"If You Are Here for Surgery, Please Ring the Bell."
It’s 5:23 in the morning and my Mother and Father are up scurrying about the hotel room. In about an hour we’ll walk across the little sky bridge that connects this old hotel with one of the big hospitals that sit at the top of Capitol Hill in Seattle. Then starting at about 7:30 this morning my father will have an operation to have one of his kidneys out – that would be the one kidney with the big cancerous lump growing on the top of it. The prognosis is good. This was caught early and looks by all accounts to be a contained mass. So, 5 itsy-bitsy incisions in the belly, and three-and-a-half hours later, my Dad should be waking up, high on Morphine, and cancer free. As things look good (and seeing how I feel when we actually get to the hospital and see him off) as anyone who knows me might figure I would, I’m going to see if there’s any fun to be discovered in the hallways and cafeterias of Western Medicine. And I plan to blog it all the way. I might freak out though. Hospitals are weird and kindof difficult places. So this idea might not quite work out, but we’ll see. My dad is good to go though. "Just go have some fun" he said, "I won't be doing anything - just lying there." He’s super ready to get this cancerous business out of his gut. He’s actually excited, as is understandable. And Western Medicine rocks absolutely at getting that one fucking thing that’s in you, out of you, and patching you all back up again. And that’s what’s going to happen here, and my dad wake up one kidney lighter and we’ll be on our way tomorrow afternoon, he with many more good creative years in front of him.
OK. Time to swing into action……
The room phone just rang…and, um, we’re late for surgery Check In!
6:52 AM
So the phone rang and we were all of a sudden five minutes late for surgery check in! So one elevator then some corridors, then another elevator, and then some more corridors lined with stretchers and framed photographs of surgeons from the 50’s and early 60’s. Then check in, and then a waiting room complete with a fish tank, and loads of other folks waiting around, flipping magazines from back to front or tapping the toe of their foot on the floor. People all sort have a look about them, and look at you when you walk in the room – like, “Which is it out of you three??”
Then his name was called and then we went to another room and were asked all sorts of ass questions that my mother didn’t want to hear “Have you got a Living Will made out?” “Would, at any point, you like to have a Chaplin visit you?” And so on. Ass!
Then we waited around for just a little longer back in the wait room with the fish tank and all the people waiting there for one reason or another. The guy with the limp. The two women who brought their own pillows. The Boomer Generation couple who brought Library books. The ashen faced looking girl. The woman eating a muffin. The kid black and white check Vans who obviously plays in a band escorting his Dad. My Mother and I will join them soon, but right now were back in the hotel room for another coffee and to organize the pieces that scattered when the phone rang and we were late.
Oh but wait - I lost the thread…After only a few more minutes waiting next to the fish tank a kindly fellow called my Dad’s name and we all walked to the elevator, and the fellow said that my Mum and I couldn’t go any further and so we had a quick family hug and the kindly fellow said firmly “No tears on my pillow!” and the elevator doors shut, and we’ll see my dad when he wakes up. Ass! A saving grace was the Spinal Tap moment that my mother and I shared trying to find our way back through a maze of halls and corridors that we hadn’t really paid attention to on the way through the first time. We got lost. They gave us a pager. It should beep about 11 or 11:30. By the way, no one in the family slept last night.
7:32 AM
They should be starting in on my dad about now. Go Fritz! My Mother and I don’t quite know what to do. We could wait about kicking stones, or, find a breakfast. That’s the ticket. It’s already been a long day and it’s only just started really.
8:50 AM
My mother and I went for the Hospital Cafeteria breakfast. Eggs, industrial hashbrowns, a bowl of fruit, and coffee that was…ass. Strangely enough wandering around looking at the food I had the sudden desire to pick up a little container of chocolate milk. Can’t think of the last time I had a hankering for chocolate milk. It somehow made me super sad.
