White Masks and Vicodin
When your mom’s a nurse, you spend a lot of time visiting the hospital. You learn and see all sorts of things most kids don’t, and sometimes, you get to go into the OR. They’re not very scary when they’re empty. Just a long table, huge honking lamp and a couple of computers with dark screens. It’s quiet. Calm. Blank. Completely the opposite of what I imagined it must be like for my mom.
Walking into one at 9:45am this Tuesday morning, I realized very quickly that I DID NOT CARE what it was really like in an OR. Nope – I instantly knew this was THE SCARIEST PLACE ON EARTH. Because I wasn’t just looking around this time. I was going to be laying on that table. Things Were Going To Be Done. By People I Don’t Know. And when I woke up, I may or may not have all the parts I came in with.
Scanning the very large, very white, very COLD room, I saw screens and tables and tanks…but no trays filled with scissors or scalpels, thank God. There was A LOT in there that didn’t register. Equipment spread out everywhere. I could hear the blowing of an air conditioner. The room felt like a deep freezer. I wondered how anybody could work in this terrible cold, day after day, their fingers turning to icicles.
My eyes bounced around the room, searching for some sort of anchor. Looking for Dr. Woodford. I saw three or four indistinguishable people in blue. Then the nurse who brought me in asked me to take my pajama bottoms off. My mind pretty much went *poof!* at that point.
They asked me to get on the table. I had no idea how I was going to do that. It seemed really, really tall. I looked at my tangle of IV cords. Then I stood there feeling stupid and blank. Someone took my IV. Someone else took me gently by the shoulders. And all of a sudden, I was on the table, propped up on my elbows, watching the nurse fit plastic leg-squeezers over my calves to circulate my blood.
Finally, a familiar sight – Dr. Woodford’s eyes appeared above a white mask on my left. She came up close and squeezed my shoulder. I could tell she was smiling at me from the crinkles around her eyes. She has such kind eyes, I thought, and almost started to cry.
‘ok, lay back now.’ I really didn’t want to. Dr. Woodford was still smiling. I kept looking at her. Slowly, I lowered myself down. My arms stretched out like wings. Then I heard Matt the Amazing Anesthesiologist talking above and behind me. ‘I’m going to give you something to help you relax. It might take a few…’
‘Whooooaaaaah. Got it.’
Dr. Woodford and the nurse looked down at me. ‘You feel it already?’
‘Yep. ‘m all buzzy.’
‘You might feel a pinch in your hand, but it should go away quickly.’
‘ow.’
‘Do you feel a pinch?’
‘ow, OW! More of a stab. It’s very cold…ow ow OW! …going up my arrrrrrrm.’
‘ok, that should go away any second now.’
‘…itt…relly hrrrrts’
‘Is it getting any better?’
‘I…thinks…mahbeee…’ BLAM!
**********************
So, yeah. This week I had surgery. Sortof an all-in-one kind of deal – a laparoscopy to remove two ginormous cysts, and a HSG to check for damaged tubes. Depending on how things went and what they saw, there was a real possibility they’d cut my tubes, or even remove my ovaries. Not really the way you want things to go, when you’ve been trying for a baby as long as we have.
Last fall Trav and I decided to try fertility treatments again. Our first attempts took place in Utah back in 2004/2005. We did three rounds of IUI. Without drugs. And not only did the treatments NOT work, they almost destroyed us. It was the ugliest, scariest, most difficult time in our marriage. So, trying again was not something we came to quickly or lightly.
We had already spent a year and a half going through the adoption process here in Washington. We plodded along in an overworked, hopeless system geared more towards foster placement instead of permanent homes, a system that in the end could only promise more waiting, more violation, more damage.
Finally, we admitted that our hearts weren’t in it. So we went to Dr. Woodford. During our initial consultation, she explained more to us in one hour than the entire cadre of doctors we’d seen seven years previous. She went over our histories, our failures, our needs. She ran a few tests, and just like before, they all came back with the same, confusing, maddening result: there was nothing wrong with either of us.
