You like me! ou Really, Really Like Me!!! Chapter 18

Mark was allowed to stay for awhile, but I was so out of it that we didn’t talk much. Soon after he left, I fell asleep. Since I was in a hospital, the nurses woke me every few hours to take my vital signs.
In my normal life, I go to bed some where between 11:00PM and mid-night and if left alone will sleep until 8:00 or 9:00AM. But since I have to get my children ready for school, the alarm wakes me at 6:30AM. I usually wake up very tired and very grumpy. So, you can imagine how surprised I was to find my self, without the benefit of an alarm clock, waking-up at 6:00AM. Who knows why I woke up so early? Maybe it was the brightness of the room or maybe it was the activity in the hall outside my door. I don’t know. What I do know is I had an opportunity to sleep as late as I wanted, and my brain woke my up at 6:00AM. Bummer.
I heard two voices right outside of my room talking (did I mention that I have really good hearing). I think the day shift was coming on and the voices I heard were two nurses. The night nurse was filling in the day nurse about their shared patients. The first voice rattled off some names and room numbers and basic information. I was not really listening. Then I heard my name, then I paid attention.
“Room 105, mastectomy; she is doing great!!!”
“Great, I am doing great! I hurt from head to toe, except for the parts of my body that are numb, and she thinks that I am doing great? Then how bad are the patients who are not doing great feel? ” These thoughts were going through my head as a doctor making his rounds walked into my room. I had read somewhere that one should never, never, ever be a patient in a hospital in the month of July if you can help it. That is because July is the month that med-students graduate to become residents, and residents become doctors or something like that. So there are all these men and woman running around with their shinny new diplomas and stethoscopes.
So, into my room walks a young man, about 5’8” dark hair, dark eyes, white coat, stethoscope around his neck and a big smile on his face.
“Good morning, I am your doctor, my name…”
“Doogie Howser, did this guy tell me his name was Doogie Howser?” Actually I don’t hear what his real name was. In my mind I called him Dr. Doogie because he looked like he was twelve years old and this was the guy who was charge of my case. Well, if the surgery didn’t kill me, the hospital stay would.
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After Doogie left I had time to look around my room. The room was designed for two patients and it was your standard two patient hospital room: two beds divided by a white curtain, a bathroom and a window on my roommate’s side, the door to the hall on my side. We each had our own TV and side table. When either of us had a visitor the other could hear all conversations.
It was during my first waking hour that I met my roommate. Her name was Helen; she had short brown hair and glasses, and looked like she was in her late fifties. I spent the next three days with this woman who was very kind, very sick and a little crazy.
Helen had something wrong with her intestines. I think that she had about half of them removed and the other half were not working very well and-frankly she produces some pretty bad odors. She tried to cover them up with a spray type air freshener. Unfortunately she chose some strong floral sent that made me sick. Her scents added to all the flowers that were being delivered were making the room unbearable.
Helen’s surgery was two days before mine. Because of the nature of her problems I felt that Helen should have been in a room by herself. At first I was angry at the hospital for being too cheap to give her a single room. Later I find out that she was given a single room, but after one day she requested to be moved to a double because she wanted a roommate. It turns out that Helen is one of those people that can never-ever be alone. She needed to have someone around her at all times. Lucky me.
My first encounter with someone like that, was a woman that I had met when I was working as a department manager at a store called Bradlees (this was an East Coast chain of stores that was kind of like K-mart). This woman was hired as a manager. We had each had a baby recently, so we enjoyed talking about the joys and exhaustion of being a new parent. One day I mentioned my one and a half day stay in the hospital, and that my parents, my sister Janis, my in-laws, and both of my sister-in-laws, not to mention my husband had stopped by to visit. And her response was:
“Oh you poor thing, just like me hardly anyone came to visit you.” What!
Back at the hospital, the moment that visiting hours started Helen had a visitor, most of the time it was her husband, who was a very nice man. Other times it was her daughter or one of her many, many friends. Someone must have been coordinating the visits because as soon as one person left another showed up. That meant there was constant activity in the room. Most of the time I found it very annoying because I like quiet. Because I wanted to spend my time in the hospital resting I had asked my friends not to visit or call me there. But sometimes having her friends around came in handy. They were always asking me if there was anything that I needed, so I had all the ice chips and water that I wanted.
I had brought two or three books to read and another two books on tape to listen to, not to mention a half a dozen music cassettes. At home I am a wife and mother who is on call 24/7, I was really looking forward to some rest, I thought that I would sleep a little, read a little, listen to music or a story. Obviously I don't spend too much time in hospitals. Between the doctors, nurses, my few visitors and Helen’s retinue, my hospital room felt like grand central station. When visiting hours were over, Helen wanted to chat with me. The only time it was quiet was when one of us was sleeping.
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I spent my first full day after the surgery drifting in and out of consciousness. I tried to listen to one of the books-on-tape but I kept falling asleep. It was not the book, in fact I was listening to a book that I have been wanting to read for a long time. The book was called “At Home in Mitford” by Jan Karon, I’ll talk more about this book later. What I want to talk about now is the daily life of a patient, and surprisingly, how quickly I got used to the routine.
As I said the hospital came alive around 6:00am, when Dr. Doggie showed up and checked a few of my vitals and asked how I was doing. This guy had a really good bedside manor. If he is as smart as his is kind, he will do well in his career. The biggest problem I had (besides the pain) was that I was having a hard time breathing. This must be normal because every new patient in my section had one of those funny breathing tubes that I learned to used it before my surgery.