Back in the waiting room there is a big video reader board that looks like the ones in airports that give you the status of incoming and outbound flights. Except this one’s for patients. My Dad is flight number 3872 and as of 7:50 AM he is “In Surgery.” My mother and I after having seen his number flash up looked at each other like – “well THAT’S weird. That sucks.” The dual reality of the two of us standing in a room with a fish tank and a load of people waiting around, and my Father lying on an operating table in a dreamless sleep having a kidney taken out. The strange thing also is that number 3872 is one of about 20 or 30 other numbers all having to do with people with some ailment or other, all in some approach to, or immediate recovery from, their own kind of surgery. And the rest of us are all here waiting at baggage claim for their flight to come in so we can pick them up and take them home again.
9:03
Back at the Hospital Cafeteria now to recover from that ass cup of coffee with a cup of tea. My mother is settled in next to the fish tank with Time magazine and two books. I thought I’d walk around and maybe look for hot nurses or something but none of us got any sleep last night. So maybe I’ll write free fall here for a minute……Um,….about…Tea. Yes, that’s good that’s right in front of me. How about a girl who is excited for tea. I'm going to go as fast as I can. OK, 123 – Jump!
"Oh DO lets have a luncheon tea! Oh, with nice pieces of cake, and rich tea biscuits with Wensleydale, oh, and treacle too, oh, and cold pancakes from the fridge that Mother made yesterday, oh, and DO lets have a finger of chocolate in warm custard, with shaved peach ice on to, Oh, it would all be so lovely, OH and after tea we'll go out and play in the garden and the boys can pretend to be Cowboys and Indians, or the Red Barron, while us girls go to the brook to look for Tadpoles and see if the Bluebells are up, OH and then later come evening time Mr. Willie is hitching Doris and Ned to the wagon and is taking us down to Bellsgate to see the lights of Lusitania go by, it's going to America you know, and Grandpa Stow says the Germans haven't got any fight left in them and that father will surly be home for Easter this year, and OH, can we paint Easter Eggs this year? We didn't last year mind you after you told us to remember all Mum had been through what with Stephan in Holland and all, and OH, tea! I'd almost forgotten! Yes, Oh lets do have a luncheon tea, out of doors perhaps? The garden would be lovely if we don't need jackets, yes, yes, lets have our tea in the garden, oh, and cakes with lemon filling would be lovely, Oh, and hard cheese – what do you call it again? Yes, yes, that's it, oh and with lovely bits of blood orange marmalade on top, yes, and Jaffa Cakes perhaps? Oh, and Butter Toffees after- you know, for when we go walking, and perhaps sandwiches for when we're watching the Lusitania at sea, oh, and tea would be lovely then too, yes, yes, a thermos of tea – enough that we can share with Mr. Willie, he does work so awfully hard you know, OH – and then later before bed we can have warm milk and play a game of snakes and ladders, and then you could put us to bed with a story, you know the one – the one about the boy who was taken by Pirates through Scotland – yes, that's the one - and he did have it pretty hard there in a pinch didn't he what being all left out in the rain and no place to lie down and all, OH, OH, and then tomorrow we could have a luncheon tea after breakfast, you know, tea with bits of cream wafers and stringy licorice from the shops before taking our pales down to the seaside, OH, CAN we go to the seaside tomorrow after tea? Martin doesn't like the stringy licorice mind, he prefers the hard bits that you put in your mouth all at once, so we'll need to stop at the shops on the way, Oh, and perhaps hard boiled eggs to take along in a basket, Oh, lets do bring a basket and blanket and have a proper picnic down and watch the waves, and I do hope the wind won't be up, do you suppose the wind will be up tomorrow? It's not so nice at the sea when it's windy. How long will it take for Lusitania to go to America? I'd love to travel by ship one day. I hear they even have table tennis for the passengers to play in the afternoons as it really must get awfully boring just looking out across the ocean for days on end, but then the Captain takes you to the room to see the ship's big wheel and you can watch the Wireless operator sending out messages from all the passengers and the big ships horn when it comes into