Thursday, July 23, 2015

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

"Begin at the beginning...and go on till you come to the end: then stop."
                                                                 --Lewis Carroll, Alice In Wonderland



And so, on to the final chapter of the story.  Well, I am hoping this will be the final chapter.


BEFORE
My pre-surgery appointment was scheduled for Wednesday, May 27 at 10 AM. Kia Prescott, Dr. Muto’s Physician Assistant, went over the particulars: this would be a complete hysterectomy, removing the uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries. (By now I had given up on my crusade to retain my ovaries. Dr. Muto had reasoned that at this point in my life, my ovaries excrete nothing. Zilch. Nada. Zero. “If you were 39 years old, there would be a reason to debate this. But not at 63.”) Kia’s main focus was the aftermath of the operation. “You’re going to be tired for at least 6 weeks. Listen to what your body is telling you. Don’t lift anything heavy. Rest. Take naps. You will not be able to run around because you will hit the wall and come to a crashing halt. And when I say hit the wall, I mean you’ll have no reserves.” She delivered all of this forthrightly and cheerfully, patiently enduring my repeated assertions about being as strong as an ox. I bounce back from everything in record time, I insisted. “You’ll see, you’re going to be a hot mess,” she smiled sweetly.


This was followed by a brief conversation with the anesthesiologist. I repeated what I always say when meeting an anesthesiologist, “No ketamine.” The doctor assured me that ketamine was no longer used on human beings. (“It’s only been used on horses for years!”) But on the subject of ketamine, my motto is Better Safe Than Sorry. I’d experienced it 30 years ago when New York Hospital reset my broken nose, and life became an endless screening of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice for the next several months.  


Ketamine's aftermath

With the anesthesiologist’s guarantee that ketamine was off the table, and armed with instructions to call and confirm my surgery appointment for noon the next day, we went to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts to spend the afternoon. 
 
John Singer Sargent paints sparkling white linen like no one else in this world.


zzzzZZZZZZZZ
I called to confirm the surgery and was informed the surgery had been moved up to 9:30 AM. I was to be at the hospital by 8:15 to be prepped. Even better! Less time to wait around Thursday, tapping my little feet in anticipation. I am not especially nervous about impending surgery. I have absolute confidence the doctor will do a fine job. But being as driven as I am, I’m always impatient to get the show on the road. Peter equates this perpetual impatience with my ambient sound—the high-pitched zzzZZzz of a chainsaw being fired up.


Prepping for surgery is a little like watching your life pass before your eyes. Only in this case, it’s not your life's story crossing your field of vision, but an entire surgical team that comes through, introducing itself one by one, asking if you know why you’re here, what kind of surgery you’re expecting to have done, and if any of your teeth are loose. (Again with the teeth?!) One member of the team was a standout—Dominick, the anesthesiologist nurse. I wish I’d asked his last name, because he was wonderful. Dominick took the time to explain every move that would take place once I was in the operating room, walking me through everything I would observe before falling asleep. This was obviously done for the benefit of nervous patients, and it was the absolutely perfect touch. The explanation included everything from how I would be moved from the gurney to the operating table, to the moment when he would cease speaking to me and turn to the surgical team to give them a status update.
The last thing I recall before the lights went out was Dominick patting my shoulder, assuring me that he would take good care of me, and promising me that I wouldn’t wake up during the surgery. It hadn’t even occurred to me that this could happen. Hmmm, now that's a
Now that's a party hat.
nightmare worth contemplating.  (Best pre-op line, uttered by Dominick as he handed me a paper surgical cap: Let’s give you a party hat!) 



AFTER
I awoke to Peter’s and my brother, Steve’s smiling faces. The recovery room was bustling beyond my pleasant haze of drugs. I was offered vanilla pudding in a tiny dixie cup. I ate it with drug-sodden gusto and was reduced to a gaga bleating of Oliver Twist’s, May I have some more, please? For the time being, the usual zzZZZZZ had been reduced to hmmmmmm.

Steve, had come up from New York to be with me. Over the years, Steve and I have made it a practice to sit with and for each other during surgeries. Steve kept me company while Peter underwent back surgeries. I sat with him while his wife, Susan, had surgery. We’ve never discussed why or how this tradition came to be. As children, Steve and I fought endlessly. (I used to say that my brother never spoke a civil word to me until I went off to college.) In a quiet moment my mother took me aside and told me we shouldn’t fight because someday she and my father would be gone, and Steve and I would have only each other. 
Steve Doloff
She spoke from her own experience of having lost her mother and finding her greatest comfort in her brother and sisters. And so it is with Steve and me. It’s always an immeasurable comfort having him with me.  


Somehow I got dressed. Peter must have made that happen. I was still so gaga that I could easily have pulled my panties on over my yoga pants and thought I was ready to go dancing. I was poured into a wheelchair and rolled out of the hospital. Although our hotel was two blocks from the hospital, Peter brought the car around to pick me up. Steve stood beside me holding my hand, while I sat in the wheelchair, blissed out, dreamy and secure in my brother’s company and care.  

The hospital sent me home with scrip’s for big honkin’ bottles of 600 mg Ibuprofen and OxyCodone. The amount and magnitude of the medications seemed vastly out of line with the minor discomfort I was experiencing. True, urinating did sting for the next day or so, and I did feel like my bladder had been neatly folded in quarters, and then unfolded and refolded a few more times. (Having your hooha clamped wide open for almost two hours and your organs moved around like chops on a grill will have that effect.) But over-the-counter Advil would have done the trick.


AFTER AFTER
Life is an elaborate and endless to-do list, and I plan my own life with bullet-points, indented sections and subsections. But the list was put aside for the next several weeks. I slept a great deal, I ate a very little, and somehow the time passed hazily, pleasantly and uneventfully. The mild soreness passed, the fatigue that Kia predicted did overcome me in many small ways over many late spring afternoons. Amazingly, I was smart enough not to over-exert myself, so I never did live out her prediction of becoming a hot mess. The lethargy was so pleasant, in fact, that I wondered if I would ever get beyond it. I missed the habitual zzzzzzzzz in my head, and asked myself, What happens if it doesn't come back, and I'm stuck in hmmmmm for the rest of my life? I needn't have worried. It came back with a vengeance (albeit, in fits and starts), and I am happily making and checking off long to-do lists again.


The pathology report was a howling success. The cancer was confirmed to be early, slow growing, and making only minor inroads into the muscle. Even better, the genetic testing showed no inherent predisposition to the cancer. As Dr. Muto termed it, This was just a lightning strike.
A fluke. It was completely contained and had been cleanly removed. The cure rate for this kind of cancer is 90%. But there are no guarantees.


And so we move forward. I dodged a bullet this time, and am immensely grateful and relieved to have done so. But my blithe certainty of many healthy years ahead is rightfully shaken. And the fragility of life and its tender connections to beloved husbands, brothers, friends and memories are spread out before me plainly, just as they were when my mother and father died.

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