Mistaken for a Death Angel, I'm No Saint

The door banged open.
 
Rolling in backward was an orderly in hospital scrubs towing a wheelchair filled to the brim with the most ancient black man I have ever seen. 

The orderly deftly placed the wheelchair in front of the waiting room TV.

“Mr. Louis you go ahead and watch the TV there.  I’ll get to your papers here. Now stay put.  Watch the TV.”

Mr. Louis was having none of that.

When he knew the orderly couldn’t see him anymore, he promptly rocked himself up out of that wheelchair and walked right up to the TV and turned around blocking everyone’s view of it.  

It looked like he was used to being the center of attention so I just smiled at him while drinking my contrast drink. 

He was dressed pretty snappy in a black polo shirt and some sweatpants that discretely camouflaged his adult incontinence apparel underneath. 

He was very dark brown with white curls cropped close to his head and furrows of wrinkles cascading down his shiny face.  He clutched a zip lock bag with something like lunch in it.

While I was casually sizing him up, he was doing some sizing up of his own.  His wandering gaze snapped in on me and his face crashed inward. 

It became a mask of a warrior ready to fight.  Mixed with terror.

In a low whispering voice, he blew out two words like smoke from a drag of a cigar. 

“Santa Barbara.” 

And, oh shit, it looked like he was coiling as if to pounce.  I braced…

“Mr. LOUIS!  Now what are you doing?  Let’s sit down ok?  You’re alright man, you’re fine.”

In a low baritone stream of what I think was Creole, Mr. Louis spoke of many different things then. 

Words like orisha and Chango and Santa Barbara stuck out like barbs on fishhooks.  The already heavily magnetized atmosphere in the waiting room became ever so much more charged with something else. 

It looked like those wavy lines you see on a hot day hovering over broiling asphalt.  I smelled ozone.

He never took his eyes from mine as he sat, and he kept on talking, even while the orderly soothingly patted his back and reassured him, until his head nodded and he slept.

The peace on his face as he slept was one hundred eighty degrees from the prowling terrified electrified scene of minutes before.

After untangling myself from the indisputable crazy of the episode, I womaned up and asked the orderly what the hell was going on.

“Oh no biggie.  Mr. Louis thinks you are an angel or a devil or something come to take his soul away.”  He chuckled.  “You’re not, are you?”

The door to the inner sanctum popped open as if on cue from some cosmic stage manager  and a cheery voice said, “Mr. Louis we’re ready for you now.”

He snorted awake at the sound of his name, fixed me with a steely glare and climbed into his wheelchair so the orderly could push him in for his test.

I looked around and no one seemed to behave like anything was out of the ordinary.  Stress.  Must be. Putting a rope around it, I waited my turn.  I’ve been known for this kind of thing and telling anyone just brought me a load of derision that I didn’t need right now.

“Mizz Linda?  We’re ready for you now.”

A smiling no-nonsense nurse sat me up in the  hall at a nurse’s station and ran a big line into my arm for dye injection later.  She was apologetic about this, and it didn’t hurt, but I bled all over the place during the “pinch.”  So, I looked like a disaster all bloodied up and sporting plastic lines running down my arm when who rounds the corner? 

My favorite angry old jaguar man in his wheelchair.

His deep set terrified eyes, swivelling like metal bb's, darted from my face to my arm.  I was paralyzed, locked in place, couldn't move.

So  much so the nurse ran into me and bounced right off.

Something changed. The electrical jolting waned.

Slowly he crumbled.  His face totally relaxed.

 He hooted with genuine joy. 

Issuing forth a torrent of French sounding sentences, he gestured and smiled and almost levitated out of his chair.

“What’s he saying?”  I asked the orderly.

“Oh nothing much."  He sucked his tooth. "Just something about how the saints don’t bleed, and you obviously do, so you are no saint. He gets to hang around another day.”

 

 

Postscript:

West African slaves brought to the Caribbean had to camouflage their so-called pagan religious deities from the overly-zealous Christian influences of their owners.  Many Catholic saints became the alternative names for the entities they prayed to.

I was evidently mistaken for Saint Barbara or Chango, a god uniquely of two genders who is patron over lightning.    

Recover, I Dare You!

