Subtitle: The Art of Being a Healing Presence, Part 1
(I began reading this assigned book last night. It brought forth the following memories.)
"If you'd have walked after your surgery, you wouldn't be in this condition." Those were the unbelievably sharp words coming from the mouth of my nurse, who was "helping" me circle the nurses' station while I used my I.V. pole as a support. I was much too sick to respond and defend myself.
There I'd been, 30 years young, lying in a hospital bed in all manner of unexplainable pain, with morphine dripping into my vein. My father had pulled his chair up to my bedside, turned to my mother and said, "What do you want me to do?" She gently and encouragingly said, "Just hold her hand." I hadn't held my father's hand for a very long time, but now it meant everything to me, as my world was crashing down and there didn't seem to be anything I could do to stop it.
It was the fall of 1990 and I'd had a minor same-day surgery, the exact surgery I'd had 6 years earlier. Back in 1984, I had been struggling with secondary infertility and my doctor wanted to "take a look around" at my nether parts to see if he could find anything obvious that would explain my inability to become pregnant again. I'd had my first child in 1981 and, by this time, we were plenty eager to have another. The surgery didn't reveal any obvious signs other than some minor scar tissue, but it was successful in two ways. One, it was a not-so-happy trigger for my irritable bowel symptoms that had been well under control for quite some time, and two, I conceived the very next month. WAHOO!!
So here I was again, exactly 6 years later, same surgery. Now, though, there was an even more glaring gap because our "baby" was well into her 6th year of life. However, this time I was prepared so that the surgery would not trigger those nasty IBS symptoms. And you know what? I was successful at that! In fact, I felt so fantastic that I offered to have the missionaries over for dinner less than a week later. I cleaned, I shopped, I cooked. I was incredibly delighted that things were remarkably better than the first go-round.
But then. And that is a really big THEN.
My doctor had called two days earlier to check up on me, letting me know he was leaving town. He was nearly as pleased as I was that I was feeling so well and that I hadn't had the same unhappy reaction to the surgery that I'd had years before. All was well and off he went.
Two days later, I was writhing in pain, completely clueless as to what could be wrong.
In the afternoon, my husband arrived home from work, scurried around packing his bag and hunting for his camping gear. He was a Boy Scout leader and he and the boys, who were running around wildly right outside my bedroom window, were taking off for an overnight camp out. Finally, after observing me and hearing my explanation of this horrid pain, he decided he shouldn't go. (Very good thinking, Mike!) We called my doctor's partner, Dr. M., for advice. He gave a simplistic explanation, telling me to take some Advil.
It. Did. Not. Help.
By midnight, the pain became bigger than me and we decided that a trip to the ER was in order. I could barely walk, but I managed to get myself out to the car and my husband drove carefully to avoid as many bumps as possible. Lucky for me, it was a slow night at the ER. Unlucky for me, they were less than helpful. They seemed bent on quizzing me about "what my husband had done" and continually wanted him to leave my side so that they could get the "straight truth" from me. I couldn't think of anything worse than for them to send my only comfort away from me. Somehow I convinced them that he had done nothing, that I had been recovering from surgery and something seemed to have gone haywire. Really haywire.
They took some blood, poked around a little, asked some questions, and finally gave me a pain pill. I laid on the hard narrow gurney, inquiring as to when the pain pill should kick in because I was getting no relief at all. "Oh, maybe 30 minutes." It had already been more than 30 minutes. They decided there was nothing else to be done, it was time for me to go home. By now, I couldn't walk, so I crawled out of the hospital. As we made our way along, my husband noticed the ER doctor sitting casually with his feet propped up on the desk, the newspaper spread out in front of his face. That image is forever burned into his memory.
I somehow made it back into the car and we drove home. It was now after 2 a.m. and I was back in bed. My husband decided that a call to my mom was in order. I will always remember the moment that she arrived, came into my room in the middle of the night, smelling like her favorite Victoria's Secret hand lotion, wearing one of her soft blue silk shirts with big flowers on it, and leaned down to give me a mother hug while we both cried. No mother wants to see her child in pain; they may as well be the one with the illness or injury because they feel the pain just as keenly.
She sat at my side, wiping my brow and wringing her hands until morning, when my husband called the Dr. M. once again, telling him that he needed to see me. He said fine, bring her over. By now the pain was so incredibly intense that not only could I not walk, but I did not want to be touched at all. My brother in law came over and devised a plan. They would bring one of our wooden kitchen chairs to my bedside and allow me as much time as I needed to get myself onto it. Eventually I did, and then he and my husband grabbed onto the legs and carried me through the house, down the stairs and out to the door of the car, all the while NOT touching me. It was brilliant, but it was awful. I'd like to say that "everything was awesome", but in truth, everything was AWFUL.
We made our way to the doctor's office, which was conveniently located right next door to the hospital. It was 9 a.m on a Saturday. My husband went inside, asking Dr. M. if he could come out to the car. The response was to have me come in, to which my mild-mannered husband replied, with a fist slam on the doctor's desk, "She cannot come in. She needs to go the hospital." With a roll of the eyes, the Dr. M. said, "Okay, take her over there."
I was admitted, gowned up, and put on morphine. My slim body was now misshapen with a protruding belly that seemed to grow larger by the hour. No one knew what was wrong and no one was doing anything to find out, thanks to a doctor that did not know me and seemed to believe I was making this all up. The hospital staff acted accordingly.
After a few hours, my nurse came into the room and, with a less than sympathetic voice, said, "Let's get you up. You need to walk."
To be continued . . .
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