Surviving Surgery

SURVIVING SURGERY

“Tic tic tic tic tic tic......bfffffffff!” The sound awoke me from a drugged sleep. It was the middle of the night. I stared blankly at the ceiling , then reality flooded in. This was a hospital, I had just had surgery and I was now minus an armpit load of lymph nodes. My hand instinctively reached for my right shoulder. One half of my neck and right shoulder were encased in a plaster shell, making me feel like Elizabeth the first in repose. The clock said ten past twelve. I felt exhausted like only someone drugged up to the eyeballs can feel, but every time I felt myself fading into delicious oblivion that damn machine would start up again. “Tic tic tic tic …”and I would be jolted awake as I became aware of an increasing pressure squeezing my lower legs until I was sure that the machine was broken and my calf muscles were going to explode at any moment and then “Bffffff” the pressure would release and the whole process would start all over again.

After about half an hour of this the nurse bustled in. A person ! A rustle of pillows, a re arrangement of lingerie ( if you could call it that) “did I need any pain medication ?” and she was gone leaving me to the “tic tic tic tic.....bfffffff!”

I lay back in the darkened room. I began thinking about the immensity of the building and all the other hundreds of people laying back in their little darkened rooms, when I became aware that I was indeed in need of pain medication. The call button. Isn't that what you were supposed to use? But where the hell was it? I looked around as well as anyone with their head in a vice could look around, but to no avail. With supreme effort I pulled myself upright. Now I really did need pain medication. I felt a well of panic begin to rise. What if I couldn't find it, I could be writhing in pain in this dark and distant pod and no one would know. Then it dawned on me that call buttons were attached to a cable that was plugged into the wall. Wrenching my body around I saw the offending call button on a table, a few feet behind the bed. Well that was a handy place to leave it. After much painful shuffling, I hauled it in.

Finally the nurse arrived. Maybe it was the lack of eye contact or maybe the absence of any pleasantries whatsoever, but I knew right then I had the crabby nurse.

“What is the level of your pain on a scale of one to ten” she barked without preamble.

“ I had no clue how to answer this question. It was like asking a person who has just been hit over the head with a sledge hammer what time it is. So I decided on a non committal 5”

“ It says in your chart you can have Tylanol or Morphine” Hmmmm a Walgreen or a street drug ? Well being a purist I opted for the Tylanol of course, which was like trying calm a bull with a candy bar. So after another half hour I had to bite the bullet .... and make the crabby nurse even crabbier...

“She flurried in....dropping the morphine in the rush of her annoyance...by the time she sent it whooshing into the IV I felt like I would have been more comfortable hiding under the bed.

For the next few hours I was floating on a cloud of wooz,until I realized that I was really hungry. There was nothing else for it, I pressed the wretched call button. ' Could I have something to eat ?”

A small package of graham crackers landed on my bedside table about 5 minutes before the breakfast tray. Food ! I began to salivate at the thought. It looked promising. A large plate topped by a metal cover. I lifted it off. My heart sank.....to clean the blood …..two greasy sausages, for the anesthetized intestinal tract.....two thick slices of white, gummy french toast …..and to wash it all down …..a cup of black coffee. I was so hungry I ate what I could stomach and fell back into an exhausted heap.

Now the hospital was waking up. A vacuum cleaner began snorting outside my door competing with the leg squeezing machine. I reached for my cell phone. “ Please” I croaked to my husband “ Get me out of here now !”