So she prescribed me Femara, warning that twins or triplets often result, and sent us on our way with the first ounces of hope we’d had in years. We tried so hard not to get our hopes up. It was too ridiculous to think. Surely it would not be this simple. Surely it would not happen the first try.
It didn’t.
It didn’t happen the second time, either. What DID happen, however, was that I grew two 3 cm cysts on my right ovary. By February, the pain became so excruciating I almost went to the ER with a set of UV lamps and a wooden spike – feeling for all the world as though I was carrying around a pair of gremlins, one shredding its way through my stomach, the other playing jump-rope with my spinal cord.
The day after Valentine’s, we tried our first IUI with the new clinic. Hopeful was the last thing I tried to be. But I thought, maybe it would help to be more optimistic. I’ve been so negative for so long. Maybe it could happen this time. It probably wouldn’t. But it could. And then, a week later, I felt different. So different from all the other times before. I felt wierd. Sick. Strange. And I thought, I think it worked. I missed my period. And I thought, it really worked, I know it did. I took a test.
It was negative.
They took me off the drugs. The cysts did not go away. They drew blood, did more ultrasounds. Said it was endometriosis, then they said it wasn’t. They thought I might have fluid in a tube, then they weren’t sure. I cried so many tears of frustration, confusion and denial going up and down those elevators. And just about the time I decided I was tired of being sad when in fact, I WAS MAD AS HELL, was right around the same time I had my last visit with the medical assistant, when she actually said to me, “I’m sorry to give you bad news, but you have endometreoma,” and, “Can you feel your ovary?”
I think she could tell by the flick of my eyes when I said “All we EVER get is bad news,” that I was imagining ripping her scalp off and screaming, “CAN YOU FEEL YOUR SPLEEEN?!”, because they shuttled me out the door and booked a follow-up with Dr. Woodford in five minutes flat.
Aaaaand wow. The Vicodin is kicking in. Wooo-to-doooo! Sorry, all, this will have to be continued…
The Incredible Bouncing Cat
My first cat was not actually MY cat, he was my mother’s. Punkie (short for Pumpkin) was a seal-point Siamese born on Halloween. In the midst of my early childhood, he taught me that animals were beings rather than things – and that some things cannot be caught because you chase them. Sometimes, it’s completely up to someone other than you. Punkie lived to be around seventeen. There were many other friends after him – Cuddles, Lady, Tinkerbell, Booter, Barney.
I saw how they felt death coming and simply sat down to wait for him like a friend. They all taught me that mercy is mercy and that helping a friend find the end is not cruel. I know the signs well. I know the goodbyes. Three weeks ago, we saw Algie sitting down for death, we saw the life leaving his eyes, and we spent a long, long day saying goodbye. And it was harder to do than ever before. Because ending the suffering. It was something I had always understood, always agreed with it – but had never had to choose.
He had stopped eating. At first it was just his crunchies. But then it was the canned meat. I noticed the ingredients had changed. I thought he just wanted what he used to have. So we tried something else. It worked for a day. Then all he did was lick it. No water. No food. Soon, no movement. All he did was lay behind the chair in Trav’s office, and fade. So we made the appointment late in the day, wanting just a little more time. I cried. Al sat. We worked. Al sat. We took him outside. Al sat. We distracted ourselves a little. He sat. I put away his dishes and pillows. Al sat.
We gathered him in a blanket and drove him to the vet. I tried really hard not to look at the room. Where they brought us. And took his temperature. And told us he just had a fever.
Three weeks later, Al’s still here. His fever lasted a week and a half, and I’m still so unsettled by his pattern of ‘better, better, better, DEATH, better, sortof, maybe, better’ that I still can’t bring myself to say “HE’S CURED!” But he is here. And we can see the life in his eyes. So we’re counting our blessings and keeping our fingers crossed.
Jules Jewels: Julie & Julia*
Ok, I admit I was never a fan of Julia Child. And before tonight, I never heard of Julie Powell. But I think I am already in love with both of them if for no other reason than they make me feel like I’m not the only dreamer nutjob out there.
And for the pttttttthh! That’s this week’s word.
*A little shout out for Trav, who never knows which name I’m using. 
