Showing posts with label surgery. Show all posts

Here's the scene: I am in my senior year of high school, there are only five more months until I graduate. At that point I will no longer consider myself a child, I will be done with high school, I will think: to hell with how anyone else sees me. I will be moving on to college, eager to jump head first into young adulthood. But until that point I will be rushing ahead, antsy with anticipation of being treated like an adult. Excited to make my own decisions, without having to actually make any real decisions yet. That is until I am confronted with the question of a rod surgery in my tibia. Here I am trying to talk it out -  as an almost-adult  - with my parents.

(Please note: what is in bold italics are my own thoughts. These are the things that I never actually said to my parents during this conversation).

 Parentals: Sandy what is the point of this surgery? Will you be using your walker on campus in college? Probably not, right? You won't still be getting P.T. services during school hours, right?

Me: But Dr. S said it's a good idea! He said that the bone is terribly bowed. That it will be better, long term, for it to be straightened.

Parentals: Okay so he says it's a good idea. But what do you think? Do you think this is a good idea? What was the point of getting your other leg rodded when you were younger? It was so that you could walk on it more. And now you don't walk as much, and in college you probably won't be walking on it.

Me: "Probably not walking on it" is not a good enough reason to not have the operation. "Probably not" risks losing too much in the future, too much potential that you might not see for me - but maybe I see it for myself. Well, maybe I will walk on it in the future. What about then?

Parentals: It's going to be a lot of pain and recovery time for something that you're not even certain will benefit you in the future. Do you really want to spend your summer before college rehabbing? You want to spend it in a cast for 3 months?

Me: You think I don't know the risks and sacrifices I'm making so that I can walk better? You think I don't know?! I'm not stupid, of course I know I'll be in a cast and there will be lots of pain. This obviously isn't my first rod surgery, and obviously this isn't going to be my first broken bone. I know what I'm doing.

Parentals: You're a teenager and you think you know everything --

Me: Because I DO when it comes to this!! You guys are the ones who know nothing when it comes to this, because You Do Not Have O.I. D'uh!

Parentals: Does it hurt you right now? Is that why you want to do the surgery?

Me: I stopped telling you when my bones hurt a long time ago. If it wasn't an obvious fracture I've long stopped telling you so that you wouldn't worry. I'm not about to start that again. Only sometimes, only a little, off and on. Only because the bone is so bowed, every few weeks or so there are little cracks in the bone. That's why Dr. S thinks it'll help the bone be stronger, so it won't break. But the truth is yes, it does ache and it goes numb at night in ways that freak me out and keep me up at night. 

Eventually, and after many days of this aggravating and frustrating back and forth - my parents became okay with my decision to go ahead with the operation. I was not yet a legal adult, still had to have parental permission, and while it was endlessly annoying for me to have this conversation: I have immense respect for my parents because they allowed this talk to happen. It is necessary, because the fact of the matter is that no one will always agree with medical decisions regardless of who it comes from (the patient, the nurse, the doctor, the parents, the physical therapist etc). But it is necessary regardless of who it comes from, that that individual is able to provide reason and clear understanding of what making a medical decision means for the present and future.
For adults the above may be obvious. But for young people, particularly those who are not yet legally able to call the shots - but clearly able to have a say in what happens to their body, this is another example of managing their own healthcare. Making healthcare decisions big or small can be frightening, talking it out with those who know you best and respect you makes it a little easier.

Now they're rolling the gurney down the hall, into the elevators that will take me to the surgical floor. I sit huddled in the swaths of bleach-free blankets and sheets, wondering what is happening to you. Just minutes before the surgeon explained, for the hundredth time, exactly how the procedure would go - reassuring you for the millionth time that only he would be making the actual incisions: "These are surgical fellows who will only be observing in the operating room. No touching." 
But at least they will still get to see me on the operating table. You, as my family members, are only privy to updates that I imagine are given by a surgical nurse every now and then. And to be honest, the only reason why I think that happens is because of what I've seen on all those hospital shows: ER, House M.D., General Hospital.. Does it really happen? And do they update you in that monotone voice the actors have in those shows? Or is it a little more humane? What are you thinking after they give updates? Do they tell you exactly what you want to know? These are the questions I'm wondering as I'm rolling towards the surgical floor, getting a little farther away from you.

Now I'm in the operating room. During the brief trip over the prep nurse and anesthesiologist have been making small talk with me. What grade are you in school? What's your favorite subject? What book are you reading? Do you have siblings? Do you have pets? I read in your medical records that you want to be a lawyer someday? I know that these questions are meant to calm my nerves. But it's hard to stay calm because you are so far away down the hall, down several floors in the elevator, and sitting in some imaginary Family Waiting Room that I have only seen on t.v. shows. I am thinking that for every question that the nurse is asking me, your synapses are firing off only a hundred more.
Did I follow the pre-op instructions correctly? Did she have anything to drink in the past 8 hours? What were the risks the surgeon told me again? Should I look at the fine-print on the copy of whatever I had just signed? Will my son remember to lock the door when he comes home from school to an empty house? How long did he say recovery would be? Is this really worth it? 