port, do you suppose Lusitania will blow her big horn when were watching her pass tonight with Mr. Willie? He says that we'll need the two cart lanterns for coming home as it will be after dark and that we'll need blankets and scarves as the dew might be coming down and Mr. Willie says we can't be catching our deaths out there, OH, and so hot coca would be so nice to sip in the wagon as we come home, to keep the chill off mind you, Mr. Willie won't mind will he? We can bring along enough for him as well, he'd love to sip a hot coca after watching Lusitania going to America, doesn't that sound grand? Oh, and then when we get home Florence might draw us steaming salty water to soak our feet, THAT would keep the death away certainly, and then perhaps we could play cards until it's time for bed, and then perhaps Uncle Charles might tell us stories about the Arial Navigators in France, and the time he went to Armenia, and motor cars, OH, say he'll tell us stories tonight won't he? And then mother will kiss us and wish us dreams, and maybe the wind will be up then, Oh I do love to listen to the wind before sleeping, you don't think that the wind will hurt the Lusitania do you? If so, then I hope there isn't any wind at all, and I can lie there in bed and remember the tea we had in that big house last summer. Do you remember? Say you remember?? Don't you remember??
Well OK then! That was fun. Caffeine is even better than oxygen. I'm thinking about my dad again now... I kindof forgot where I was for a minute. But I guess that that was the point...but only for a minute or two. It didn’t kill much time though.
So, to get a kidney out they used to go in though your back and push all of your bits out of the way ‘til they got there. Now days they make four little incisions, and then a fifth that looks like a V. They put a camera in, then a tube that puts some sort of gas in to give them some room to maneuver, then a baggie that goes over the kidney with the lump on top, then that bag gets closed up and pulled out and that’s about the shootin’ match. And as a consolation prize for loosing a kidney my Dad gets a free Morphine trip and an overnight stay in a room somewhere in this building, down some other maze of corridors or other.
9:50 – that pager went off – the doctor is coming. It’s nearly two hours ahead of schedule!
OK, the doc. is cool. Everything went great. He says that it was a “perfect” operation. “Perfect” - he says it twice. And my Dad is in recovery waking up and when they find an empty bed for him we can see him. Crazy. It’s done so early. Maybe I can get my mum to walk around the block with me. It’s nice day out there away from the fish tank.
11:41
Been visiting back in the cafeteria with my Father’s sister and her husband: my Aunt Peggy and Uncle Jack. They came down and it's great to see them and get caught up. Really good. Still haven’t made it outside yet, and am overflowing on caffeine. They are looking for a bed for my father but haven’t got one available yet. I passed the room where he is at the moment though – the Recovery Room #4 and it made me sad. The big cart sized door is open and you could see the little curtained-off berths and you can see these little gray socks sticking out from behind the curtains. These little gray socks are circulation-improving socks and they are on the feet of people lying there drugged up and coming-to in the Recovery Room. And one of these sets of socks are on my father's feet. In the elation of the quick operation and good immediate news, these gray-socked feet are also the reality. My Dad’s hurtin’ at the moment. Or maybe not hurting – yet. But to see him off a few hours ago smiling and waving as the elevator doors close, next we’ll see him will be after a life saving trauma to the body, and no matter how un-envasive the procedure is, he’s still just had a major organ out and is lying there coming out of a druggy sleep in a room that he’s never seen before with all sorts of tubes and oxygen and stitched-up incisions and that’s ass.
Right - they just called us - we can go see my dad - don't know when I'll get back to this - it doesn't matter either. My Dad's out of surgery and up on the 17th floor....off we go. Will get back to ya
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It's Saturday now....Two nights later. I'm spent. My Mum is spent. My Dad is resting after eating a little and we're back on Whidbey Island. I'll fill you in. But not tonight. It's strange being back, wearing virtually the same clothes that we left in. Wondering, What the fuck was THAT??
