In Stitches

I had an operation. Strange to write that but then, the entire process has a sense of other-person-ness. Nothing major, exactly. A friend explained that MINOR surgery is what happens to other people- MAJOR surgery is when it happens to you. Frankly I think major should have left a more impressive dent.

I had my gall bladder removed. It seems somewhere along the line I collected 4 stones in it (had I a choice I might've opted to carry them in a change purse but no one asked), they had lodged themselves in a bile duct and caused more than a few minor discomforts. It took some time to diagnose and for awhile it was thought I had an ulcer, acid-reflux- the darling of the over-the counter set (five year olds learn to spell Prilosec and Nexium right after McDonald's which is good because my feeling is that one eventually leads you to require the other- you do the math) and I had myself convinced, as I have before, that I was swallowing some pressing emotional issue, I have spent the past 9 months or so poking my veins for blood tests and my psyche- for tears. I ate well and I talked- to my therapist, to VLH-poor thing I told him everything I could think of that might be bothering me- as it didn't amount to a hill of beans all it did was exacerbate an overwhelming sense of foolishness and then, the day after I spilled my emotionally puny guts of every dopey thing that I thought I might be holding back a sonogram revealed the four stones. Confession may be good for the soul but it's crap when trying to gather the tattered shreds of your feminine mystique- I was about as fatale as a bowl of rice krispies and considerably soggier.

I wasn't in the mood to "wait and see" when the next attack happened. Work demands that I travel and the idea of a gall bladder attack in mid flight was too awful to contemplate. My doctor (imagine Boris Badinov with an irrepressible need to flirt- that's my doc) said that the pain from one of these attacks was comparable to childbirth. I had to agree, but only if the kid was wearing a suit of ground glass. So on Wednesday, I called the surgeon and made an appointment to meet him on Friday and an appointment on the following Monday to have the gall bladder out. Gallstones may grow IN this girl but no moss- I was a rolling gallstone.

I know I should have done research on the surgeon but- in my head there were only 2 things I wanted- he couldn't smell funny and he needed to resemble Marcus Welby. (Google it- if you are too young to know who Marcus Welby was then- you may indeed be too young to be reading this- Nic, ask your mom. ) I am certain there is some set of criteria I should have followed but- it was my gall bladder and my rules. He had no smell whatsoever and had the requisite pink cheeks, glasses and white hair so- so I took the plunge.

Aside from an eyelid surgery I have never had anything removed or altered internally without a couple of glasses of wine and candlelight so I approached the event with little or no preconceived notions or expectations. I had viewed a couple of websites about the surgery but as the description of the procedure turns into a B horror film when it's YOUR belly button being entered I closed the window so fast the pop-ups didn't even have time to come up and cookies could find no purchase on my browser. I kept busy all weekend spending time with the visiting Maryland cousins and distracted myself with a wild weekend of shoe shopping- shoe BROWSING actually as I didn't buy anything for myself- obviously though I was in denial I must have been more than a bit preoccupied to leave Nordstrom's without one single cute pair of something in a shoe box.

Denial served me all the way through the see-you later kiss I gave VLH when I left the hospital waiting room (I gave this my full attention- some kisses are more important than others) and went into an altered state. The only way I was getting into the hospital gown and robe and sickly flesh colored socks was to pretend I was dressing someone else. Here is a note for hospitals- sick people do not need to feel worse by being dressed in a burkah. I looked at the clothing they handed me and thought- this could make a laundry basket look dowdy. Drab would have been a step-up fashion statement and the poofy hat... yeesh. How about something a bit more like- well how about an adult version of the knit caps they put on newborns? It could be a sort of Seattle surgery look- grunge meets O.R. . Sadly no one asked me and Mr. Blackwell was nowhere in sight. As the nurses and doctors were similarly dressed-(at least scrubs have a waist tie and a back!) I was ok to an extent, when in Rome, you know. A word to the nurses wearing the flowered scrubs- it's not a fashion statement when you wear them- instead of looking like a medical professional you look like a Laura Ashley living room suite.