I wish you could be with me to see how metallic the inside of an operating room is. Metal is reflective, shiny, sterile, and cold. Just looking at all that metal in there makes me shiver a bit. Would you like another blanket? The nurse asks me. They've lifted me onto the operating table, it's slim, black, and has a place for my arms to be strapped down onto. Someone begins to place 'stickers' with vein-like wires attached to them. The anesthesiologist waves the little tube of cherry-flavored sleepy drug underneath my nose, my stomach turns.
In my head I'm not thinking about how straight my bones will be after this operation. And I'm not thinking about what color cast would you like? I'm thinking about something I know best, the most familiar person my brain can conjure up in this frighteningly silver room: you. Are you sitting in the chair with your legs tucked underneath you, with your hands clamped between your legs as if you really need to go to the bathroom? Except we both know that you don't, you sit like that - curled up and tense when you are nervous.
Has someone brought you something to drink? Jello, apple juice, and popsicles are for patients so what do hospitals give to family members in that Waiting Room? A styrofoam cup of coffee? Non-caffeinated tea? Hot chocolate? Do the graham crackers you are nibbling on suddenly taste like cardboard? What are you thinking about now?
How long will this take? Will something go wrong this time? Will she be okay? What did the nurse just tell me again? What does that mean in plain English? 

Don't be nervous. Because I am not nervous anymore. I'm looking up at smiling eyes hiding behind a surgical mask, thinking about you and the questions that you are wondering about. Somehow I believe that there is comfort in the unknown that we are both facing, hundreds of feet away and in drastically different rooms; because as long as we are both thinking of each other then whatever heart-wrenching-hand-wringing-hair-graying-pulse-stampeding incident we must deal with - will never - sway our confidence in one another.
"Okay Sandy, ready to go into a deep sleep?" The anesthesiologist asks. I am looking back at him and only manage a nod as I imagine someone coming to tell you, "The operation has just begun, and she is doing great." 


See you soon in the recovery room,
Sandy 

For a few seconds I believe the bed has swallowed my entire body, leaving only my eyeballs. At first I can feel nothing else, and my brain seems to still be wiping the dredges of the anesthesia off - for the time being it can only send a few bursts of signals to my eyes. All I see are the glaringly obnoxious fluorescent lights above, then the curtain divider, and then from the corner of my eyes the machines with all of its wires that are all heading in my direction.
Meanwhile the room has begun a slow counterclockwise tumble: the ceiling melts into the wall, the fluorescent lights look like they're about to fall on to me and then there it is -- the tips of my fingers brush past the top of the cast. The familiar dimpled ridge texture of the fiberglass cast sends my brain shooting down memory lane, and then it all comes back to me: a rod surgery on my left tibia.

I yak up stomach bile as I always do after operations. It's the final signal that says: okay your body is awake now. The nurse holds out a small cup of water for me as I hungrily gulp it down, like it's some kind of mirage that might disappear on me any second.
It's sometime between when I first remember what has happened and the time I am given my first sips of water that the pain hits.
"It was a long surgery, Sandy. Far longer than anyone expected. It lasted 6 hours and Dr. Shapiro had to make 4 breaks into the bones." The nurse tells me.
Still not really able to form complete thoughts yet, I make a sound that is something between a groan and a cry. My hands grasp at the fiberglass cast, fingers scratching at a leg that only that morning I had been able to touch the skin of. Now it lay in several pieces, with all kinds of hardware screwed into the bone - that thought alone made me squirm.
"Don't be afraid to push the pain button, okay?" She put a small buzzer into my right hand, the one that wasn't already swamped with I.V.'s swarming about. I nodded my head, half rolling my eyes to tell her that I already know all too well what the pain button does.

After my vitals are checked again, and a room upstairs has opened up I am rolled to the 9th floor in a room that is across from the nurse's station. It's the room I am always in after rod surgeries, a single room to myself with the border of animal decorations going around the walls. The first night after surgery is always the worst for me. The throb of pain ebbs and flows all throughout the night, the morphine makes me frantically itchy, and my dreams are a mix of lucid reality with the backdrop of pain medication. In short: I have no idea what is going on.
Several times an hour various nurses will come and check on my vitals. But the blood pressure stands that give my arm a gentle hug at midnight, then 1AM, 2AM, 3AM.. has appeared to me as various morphed alien-octopus creatures with tentacles that squeeze for a bit then get ripped off.

In the dim of the night light, and mixed with the neon glow of the machines I could tell he was wearing a large blue cookie monster t-shirt. Must be one of the perks of working at Children's Hospital I thought. Rarely do I remember anything about my stays as an inpatient, especially during the first night after an operation - but for whatever reason the guy checking my vitals that night made an impression. He was going about his business, jotting down my numbers and adjusting my oxygen mask when all of a sudden I blurted out:
"Wouldn't you rather be somewhere else?" 
He stopped what he was doing and looked down at me, smiling,
"No of course not! If I were anywhere else I wouldn't be able to help you and there's nothing else I would rather be doing." 


To this day I have no idea what spurred on my question. I don't remember what my thoughts were before I asked it, but it's pretty obvious that I wanted to be somewhere far away from the 9th floor of the Children's Hospital in-patient floor. But his response comforted me the rest of that night, I remember I slept as comfortably as I could knowing that despite my drugged and broken state of being - there was someone in the world who wanted to be there to help hold me together.

"These saltines are STUPID!" I screamed. I clutched the packet of crackers and zinged it like a frisbee across the room. Supposedly I hit the nurse trying to get me to eat. I say supposedly because I have no recollection of any of this happening. That part of the story all comes from friends who visited after my operation.