Moving the Needle

Hockney

It was a long day.  All the signs were ominous.  We drove to the surgical center through a downpour and flooded streets.  Full moon.  And when I got there, they told me my anesthesiologist was named Dr. Moriarity.  Moriarity!  That was Sherlock Holmes archrival.  So I said. 

"You're the second person today to mention that," said the attending nurse.  

The doc's P.A. came in to explain what was going to go on that day.  Of course.  I asked if I was going to be able to walk after the surgery.  

"Sure.  He is just removing something under the skin. . . . "

I did see the doc just before they took me in for surgery.  He was his usual taciturn self.  He looked, maked my leg, and said he would have to put in "permanent stitches."  I guessed that meant the kind he would have to remove.  

When they wheeled me into the surgical room, I began to quiver and shake uncontrollably.  I couldn't stop.  It was embarrassing.  The anesthesiologist was not there.  I had met her earlier, but it was a man who said he'd be administering the anesthesia.  Probably a P.A.  

"Are you cold," he asked me.  

"I think it is probably anxiety," I confessed.  

"Oh, here, let me give you something for that."

That is the last thing I remember.  I went into surgery at around 1:30.  I came to in the recovery room around 3:30.  That seemed like a long time to me.  As I came to, I was shivering and quivering again. There were two nurses asking me if I was o.k.  

"I can't quit shaking," I mumbled.  

"That's normal coming out of the anesthesia."

"Really?"  

I've been under many times before and don't remember ever quivering.  It was taking me long time to come to.  I was the last patient of the day, and I think the staff was eager to close up shop.  

"Do you have any pain?"

My leg was stinging.  

"A little."

"On a scale of one to ten."

I thought a minute.  "Two."

Then they had me stand up to sit in a chair. 

"Ow--it's a five now."

"O.K." said the nurse.  "I'll give you something."

She put a syringe in my IV tube.  

"What is that?"

"Dilaudid."

Oh, man. . . I like the Dilaudid.  But that was it.  No opioids for home.  It was going to be all over the counter shit from here on.  WTF?

I was still loopy when they brought my mother in.  A nurse began explaining my post-op care to her, but she couldn't hear, so I said, and I answered all the questions.  My mother would have been confused by it all anyway.  

The doctor never came to tell me how it went.  I'm guessing he was in a hurry to get home.  I did not think that bode well.  

The nurse told my mother to get the car and pull up to the front door.  She helped me dress, then wheeled me out I a wheel chair.  It was only raining slightly at the time.  It was a straight shot to my mother's house, about two miles.  With luck, we got home without incident.  

I was loopy for most of the rest of the night.  I hadn't eaten or drunk anything for around twenty-one hours, so I made a can of chicken soup.  As it heated up, I put two eggs in and turned up the heat until I had chicken noodle egg-drop soup.  It was thick and chewy.  I had it with crackers and a small coca-cola. It went down well.  A bit later, I took a pee.  There.  Two things to check off the watch list.  I didn't have nausea and I had "voided."  I felt a tightness and a stinging in my calf as I walked.  I assumed it was the stitches.  

My cousin called.  My mother answered on speaker, so I could hear the conversation.  My mother said, "They took the cyst out, so everything is good now."

Yes, she wanted it to be.  But then I heard her say something that she hadn't said before. 

"The nurse came out and told me that they had to make a big hole," she was making the size of it with her thumb and forefinger though my cousin couldn't see, of course, "and she said that they had to do reconstructive surgery."

My eyes and brain were popping.  What the fuck did that mean?  Nobody had told anything to me.  When my mother got off the phone, I questioned her.  She said the same thing and made the same sized hole with her fingers.

"That's what the nurse told me."

I didn't think that was the best news of the night.  What could I do?  I got another small coca-cola and settled back into the remainder of my Dilaudid buzz.  

After dark, I was getting hungry, but my mother hadn't anything for me to eat.  She doesn't own milk.  There is no coffee or tea.  She did have some of that shit they call peanut butter, Peter Pan with sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oil, some other shitty oil I can't remember, and palm oil.  Why are they allowed to call it "peanut butter"?

