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October 11, 2000

ACT VIII: Fear & Loathing in the E.R.

I couldn't breathe deeply. I puffed little shallow gasps and somehow knew I had to take a shower because I wouldn't be seeing one for a long time.

I knew I should probably go to the hospital, but I told Andy to go to work while I sat at my parents' house so they could baby-sit me. Maybe I would get better, I told myself.

As soon as my mom got a load of my shallow gasping, she called Dr. Margules. While we waited for him to call back, I perched tentatively on the edge of the big comfy chair in my parents' living room, for once secure in the knowledge that my dad wouldn't give me the boot and claim the chair for himself.

I felt simultaneous relief and fear when Dr. Margules called and told my mom to bring me in to the emergency room. I couldn't imagine functioning in the condition I was in for much longer; however, I wasn't thrilled with the prospect of my surgery being bumped up a week.

Three hours later I was finally sitting on a gurney in an examining room with Andy and my mom. I was hunched over, cross-legged, and yelling at Andy to stop making me laugh. I couldn't sit back. I couldn't sit up. And I couldn't laugh without shrieking in pain, so why wouldn't he stop?

A nurse came in and put a blood pressure cuff on my arm. Instead of pumping the little balloon by hand, she flipped a switch that would do it automatically and left my little cubicle.

Pressure, pressure, pressure, ow! The cuff had reached maximum density and it exploded off my arm, landing somewhere on the floor behind me. We all looked at each other in horror and waited for the nurse to come fetch it.

Soon enough, she opened the curtain and saw that my blood pressure arm was naked. When she saw the cuff lying on the floor (desolate, inflated, useless) she tisked in annoyance and flounced off, returning with a larger one. As she strapped it to my arm I asked,

"Did I, like, blow out of that one because my arm's too fat?"

"Yes!" she answered, still annoyed.

An uncomfortable silence was broken by Andy saying, "You and your big, meaty flap!" This comment normally would have made me laugh and cheered me right on up...but instead, my burst of laughter was followed by a scream of pain.

"Stop it! STOP IT! Why can't you STOP MAKING ME LAUGH??"

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" he told me, looking stricken.

My mom looked at him like she wanted to kill him.

"Dammit, Andy! I'm not kidding! IT'S NOT FUNNY! Fuck!"

He looked genuinely contrite and sorry and I realized that I didn't care if I had to have surgery that very moment. Nothing could be worse than the stabs of pain that were getting scarier by the hour.

After more x-rays and bloodwork, it was determined that I would have surgery that night. Doped up on morphine, I was given a ride to my new room on the trusty gurney.

"Wheeeee!" I tweeted as I reveled in being able to lie down for the first time in oh-so-long, the wind gusting through my hair, the visitors looking at me with concern as I sailed by on my magic gurney pushed by a very rotund man.

ACT IX: The Surgery

"Hello!" I announced loudly as I was driven by her and to the window bed. "I snore!"

"OK!" she said, glad to make my acquaintance.

I spread out in my bed, holding court and informing those present of my deep hunger until I was summoned for surgery. The sun was setting and I was whisked off to meet my fate on the floor below.

The hospital was quiet and felt deserted as I rode down the hall on my magical gurney, stuffing my hair into a cap and looking longingly at the nurses' station, filled with chattering, happy, gallbladder-issue-free women. When we arrived down in the operating room area, there was a small bustle of activity surrounding my room. People were strolling around, joking, eating, and generally ignoring me. I hated it. I wanted to run away. I felt sick with fear, certain that this time was going to be worse than any other.

The anesthesiologist greeted me and I decided he looked like Paul Newman with a beard. I clung to his hand when he shook mine and said, "Please... help me...I get so sick when I wake up from surgery."

"Well," he said kindly, chewing the last of a roast beef sandwich or something, "Thanks for telling me! I'll give you some anti-nausea medicine."

"I hate surgery," I told him. "I'm not good at it. I'm not."

