Thursday, November 21, 2002

detail from a vintage poster we own, hanging in someone else's house...it's funny what we 'own'

"I weigh 150-153 pounds."

LB, February 10, 1991

[I'm occasionally reviewing old, hand-written notebooks and I've decided to quote myself now and again. Isn't it funny what adding an extra 2 or 3 pounds a year can do to you? And that's only about an extra 30 calories more than you need a day...and suddenly you weigh 178 and are happy about it beause two months ago you were about 182.]

If they put you in the hospital and knock you out (even without general anesthesia), it's serious to me.

We got up and gathered our stuff and headed to the hospital. Fortunately we are close to the main Seton. Unfortunately they are doing a big construction project and it's chaos. We had to park on the roof of the garage behind the place at 9am. We had to wend our way in a daze to surgery even though FFP had been a week or so ago.

The chaos continued. We paid $150 that they figured insurance wouldn't pay, we waited. We got called into what I call 'the locker room.' FFP changed into pajama bottoms, a gown and a robe and socks with rubber skids. We waited. An aide came and took him and I was left with his clothes and glasses in a plastic sack and a briefase full of reading and writing material. It was now 10:30. Hmmm...I didn't bring food or have breakfast. I went into a nearby gift shop immediately and bought a coffee and a breakfast taco. Ate the taco quickly at the single table, surrounded by religious gee-gaws, angels and crucifices, for sale.

The surgery waiting room was crowded. One whole section was packed with several generations of some Texas clan, waiting for some member to have a cancer surgery. They told and retold family lore, each person embellishing or telling their version of the story. They kidded younger members about dating. They kidded older members about long-standing marriages with easy repartee. They talked on their cell phones to family members apparently still driving to Austin.

"They are in Texarkana," one says.

At one point, a tall, patriarchal type in a Western-tailored suit and belt with large Western buckle says to a younger member of the tribe, "Think how lucky you are to have two brothers. Think how lucky Aunt Mary was to have three brothers." I once had a theory that every family had an Aunt Mary. It's not far from true in old Texas tribes.

When the surgery was over, they retired en masse to the cafeteria, then returned to wait for the loved-one to emerge from recovery and get a room.

Other smaller family dramas surged around this one. Here a husband architect worrying about getting paid for jobs waits for his wife's surgery with his mother-in-law and wife's sister. The latter is 47, works for Motorola and is planning to be laid off. People give a lot of themselves up within the earshot of strangers, don't they?

Another guy waits alone, perhaps to do his preopt, holding a worn green folder on which someone has inked in neat block letters, 'KNEE.'

The waiting room throws together all classes and groups with family and friends waiting for someone who has to have a procedure, something minor, something major.

I sit amid this chaos. At 11:30, I think that they must have started his procedures. I am wrong. He has been waiting in the bowels of the hospital for an operating room or something. I read my book, I write a little, I listen.

Finally, it must have been after 1pm, they call on the overhead for me to come to the desk. The handsome surgeon says everything is great and explains home care. So much is dependent on taking care of yourself or having someone to do it.

But still you have to wait as they migrate the patient from surgery to recovery to the outpatient release area. Only later the nurse won't understand why they put him through recovery without a general. Because he was completely out of it from whatever they gave him, I'm guessing.

But the second call comes. He's trying to sip apple juice and eat graham crackers. Nausea comes and goes. The nurse changes the dressing and after some fits and starts with nausea she gives him something in an IV they are dripping. We get him up and he gets dressed. More nausea. There isn't much to throw up, of course. [Hey, I'm sparing you the worst of this.]

Finally, they say he can go home. They give me a ten minute head start but still he beats me to the west entrance after I wind through the hospital go up three flights of stairs, wind out of the garage, wait to pay for the privilege of waiting and bully through the traffic on 38th Street. Then getting out into the traffic and home is tricky but soon we are there. He feels like looking at e-mail but he continues to throw up occasionally. He can't eat or drink. I give him good old mild chewable pink bismuth (Pepto Bismal). I don't know what else to do. I worry. My dad comes over and sits with him. I go get the prescription for Lortab (Percocet), in any case a strong pain reliever that I hope he doesn't need, not soon anyway, because you need to take it with food.

I have to wait forty-five minutes for the prescription I probably won't need. [Just for the record you may purchase a Scooby Doo Chia Pet or a Magic Growing Christmas tree at Eckerd's. Just so you know. It's boring wandering around the store to see what they are selling.]

I cook a steak FFP was hoping he could eat and some baked potatoes and make some spinach salad for Dad and I. The cooking smells make FFP feel sick.

We are up and down, asleep in our chairs occasionally. He finally gets a little water down. I try to read and watch TV. Finally we sleep in the bed and he seems comfortable.

He will get up in the morning and get breakfast (toast) and some liquid down. I will examine his wound and be satisfied with its condition. I will feel better then. But I doze off worried. I hate doctors, medical procedures and pain. But FFP has been miserable. I hope this makes him feel lots better when it is over.

While I waited for Forrest at the hospital, I worked on the text for an 'ABC's' book for my little great-nephew. I am always struck by the magic of twenty-six letters, arranged in the infinite possible ways with white space and punctuation to make words, then text. And don't write to say it isn't infinite for a word has no real (only practical) restrictions on its length and, therefore, a word itself can be an infinite thing.

JUST TYPING
Waiting.
Is an art.
Focus.
On distracting yourself.
From the minutes.
Don't assume the time means anything.
Things run late.