I would breath into it and try to make the little ball rise to the appropriate line like the lady had shown me, but I couldn’t get the ball that high since taking a deep breath was impossible. I felt like there was a big clump of phlegm caught in my throat. Breathing in to the funny tube helped, but it didn’t solve the problem. I found myself scratching at my throat as if that would make the phlegm go away. It didn’t. I wanted the doctors to operate on me again to get the phlegm out, or at least stick a suction tube down my throat. I asked Dr. Doogie what could be done I begged for him to help me. He did not know what to tell me so he went looking for a more experienced doctor.
The experienced doctor came to my room. This man looked like a real doctor, he was in his late forties, maybe early fifties. He was of Asian ancestry. He told me the only way to get rid of the phlegm in my throat was to cough it out.
“Cough it out? Do you now how much it will hurt to cough it out?” I asked him. He told me that if I wanted to get the phlegm out of my throat, that coughing was the only way. This was one of the few times in my life that I actually wanted to kill someone, but lucky for both of us I was too weak. Later I tried a weenie cough or two. The attempt racked my body with pain so I stop then blew on my funny tube and suffered.
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Did I mention that Memorial is a teaching hospital? I read somewhere that teaching hospitals were among the best places to be treated because they were always up on the latest medical information. I have no idea if that is true or not, but it sounds good. Anyway when I filled out the millions of pre-admission forms there were a few interesting documents. One was a walking will. This document let me state what kind of life saving procedures I did or did not want. I thought this was a good idea. Mark and I had a long talk about it. We wanted to make sure that everything was spelled out before hand, so that if something went wrong, my family and my husband would not end up in one of those stupid court fights, trying to decide whether or not I would want to be kept on the feeding tube. I didn’t.
The other interesting document stated that was a teaching hospital so they wanted permission to video tape my surgery, and to allow med-students following doctors on there rounds to watch when a doctor examined me. Ok, I thought, this was for science so I signed. I don’t know whether my particular surgery was taped but I did meet a lot of med-students.
Did I also mention that I am very modest? After all I am a minister's wife and a librarian’s assistant. So there I was in my hospital bed, all that I was wearing was a hospital gown. I brought pajamas, but because it hurt too much to move I never changed. The hospital gown had two snaps on each shoulder. When I noticed them I wondered why, I soon found out. It started with the arrival of Dr. Doogie. He came into my room and checked my chart, he talked to me for a few minutes, then asked if he could check to see if I was healing properly, he was the only doctor who asked permission. Then he unsnapped the right side of my gown and looked at my scars. He told me that my breast was healing quite well, then he re-snapped the gown. Again he was the only doctor who snapped my gown back up, then he left.
Later another doctor came by with a crew of med-students to check on my progress. I’ll call him Dr. Rude. Dr. Rude explained to the students (about six or seven of them) what kind of surgery I had and how I was progressing. Then he walked over to my right, unsnapped my gown exposing my right breast, explained that I had both a mastectomy and reconstruction, and that every thing went very well, and that I was healing at a very encouraging rate. He then closed my gown by placing the snap parts back on my shoulder, but failed to re-snapped my gown. He and the students left. Not only did he disregard my modesty, but he left my gown unsnapped. I didn’t have much use of my right arm yet so I could not re-snap my gown myself. I had to wait for a nurse to stop by and ask her/him to re-snap me.
In the afternoon Dr. Sullivan stopped by to see me, he was in a great mood. He greeted me with a big smile. He told me how well the surgery went. He also said that although he wouldn’t be sure until the pathology test came back, he felt that the cancer had not spread.
“Tissue has a certain feel when it has been infected with cancer, your tissue did not feel that way.” He stated again that I would have to wait for the pathology report to come in but he was optimistic. He too unsnapped my gown and was pleased at the progress of my healing. He placed the snaps (unsnapped) back on my shoulders and left.
little later Dr. Asgari stopped by. It was strange, he was so happy when he walked in to my room. With his arms enthusiastically waving and a big smile on his face (Dr. Asgari smiling, who would have thought it?).
“You have great blood flow!” he ranted. “Great-Blood-Flow!!!” He explained that when he does a trans-flap, he divides the stomach into four sections. The first three are together from the left of my stomach area to center, there the blood flows horizontally. The forth quarter is on the right side of my torso and the blood flows vertically. Dr. Asgari told me that he rarely uses the forth part because the blood flow is typically not good enough. But my blood flowed wonderfully (except when I was donating blood). He had more than enough stomach parts to build a beautiful new breast.
As he was saying this I remembered Frances telling me that a friend of hers had wanted Dr. Asgari to do a trans-flap on her, but he refused, because she smoked, and smoking effects the blood flow. He would do implants on a smoker, but never a trans-flap. So there I was, the woman with the great blood flow that can make this stoic doctor smile. He unsnapped my gown, to check out his handy work, declared it a success, then puts the snap parts (unsnapped) back on my shoulder and leaves.
This goes on for the next two days. I must have had the best reconstruction that this hospital had ever seen, because doctors seem to wandering in and out of my room all day long. I was beginning to think that men are putting on a white coat just to look at me. I swear that the last guy who checked me out worked for the food service department. Ok, that was a joke, but it seems like my breast got more attention in the three days that I was in the hospital, then they ever did when I was single.