It is time for me to put this Tale of the Tumor away and think on things less bulbous, rude and invasive, and more cool, like my scar that looks like a big osprey feather.  One last hurrah though has hatched in my fevered brain, so here goes:

If you are preparing for abdominal surgery and are facing a prolonged recovery period, both in the hospital and at home, let me offer a few survival hints if I may:

In reference to the hospital:

Abandon all notion of time the minute your feet hit that first shiny linoleum tile. Hospitals have some kind of agreement with the gods of quantum physics making time, (you know - seconds, minutes and hours ), either race away like water droplets blowing off your windshield in the car wash, or gum up into rivulets of cold running tree sap. Three ways this happens:

• Nothing painful will be done on time or quickly. Things like the utilization of giant needles, tubing and catheters are announced with great resolve. “We will now puncture you with potential for excruciating pain and the spurting of fluids! Huzzah!” All the equipment is wheeled in with which to accomplish the anxious-making procedure, you grit your teeth and steel yourself for the onslaught and, holy batshit, a delay! Somebody next door codes, or the kid down the hall is wailing, or there is a shift change. And time just slows to a snail’s pace allowing one to really marinate in one’s own flop sweat and in the contemplation of what’s to come.

•  Nothing to alleviate said pain will be done on time or quickly. In my case, my doctor informed me that I should have a visit from Dr. Morpheus around every 4 hours for pain, but I needed to ASK for it. Here’s where time really takes on a personality of its own and the nurses know they have you by the short hairs. The pain (The kind of pain one has when someone has been handling your entrails through a 14 inch incision which is now stapled together with concertina wire) would pop up and say, “Hi! Ready for another go-round?” What I thought was at least a 4 hour sleep was really only maybe 20 minutes or most of an episode of CSI.                 So I held out. When time is up, I then summoned my attending nurse by pressing the call button. “Yes?” she says over the speaker. “Pain meds please?” say I. “Ok.” Says she. Thus begins the ritualistic process of securing the meds from the pharmacy in another wing of the flipping hospital, the multiple signings in and signings out of a highly coveted “NARCOTIC” so we can be sure it doesn’t get jacked by some closet addict on the mile and a half walk to my wing of this hospital. An hour later, there comes my nurse with the injection. They always dismissed the sweat soaked linens, the washcloth I was biting down on and the death grip I had on my blanket, and I just coo’ed and sniffled as the syringe delivered the goods and the sweet sweet lethargy of Dr. Morpheus enveloped me for the next 20 minutes. In short, the pain and the relief never synched up. But it was fun trying.

• Nothing about the patient’s personal hygiene can’t be “put off” until next shift. This is how I slipped through the cracks and was not offered the application of even a simple washcloth to my dopey face, never mind my armpits or other parts, for 4 days. Like pain relief, I had to ask, once I couldn’t even stand myself anymore drugged or not, if I could give myself a sponge bath and wash my hair which was now sticky and matted and very Edward Scissorhands-ish. Honestly, I volunteered to be discharged much too early, necessitating a return trip by ER, just because I wanted to wash my hair. To be fair, apologies were forthcoming and the shift change conundrum was mentioned as the problem. Hint: Ask your visitors to sniff and make sounds like “whew” when the nurse is there so they get the hint.

Interlude : Nurses say the dandiest things -

• “Boy when they found that tumor, I bet everyone thought you were dead girl walking! Good thing it was benign!”
• “Nice that you didn’t end up with a (colostomy) bag. My friend had a tumor like that and it wrecked her colon. And it keeps coming back!”
• “So how long have you had the Parkinson’s? I just lost my best golfing buddy to Parkinson’s. (welling up and sniffling).  Wow.”
• “When you poop, just relax and whatever you do, don’t bear down! You’ll just pop!”

• “Why don’t you like the blue jello?”

No lie. True quotes. I am kind of glad I peed twice/puked once on the floor there. I may have been on the morphine, but there may have been a botched enema as well.  Hmmm. Enema revenge is a new concept.

Maybe the peace sign there should've been another salute of note.

In reference to going home:

As intrusive and institutionalized as the hospital may have seemed, home was 180 degrees the opposite. My loved ones did not know what to do with this stinking, stapled up, babbling, hallucinating, puking, barely ambulatory hot mess with Edward Scissorhands hair and puncture wounds all over, but they tried so hard it makes me well up just thinking about it. A few things to pre-request before going home:

• 
  
  
• 
  
  A RECLINER. A pillowy, towel draped, rocker recliner. I call it the HEALING POD. Everything revolves around the Healing Pod. Point it toward the TV with a nice view to the garden, and position the computer, bookshelves and array all liquids and pills on an end table within arm’s reach. It’ll look a little like the command center of the Starship Enterprise when Shatner was El Jefe Grande. Set up the portable “potty” they sent you home with right there (I called it my litter box so there was no confusion), so you can launch either end of yourself at it at a moment’s notice. Here’s a tip: Keep an air horn somewhere nearby for when your family is hiding from your last request for something you can’t do. Like dump out the potty or scratch that one spot near your ass you can’t reach. The air horn works well on the pets too who just have to jump on your sutures with terrifying joy when they see you again.