"Don't you worry about a thing," he said as I was pushed into the operating room and shoved over onto the operating table.

After I was on the table, they had me hold my arms out to either side and it felt like they were strapping me down.

"You'll be out any second," Dr. Newman told me, injecting something into my IV.

Not surprisingly, I had a hard time shutting up.

"You know," I told him, struggling to get the words out through my six-inch thick tongue. "At the last surgery I had? The doctor played the Monkees while he worked on me. The Monkees! I mean, Jesus..."

And that's all I remember.

ACT X: Aftermath

"Patient is AMY LESTER. Pulse is BLAH BLAH. Blood pressure is BLAH over BLAH."

"Patient is AMY LESTER." God, will you shut up? I'm right here! I'm trying to sleep! "Pulse is BLAH BLAH." Jesus, lady, next time you're scheduled to work in the recovery room, lay off the Red Door, would ya? I'm gaggin' over here! "Blood pressure is BLAH over BLAH."

And so on.

Before I was fully awake, and before I wanted to take a trip, I found myself being transported back to my room. I tried to open my eyes and smile pleasantly (always having to be polite, always having to let people know I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm really fine), but couldn't do it. I zonked out until I heard Andy's voice.

"HI PIE!" He was at my side, getting in the way of my gurney getting into my room. "The doctor said you had ALL THESE GALLSTONES and one was blocking your bile duct and it was a good thing they're out! And Dennis came and took your mom home and I'm so glad to see you!"

I tried to smile at him, but then turned my head away and closed my eyes. Please let me go back to sleep. Please let me go back to sleep.

I was able to get myself onto my bed, but my stomach felt tight and sore. I could taste the anesthesia, but for once I wasn't throwing up. As soon as I was safely in bed, I closed my eyes and turned my head to the window. I felt like crying.

I don't know how long Andy stayed before he left, but I was glad when he did. It was late and I wanted the lights off and to be left alone.

I never really got a chance to sleep because I was interrupted by a constant stream of medical personnel.

"Temperature."

"Pain meds."

"Shot."

"Vitals."

Then came the worst visitor wanting to do the worst thing to me.

"The doctor wants you to have a catheter."

I squinted at the clock. It was 4:30 a.m.

"What?"

"I'm going to put in a catheter. Doctor's orders."

"What? Why??"

"He doesn't want you to have to get up to go to the bathroom. So he wants you to have a catheter."

"Um, you know, I don't even have to go to the bathroom, and I really don't want it, so thanks anyway." I turned my head and pretended to go night-night.

She wasn't buying it.

"Please spread your legs."

I shall draw a curtain over what ensued next, the horrors of which I will most certainly need therapy to work out.

So I took to the hallways, wandering up and down, wielding an IV pole and a bag of my urine, my ass most certainly hanging out the back of my gown and my blood-circulation stockings beginning to unravel and sag as I trudged onwards, trying to make inaudible but cleansing farts.

I needed a break, so I returned to my room and watched George Bush on Oprah, and I was surprised to find that he didn't make me release waves of gas because he is just about the slimiest man I've ever seen and he literally made me crampy. Or maybe that was just my gas. Hard to tell.

Sometime before lunch I finally persuaded a nurse to rid me of my catheter, and just as that little matter was taken care of, Dr. Margules arrived to take me for a walk.

He described the masses of stones they had to removed, and how they had to put my gallbladder back because there were so many stones that it wouldn't fit out the little hole they had carved in my stomach. He was very pleased with the whole thing, and I was more than a little queasy and I wished he would stop and just tell me to go home already. He said he'd come back after dinner and if I had been a Farty Marty, I could leave.

The afternoon passed, but the gas didn't. Still, at dinnertime, Dr. Margules decided to let me leave as long as I promised to take a laxative of some sort upon arriving home. I said there was nothing I'd rather do, and I hurried into my civilian clothes and let Andy whisk me away.

And he did.

And I'm fine.

And I'm glad.