Under the knife, post op
Let’s start with the most important fact first: No cancer. No cancer, no cancer, no cancer.
Less important details follow.
My operation was shoved back several times. The good news is that I was having an open-heart surgeon perform my operation. The bad news is that nearly everything else he works on is critical, and when his attention is needed, a mere biopsy gets pushed back a few hours. This isn’t to say I wasn’t treated well – St. Mary’s Hospital in Apple Valley has, to a person, the most courteous and professional staffers I’ve met anywhere, whether it’s at the Pentagon, Senatorial offices or even the little old ladies at the mall who tell you where Spenser’s Gifts is, when you’re looking for a novelty tracheotomy box voice changer. So I didn’t really begrudge them the delays, although when someone cancelled – Does that mean someone got better, or that they were beyond help? No one said. – and we were asked to come ASAP, there was still a bit of a mad scramble to get there in time.
As I was laying in pre-op, having soda straws shoved into my hand and inner elbow as IV shunts, along with #712 in a series of blood tests, my blood pressure was apparently unusually low for someone about to have surgery. I was more nervous, according to the blood pressure tests I get regularly now, at the oncologist (whose name I will never have to learn now, so he will just remain “The Oncologist� for the rest of my life) and at the pre-admit testing yesterday. Of course, this also means that I didn’t get an injection of drugs to relax me prior to surgery. We call this a mixed blessing.
On television and in the movies, operating rooms have all the focus on the operating table itself. At St. Mary’s, the room was packed with other machines – even the operating table wasn’t a table per se, but something table-shaped but not actually a table as I’d recognize one. The nurse wheeling me in noted that every chest surgery other than heart transplants are done in this room, with the implication that all this equipment is needed for one chest surgery or another. Which was fine by me: If something goes wrong, I want Batman to have his utility belt close at hand.
Everyone in the room radiated quiet confidence, along with the exhaustion of having done three other chest surgeries earlier in the day. The fact that they all had on full-face splatter masks suggested that they were about to embark on a fairly serious operation once more.
The ceiling was hung with larger versions of the lamps dentists suspend over their chairs, including the large knobs in the center used to precisely position them. There were so many lights radiating so much heat that the air conditioner was kept at the meat locker level, and the nurse went and got me a blanket which apparently was in a dryer in a side room for me. My blue-eyed Sikh anesthesiologist – who had the most dense facial hair I’ve ever seen on any human in my life – told me the drug he was injecting into my IV line (the upper one) would make me feel light-headed. I noticed the dentist lamp over my face had suddenly split into three, and I felt very warm and cheerful suddenly. “This is just like being drunk, except without the awkward calling of ex-girlfriends at 3 in the morning,â€? I said …
and then I was waking up. With my eyes closed, I heard my mother in law talking, and realized that the operation was over. I shifted a little. My throat was sore, but there was no IV shunt in my neck and apparently no bandage on my side and no tube down my throat. They hadn’t had to go with Option #3 and deflate a lung. This is A Very Good Thing. Splatter masks on surgical staff is all well and good, but I’d prefer not to be the one splattering, all things considered.
I opened my eyes. I was still too groggy from the anesthesia to know whether this information was asked or volunteered by my wife or her mother, but three hours had passed since the warmed blanket was placed on me. I did not have cancer. I had something else growing inside me instead, but it was non-fatal and more or less treatable. It was now 10 hours since I’d stopped halfway through my glass of water, and I was starving. Dinner, unfortunately, consisted of some ice chips, since there was concern my throat was too swollen from having a camera sliding down it to put anything more substantial down my gullet. I spent a listless night in the hospital – made extra listless by the fact I had oxygen going in my nose an IV in my arm and no way to get to the bathroom as liquid was apparently pumped directly into my bladder through my elbow. Another medical adventure, using something called a “trucker’s friend� by much of the world, under my belt. Those wondering why the bloom is off the rose for this particular adventure for me may be starting to see why at this point.
Now I am home, with a bottle full of 500 mg Vicodin horse pills, a plastic tube that measures how much air I bring in and how hard (to remind me to keep taking deep breaths to fight off pneumonia), a very sore neck and a package of bandages to dress the wound with on future days. I have a 1 1/2� wide cut at the notch of bone at the base of my neck between my collar bones, which I’ll need to keep dry until it’s closed up better. I suspect interesting facial hair, possibly including the dreaded neck beard, may be in my immediate future. I do get to have a bitchin’ scar that will be visible at the neck of nearly every shirt I ever wear. Now I just need to find a novelty tracheotomy voice box at Spenser’s Gifts to use to freak people out, and I’m all set.
Bathing after a night in the hospital, I discovered my chest had been shaved and my entire front torso had been wet down with yellow Bactine antiseptic. While the operation apparently went quite well, the unspoken Option #4 – crack open my chest and restart my heart – had been prepared for, which again is a mixed blessing.
I have an appointment with my chest surgeon, the good Dr. Hakob Davtyan, on Wednesday, and then it’s back to my general practitioner for the sarcoidosis. More information about it is available online.
Again, it’s not fatal, and is mostly just troublesome – the futile cough will be here for a while, for instance. I told you all I’d live to piss on my enemies’ graves. Boy, are they going to not like getting that phone call.
I appreciate, and am somewhat surprised and taken aback by the outpouring of sympathy and concern from everyone. I deeply appreciate it, and it definitely helped. When I was laying in pre-op, it occurred to me that dying on the table would really be letting everyone down, and be a piss-poor way to die all around.
Thanks, guys.
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Is that what you spent all that time at Spencer’s buying?
Comment by joelpy — June 26, 2005 @ 8:09