• A SATIN BLANKET. My worst issue was tangling up in the bedclothes, pinning myself down like King Tut in his sarcophagus. A freak out provoker for sure! And I did! I freaked and it hurt! The slick jewel-toned pink and purple slippery satin blanket (my new cherished “woobie”) allows me to levitate and spin with no friction gumming up the works. Moving about in bed after abdominal surgery is its own circle of hell and my woobie was the key to sanity. And it is pretty.
• MOMMY. (Or someone like your Mom) If you’ve read anything I’ve written so far on this serial topic, you know why.
• REMOTE CONTROL. Self-explanatory.
•  FROZEN LEMONADE. Nectar of the gods, and helps you not feel sorry for yourself when nothing else edible tastes, feels or looks good.
• YOGA PANTS and BIG T-SHIRTS. Bamboo fabric no elastic drawstring pants to gently cover your lower parts where they cut you. Big T’s to camouflage the notion of never wearing a fucking bra ever again! Your sutures will thank you.
• CLEAN EVERYTHING. Do not go home to a mess. Have your loved ones shovel all their steaming piles of mess into their respective lairs, and never look in there. Request that your recovery space is clean, swept and smelling nice. Although it was perhaps the last thing on my loved ones minds, my mortality and transformative pain was kind of distracting I reckon, it would have been lovely to collapse in my HEALING POD knowing that some Martha Stewart obsessive-compulsive scrubbing had been done.

So now, coming to you from the HEALING POD in my 6th week of recovery, I will now lay down this story and move on to others. Life yields up so much joy. I am a-gonna go live it now.

As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

Pollyanna, Biopsies, and The Glad Game

Admitting something here that will forever brand me as the biggest cupcake in the history of cupcakes. An admission that will be tattooed forever across my forehead in florid illuminated script: “Pollyanna dork-a-saurus”

I love the movie Pollyanna starring Hayley Mills.

I said it.  I am a big pink icing-slathered jimmy-festooned cupcake dork-a-saurus. But that’s beside the point.  See, in the movie Pollyanna spoke of a game she played with her missionary parents when the going got rough in some deep dark non-Christian place where they were converting the heathens to proper British religiosity.  Like the time she got crutches instead of a fancy baby doll for her birthday…Must’ve sucked out loud mightily, but they just turned it around by using “The Glad Game” – They were glad they didn’t need the crutches, they were glad the crutches were there in case someone needed them, glad that they were such sturdy well-made crutches and so on.  This helped Pollyanna to put things into perspective, even though it still bit the big one that the baby doll didn’t make it to her little girl arms. With my anger issues, I’d have thrown those crutches on the community bonfire in the middle of the pagan third-world village they were there to save.  Then I would’ve personally loaded my parents into the big, black cauldron for the village matrons to season up and braise into Missionary Stew. For Pollyanna, a vision of spunky grace and good will, a little positive thinking goes a long way.  Thank god, she is a role model for me.

 
“The Glad Game,” although we don’t know it at the time, is the one pastime my Mom and I naturally employ when things seem tinged with overwhelming melancholy or danger or fear.  As tough as I think I am, sometimes it is all just too crazy to muster up the usual snarky survival techniques, and reverting to the “game” with Mom is a saving grace.

Wouldn’t you know it would be raining…
I’m glad it is, less traffic.

I hate hospitals…
I am glad this one has that gorgeous player piano in the lobby.
Yeah, and I am glad the ceilings are nice and high and the Christmas tree is pretty…and everyone is smiling.  I’m glad.

What in the name of the Inquisition is all that?
You should be glad that all those needles and tubes are packaged perfectly sterile and your nurse is opening them up in front of you…
Yes, I am glad everything is nice and sharp and clean.
Damn, I am glad my nurse is really good at what she does. That didn’t hurt at all!

Oh great here comes Doc, it’s time…
Be glad he is on time and so handsome too!
I am glad he didn’t dumb it down either.  I am glad he respects me.  This is going to hurt…but I am glad he could get to the tumor through my back. I am glad he looks nice and buff so pushing that giant core drill needle through my back won’t be hard for him.

Every time you punch through, pain is shooting down my leg…Glad you are stabbing my freaky growth/mass/tumor.  Glad you keep stabbing it. Glad you don’t mind if I cry a little.

We’re almost done.
I am glad we’re almost done.  I am glad you could get more tissue in the biopsy than you thought.  I am glad this is over. Glad for reality altering meds in my system to help me accept this puncture invasion of mind and body.

Glad this step in the journey is done.

Damn, I am so glad to see breakfast and pie.  And Mom.