2:38 a.m. - 2004-06-15
Bye Bye Boobies, Part Two
Here's Part Two of the story. It's getting kind of ridiculously long, so I decided a part three was in order. I tried to keep the grossness to a minimum, but there's a little more of the medical stuff in this one. I didn't really intend for this story to get so long, but I want to remember everything, so you get all the details too. Go back and read part one if you haven't yet, or you won't know what the hell is going on.
Mum was fretting about the time by the time we got to the hospital – it was about 10:03, and we were supposed to be there at 10. I, being much more cynical than her, knew that we’d be in for a good old fashioned sitting around for a good long time before anyone would want anything to do with me, so I wasn’t too concerned. We parked (harder than you’d think in the incredibly badly designed parkade) and took the elevator up to the assigned ward. I checked in at the desk and then asked if they had any intention of talking to me for the next ten minutes. Upon establishing that there was a nice big crowd of people ahead of me, I scuttled back downstairs to buy some chapstick. The not being able to drink anything was absolutely killing me, and I knew that by the time I came out of surgery I would be absolutely parched, and have the dreaded dry lips as well if I didn’t intervene.
Once we got back up to the ward, we played a rousing game of hurry up and wait for a while. I discovered that the book I’d brought was truly, truly awful, reminding me that bringing only one reading choice when you haven’t started it yet is a bad idea. I tried to read some of it anyway, but mostly just stressed out and jiggled my feet a lot. I killed a good chunk of time getting lost trying to find the bathroom and made a bit of awkward small talk with mum, who was smarter than me and had brought a very interesting book. (Just as well – she had a lot more waiting around than I did.) Finally they called my name, at which point they weighed and measured me and stuck a hospital bracelet on my wrist. After a bit more waiting, Mum had to go and make a phone call, which of course invoked the “go to the bathroom at a restaurant and your dinner will arrive” rule, and I was taken to a room. There were a ton of other people in the room (three other patients and a bunch of their family, including one very nosey woman who came over and said “what do you have to have done, dear?” when I was trying very hard not to cry. I really, really wanted to say “I don’t think that’s any of your business, is it?” but I was too flustered to be sarcastic. Seriously. Who does that? Rude!)
I changed into my delightful hospital gown and started seriously freaking out. My feet were freezing, so I left my socks on, amused by the sight of stripy frog toes sticking out at the bottom of the sheet. I burrowed into the awful sheet and tried to resist the urge to get my stuffed bear out of my bag. I looked out the window, which faced onto the very nice atrium in the hospital, and waited for my mother. She showed up soon after, and hearing her calm voice saying “excuse me, was my daughter just brought in here?” brought me even closer to tears. I was scared and cold and bored and uncomfortable. I pulled my hoody on over my hospital gown and shuffled over to the bathroom, attempting not to flash my roommates and trying to take some comfort in my Disneyland hoody. When I came out of the bathroom I found a nurse waiting for me. She handed me two pills and a little tiny plastic cup of water to take them with. I swallowed the pills without complaint, grateful for even the three sips of water, and noticed another little cup of fluid in her hand. The nurse informed me that it was some “pickle flavoured stuff to help balance stomach acid,” and my heart sank. There is nothing in the world that I hate more than pickles, and the thought of the only thing I got to drink all day being something I was sure to throw right back up was the last straw. She left the cup on the windowsill and left, telling me someone would be along shortly to start my IV.
I totally lost it. I cried and cried, the thought of that awful pickle juice giving me something to fixate on when I was terrified about everything. My mother rubbed my feet and my back, had the presence of mind to close the curtain when the nosey lady was looking a little too interested, and said calming things. She didn’t make fun of me for being scared of the pickle juice, or tell me I was being silly. She just patted my back and handed me my bag so I could unearth Francis, my bear, no longer caring about looking like a ten year old and just needing to bury my head in his comforting fur. I burrowed into him and sniveled for a good long time. Eventually a nurse came back and attempted to start an IV.
Yeah, that didn’t work at all. She left me with a hot compress on my hand for five or ten minutes, trying to get a vein to appear, but no dice. She dug around optimistically in my hand for ages, poking everything except a vein. It hurt. And that stupid pickle juice sat on the windowsill, mocking me. The clock was ticking – I was due to head into surgery pretty soon, but my mother also had a lunch date. I was absolutely terrified and I needed my mother to not leave. To her credit, she realised this, and called the restaurant to leave a message for her lunch date that she’d be late. I think if she’d left at that point, I might have chickened out. I was so scared, and I couldn’t get the image of throwing up pickle juice out of my head. The nurse gave up on the IV and told me they’d put it in in the OR, and left again. I cried some more and clutched to Francis. It was not a bright point in my life, that wait.