The surgeon stopped by and asked me how I was - I'm a little scared I said- "Don't be" he said and tapped me twice in the way I tap a chicken breast to test for doneness- Oh, well, that was solved (sheesh). The anesthesiologist stopped by- his name was Dr. Wu. I flashed on my friend Sharon telling me about the culture of drugs immortalized in the lyrics of Fagin and Becker (Steely Dan) and smiled. He surely would not leave me conscious for the proceedings- I would worry about waking up when it became necessary- and not one moment sooner.

I remember the operating room was cold. And much more room-like...where was the gallery (too many medical shows...)? I remember a heated blanket on my legs and missing my red wool socks. I remember the anesthesiologist peeling one arm off my chest and laying it to one side and the needle prick. I remember the nurse peeling back the second arm from my body for a blood pressure cuff and then the table fell away...

"This is the hard part" she said moving me from the operating table to the gurney- a table designed to make you feel like meat on a slab. And then helping me to a lazy-boy recliner chair in a room with curtained partitions. Pain radiated from my center- it felt like kittens trying to claw their way out of my mid-section but thanks to the pain meds while I did have pain I was zonked-out enough to believe it was happening to someone else. And then they brought VLH in. I think I may have worn the face he had on in the presence of a sick loved one but I had never seen a face like that aimed at me. It was a combination of relief, love and fear. Happy I was alive, and myself, and scared that there wasn't anything he could do for me. Had I the words (or a tongue) at that moment I would have told him he did everything I needed just by walking into the room.

And then I was home. The floaty sensation of the after-effects of anesthesia and the addition of Vicodin made the next 12 hours a blur. There were two things that stuck out- I was NOT prepared to be unable to sit up by myself. No one told me. I felt like something out of Kafka lying on my back limbs flailing unable to rise and not being a good sport about it either. The second thing was ... a bit about this particular laparoscopic surgery- the upside is- teeny little cuts. Old school gall bladder surgery left you with a scar 12-14" long. Laparascopy leaves a little scratch about 6" above your navel and two holes to the right of the belly button that look like you were poked with knitting needles. There is also a cut inside the belly button- I haven't looked- have you ever TRIED looking in your belly button? Not possible. Well- when they make the small incisions they go in with a camera and light to find your gallbladder- I imagine it is like human spelunking. In order to get some space to work they puff your belly up with air, to get a better look. I guess they get as much air as they can out before they close you up (imagine the belly button as the opening in a balloon making that pttttttttttttttthhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhppppppppp noise as air escapes- I did and found out laughing hurt too). Late at night when I woke that first night I could hear myself ...fizzing. In addition to the pain of things being cut and resewn internally you get little pains- bubbly pains. While the surgery pains seemed bearable the pricking pains were...disturbing. Not really pain just- uncomfortable. Somewhere that first night as I drifted in and out a thought came to me, an image really of dozens of tiny little old ladies sitting inside my belly putting me back together. It's funny how clearly I could see them- hairnets, large lensed glasses magnifying watery blue or brown eyes and flowered house dresses, droopy support hose and carpet slippers sitting in chairs with skeins of pink yarn in baskets by their sides determinedly knitting my insides back together. I would feel the tiny bubbly pains and pictured one of the ladies dropping a stitch or having a slip of the needles- perhaps knitting when she should have purled.

I spent about 2 days in bed- I didn't realize I could do that but it was actually pretty easy. I had lots of help, J and Z babysat and though VLH had to carry on with the business of belt vending he checked in frequently, more often than not finding me half asleep. Day and night sort of blurred and sometimes in waiting for the right time to take my meds I would lie in bed feeling my pain and the little ping and poke and it helped through the discomfort to think of the ladies pulling me back together one stitch at a time.