I spied a tangerine and ate that.  Then I started drinking water.  There were left over cans of sparkling water that I had brought some time ago.  I tried talking with my mother, but she couldn't hear most of what I said and I would have to repeat it in a shouting voice.  I gave up and turned on the commercial laden news.  

I checked my phone.  The only two people who were checking on me were people from work.  One was the woman who kind of almost asked me out.  She had texted the day before I went to surgery out of the blue to see how I was doing.  I hadn't heard from he in about a month.  So I told her my tale.  She was super duper sweet and wanted me to know all the things she would do for me from taking me to surgery to getting me groceries, etc.  Now she was checking up to see how I was doing.  I felt like I was getting healing vibes.  

The other text was from my old secretary.  She said she heard I was sick and wanted to know what was up.  I asked who told her.  She told me the woman who kind of almost asked me out had told my replacement at the factory for whom my old secretary now worked.  

"I don't want to get anyone in trouble," she proffered, "but. . . . "

"No trouble.  She has been super sweet.  I will copy the text I sent to her about it all before I went to surgery because I am too loopy to try to write it all out again."

And so I did.  

I didn't get another text from her.  

Later that night, one of the gymroids texted to see how I was doing.  It was on a group chat, so another one texted in, too.  

And that was it--work people who I don't see any longer and two gymroids.  

"My girlfriend should have taken me," I told the gymroids, "and should be taking care of me now, but. . . ."

Yea.  My mother talked about how much help Ili had been after my wreck.  I think she was thinking the same thing.  

But, "A man alone ain't got no bloody fucking chance."

Especially in today's market.  "Back in the days of Good Old America," as the memes go, they would have admitted me into the hospital, prepped me for surgery in my room, taken me to surgery, and brought me back to the room for the evening to make sure I was o.k. and to give me whatever meds I needed.  The Medical Industry, however, works from a bigger profit motive that seems more like something in a developing country where you go sit in a cattle pen waiting to see a doctor in the clinic who does whatever then shows you the door.  Maybe India would be a good model.  

"If anything goes wrong, if you can't void that night, if you nausea or vomiting, or if you see any seepage through the bandaging, call your doctor.  Try to keep the leg elevated.  Eat lightly.  Clear fluids."

Right?  What do you think would happen if I called the doctor's office at midnight if shit went wrong?

"If this is an emergency, call 911."

But with all of my mother's intensive medical training, I guess they thought I'd be fine.  

There is nothing in any of this that is giving me confidence or making me feel good.  Much the opposite, I'd say.  

My beautician is getting a hip replacement.  It is also going to be outpatient.  WTF?

When my mother had me, there was a three day hospital stay.  Now they let the mother and child stay for one.  That is a good metric, I think.  If anything goes wrong, "you know what to do." 

As I watched the commercial news stations, almost every commercial was for some medical drug or device.  

Now we have RFK jr.  And now he has Casey Means.  Michelle Goldberg has a nice column on that in today's Times (link).  

I think we are all fucked.  Some just don't seem to mind.  

Whatever.  Once you are in the hands of the medical system, you are done for anyway.  Your life will not be your own.  I'm going to start my meditation and groovy vibing and try to align my chakras and get my auras straight on my own, for I am, really, what I've got.  I need to center myself in a way I've not been centered for a very long time.  I've been living on anxiety and adrenaline for too long now.  I'm going to have to embrace myself and what the great void of the cosmos has in store.  I DO know for a fact that meditation can change your mental state, that you CAN move the needle into a sort of Nirvana.  I've seen it done with brainwave machines in psychology labs with kids who've had no prior training.  They could change the temperature in their bodies just by concentrating on moving a needle.  Some were better at it right out of the gate than others, but they could all do it, each and everyone of them.  

I should be able to do it, too.  

And so, for a little mood music, something to help me move the needle.  Maybe it can move your needle, too.