. We arranged to meet my parents in the parking garage, from whence they could drive us home. I put on street clothes for the first time in a week, gleefully throwing aside the hospital gown I was wearing. My IV was removed. We were handed a stack of papers, the wheelchair arrived and we were on our way out of that place. I was as happy as I'd been in quite a while at that point. I was keyed up and I knew I'd crash hard later, but I didn't really care. I was going home. In a blizzard, of course, but I was going home. That's all that mattered. To get out, we had to go down one set of elevators, across the lobby where the husband had waited for hours on end to find out how I was a week before, up another set of elevators to the skyway to the parking garage. When we entered, I saw my mom waiting for us at the other end. We met up with her and I was wheeled out into the snowy parking garage. It was then I got my first breath of fresh air in a week. It was delightful. It was cold and damp and refreshing as anything I'd ever felt. I relished it and it almost made me dizzy with pleasure. I felt snowflakes on my face, and they, too, felt wonderful. They signaled change. I was on my way home.

Posted by Kathy at March 29, 2007 11:38 PM | TrackBack