Each day I felt a bit better, by day three I was out of bed for several hours at a stretch, by day four I could sleep on my left side and by day five my left and even found myself able to head over to the doctor with Z that day. The thing about the process was that just living and doing really small things seemed like such a triumph. The first time I stood up by myself I thought I could easily imagine how a gymnast feels when she sticks a landing- 4.0. Things like eating, or drinking were intensely wonderful and even my first post surgery hug from VLH (imagine a big teddy bear trying to hug a soap bubble- he was that tentative) felt incredible. Lying next to each other at night I was especially grateful for skin- his and my own.

As ever I rushed back into life and work. Even then the little knitters held me in check- whenever I overexerted myself I would feel a poke, right in the navel that said "Hey- still workin' here" I pictured now just one lone knitter stitching cleanup by the light of a bare bulb in my stomach.

I am now about 11 days past the surgery- the band-aids came off and then the steri-strips (tapes that replace stitches in this kind of surgery) and my biggest dilemma became the inability to get the adhesive off my belly. "Try acetone" suggested Syd. "You want me to pour NAIL POLISH REMOVER on an open cut???" I said. I forget Syd did her post grad work at Lucretia Borgia University.

Friendly advice aside, as I said it all feels like something I watched someone else do. Aside from not being able to eat very much (not the worst thing) as a full tummy doesn't feel so great I have most of my energy back. Unlike other times in my life when I start to fade- I let the dishes or the writing or the drawer reorganizing wait and take a little lie-down. You often hear the saying- comfortable in your own skin...for me it's even better, thanks to the care of many specialists, I am grateful in mine.

There is no spoon

Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon boy: Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

Ah, The Matrix. One of those terrific movies with a lovely shivery plot twist that leaves us simultaneously fooled and delighted. That delight had definitely waned by the 350,000th Keanu Reeves "Whoa" in Matrix 3 but still I paid to get in to see them- still feeling foolish, but not quite as delighted.

I mention this because I am getting ready to do something...kind of big for me and the way I deal with that is to distract myself-HARD. I can get wrapped up in the littlest thing. Like Proust's madeleine, I can be transported into some deep memory with just a tiny nudge from the corporal world. In this case- a spoon.

I looked into my silverware drawer tonight. My silverware drawer is the utensil representation of the apocalypse- the silverware sorter-thing sits atop a mind boggling array of other kitchen utensils- garlic press and cherry/olive pitter, one small heart shaped cookie cutter, various spatulas and wooden spoons, measuring spoons and knives. You may ask youself...Knives? Loose in a drawer? Fear not. It is ever a joke among the near and dear- pretty much anyone who has ever cooked by my side in my kitchen that you can't break skin with any of my knives. Were I in a morbid state wishing to off myself with any knife in the drawer it would be a two person job. Me to hold the blade to my wrist and a second extremely determined person willing to lean on it- for a really long time. VLH got me a lovely set of knives for Hanukah, in their very own block, knowing there isn't an inch of space in that drawer for so much as a paring knife. There is, however, one small space in that drawer, the space where soup spoons should be.

The soup spoon space holds just two spoons- one long handled iced tea spoon my ex-roommate Camille left in lieu of three months rent and a big silver serving spoon someone left one Thanksgiving- I just don't know who-or I'd give it back. I know full well somewhere in the world there is an old-school felt-lined silverware box with a slot waiting for it. I pause for a second's guilt, then move on- this was not the piece of minutiae that would distract me tonight. Staring into the pathetic little spoonless void - I thought of China.

My sister and I loved spoons- specifically soup spoons, when we were about 4 years old. Not for eating- soup spoons were too big to fit in our mouths and held just enough liquid that if we did try using one we were guaranteed a baptism with every spoonful. Cindee and I liked soup spoons for digging.

I guess most kids had shovels- little plastic ones, probably purchased with a bucket for the beach. We didn't. I doubt at four years old that we felt the lack- but even given the choice I am certain we would have picked a nice hefty spoon with an ornate curliqued handle over some flimsy store-bought digging implement. We had serious plans. We had seen it on television- I am pretty sure inspired by Rocky and Bullwinkle or Mr. Magoo or perhaps Peabody and his boy Sherman- we wanted to dig to China.