Eventually, a porter came along to take me to the pre-op room. I took off my socks and grudgingly put Francis away, and then, taking a deep breath, drank back the pickle juice. It was truly the most disgusting thing I have ever had in my life – a combination of pickles, lemon juice, and bleach, and it was without a doubt the worst part of the entire experience. It was just so, so awful, and the timing of drinking it couldn’t have been worse. As soon as I swigged it back, gagging but not losing it entirely, I had to leave Mum behind. I have never wanted my mother more than I did in the ensuing twenty minutes, but I didn’t really let on to her – I knew she was worried as it was.
The porter, fortunately, was extremely nice, and very sympathetic about the disgusting stuff. She chatted with me as she rolled me along (I think she was pretty close to my age, actually, and very cheerful.), and it wasn’t very far to the OR. She rolled me up against the wall, put the brakes on the gurney, and patted me on the foot. Before she left, she offered me a variety of surprisingly up to date magazines, and we had a brief laugh over the varying degrees of terribleness. I opted for Glamour for the trashy distracting factor, and buried my nose in it to try to avoid thinking about what was happening. I sat by myself reading for a few minutes until my surgeon came along.
I’d found him pretty cold when I’d seen him in his office, but to my relief he was a little friendlier in the hospital. It’s not that he wasn’t a nice guy, just not very chatty. But he managed to strike a good balance of warm and clinical, which you want a certain degree of when it’s a guy drawing all over your breasts with a permanent marker, using a weird little plastic guide thingy to mark things. He left after a few minutes and told me we’d get going pretty soon, and that the anesthesiologist would be along to talk to me in a few minutes.
He did indeed show up quite soon after, and turned out to be a very friendly fellow who made a note of my family history with Demerol and agreed with me that puking was definitely something worth avoiding. He explained how things would go, apologized for the old boot smell of the oxygen mask, and was generally very comforting and nice. Kind of cute, too, which helped. He told me to sit tight for a few more minutes and he’d see me in the OR.
At which point I realised I really, really had to pee. I’m not sure how that was even physically possible after the 12 hours of no fluids, but I’ve always reacted to being scared by having to go to the bathroom. It was great when I was a kid going on scary rides – I was distracted enough by needing to pee that the ride didn’t scare me as much, but I didn’t want to lie there freaking out and having to pee. I called out to a passing nurse, who rolled me over to the bathroom door, at which point I promptly revealed my ass to the entire room. I was much more grateful at that point, though, that I didn’t have an IV, as it meant I could zip in and out of the bathroom without too much trouble. I was shaking like a leaf at that point, and the nice porter came by and brought me a heated blanket.
And then a nurse came over, introduced herself to me, and rolled me into the OR. I was moved over onto the table, which was narrow and cold and scary. They did let me keep my blankets, though. They strapped my arms down to the bars that went out from the bed, and whipped out the sphygmomanometer (I will have you know that I did not have to look up the spelling of that word, thanks to my grade 11 bio teacher who made us all memorize how to spell and say it. Ah, the useful tidbits I remember from high school.) to take my blood pressure on one arm while the tourniquet went onto the other arm to try to get the IV in. The nice anesthesiologist came back to get the IV in, and a couple more nurses were introduced to me. I have to say, every single nurse I encountered that day was utterly delightful and nice to me, which was a source of great comfort to me since I was scared witless at that point. They finally got the IV in, and I lay there for a few moments, staring up at the bright lights and watching people bustle around. It was at that point, lying with my arms out like I was on a cross, that I realised that I hadn’t backed down. I hadn’t chickened out, come up with an excuse, run screaming in terror. Despite the fact that I was completely, totally, utterly terrified, I was still there. It was too late to change my mind, and I was proud of myself for overcoming the fear to do something I knew I wanted.
They finally got the IV in, and the nice anesthesiologist loomed suddenly over my face. “Ok, here comes the mask. Like I said, sorry about the boot smell, but don’t worry, you won’t be able to smell it for long!” He slipped the mask over my face, and I breathed in a few times. I remember thinking “boy, it really does smell like a boot,” and that’s the last thing I remember.