We would have to beg my grandmother for spoons. It wasn't that she would deny us anything. When it came to my sister and I "no" just wasn't in her vocabulary. She loved us that much. As our primary caregiver she had to choose between ten minutes to herself of peace and quiet and never seeing her silverware again. You see, while we were big on begging, As twins we had the added advantage of two against one- tiny eyes welling up with tears, each of us with two handfuls of her housedress hem we could beg for all we were worth. The problem was we NEVER brought the spoons back. Alas, she was putty in our hands. Inevitably she chose a few precious moments of silence and the joy she felt seeing us run laughing out the door and down the stairs to the 10 x 10 cement box that was our front yard. Later on she'd send my grandfather out, usually after dark, flashlight in hand muttering to himself in Yiddish, to locate the missing flatware. Unfortumately he was only successful about half the time- but he inevitably bore the brunt of my grandmother's fussing when the silver remained missing. I can't remember her ever yelling at us- her point of view wasn't that we had lost the spoons so much as he did't find them.

I remember those afternoons so clearly-the feeling of kneeling on the inevitably hard packed earth (my grandmother could say "no" to us if it rained and the ground was damp- she believed with all her heart that if girl children sat on wet, cold ground it rendered them sterile- we didn't argue with this as her delivery of this news was as grave as the six-o'clock news and while we weren't quite sure what sterile was it sounded like something that would require a bath. We were against that on general principal. I remember the dry dusty smell of the soil as we broke it and the slight moistness underneath and the occasional half an earthworm that lay beneath the crusty top layer. Pebbles and hard bits of earth would cut into our knees and when switching to the more comfortable seated position we'd grind the dust into the seats of our shorts and allowed errant bits of earth to find their way under the elastic leg of our flowered cotton panties. We would Stanley to my Livingstone and we would sit and dig and talk as if there were no one else in the world. My sister was my travelling companion- her conviction just as strong as mine in our ability to get to China before our grandmother called us for supper. I don't remember what we talked about- it was a long time ago. I like to think we imagined what it was like on the other side of the world. With me ever the talker and my sister as my most avid listener- I am sure I spent the time telling her with absolute surety that we would have no trouble talking to the people we met in China- after all, we talked to the waiters at the Canton Chop Suey restaurant and they always brought us extra fortune cookies. I had a list of questions- Did duck sauce actually come from ducks? Were Chinese eyes slanted because they squinted at the TV as my grandmother suggested? Could I get one of those hats? The questions never really got answered but they wound their way into the air as dusk settled and we felt the weight of borrowed time knowing any moment my grandmother would call us in and the record for "5 more minute" reprieves was three before she'd threaten to wake my dad from his post-work pre-dinner nap to come and get us.

We would trudge up the stairs dragging our filthy Keds and toting more soil than we ever dug out of the yard in our ankle socks. More often than not my grandmother would undress us in the front alcove shaking the dirt from our clothes out the door and brushing the dirt that wasn't firmly adhered off our squirming naked bodies before herding us off for a bath a deux. We would only be persuaded to actually enter the tub with copious amounts of Mr. Bubble sprinkled in it creating mountains of foam- half of which would fly out of the tub when we two filthy explorers jumped in simultaneously to prevent one or the other of us from defecting. More than once I know my grandfather had to chase one soapy naked escapee from the tub while my grandmother kept a glaring eye on the twin that didn't quite make it out the door.

And after the bath we'd lie awake in bed- whispering- slipped between my grandmother's impossibly soft faded cotton sheets under her fluffy feather quilts. Planning new expeditions, finding answers to the impossible questions and promises of new adventures just past the next morning's early light. We'd curl around each other and fall asleep with our breath warm in each other's ear, nestled like silver in a drawer. The world was a simple place where I could be happy. I had a spoon.