Looking back over the last week

By the way, the title of the previous blog is a theft from Christopher Moore’s “The Stupidest Angel” In Chapter 15, all hell breaks loose. Chapter 16 consists completely of “Well, *that* happened.”

It is Tuesday night, a full week since my surgery. I am still at my brother Mike’s house and expect to be here until Thursday morning.

Today, I spent the day alone and took a shower, so I will do fine on my own. If I went up and down the stairs once, I did it about 10 times. I took a walk around the cul de sac my brother and sister-in-law live on and I power napped. It was tough work, but I was up to the job.

All I have taken for the pain today is Tylenol extra strength. I am also on antibiotics. As far as the abdomen and surgical incision, I ache, but it is not really painful. I do have to plan out moves like standing up from a chair, especially a couch, but I am able to maneuver myself around OK. Curiously, walking up stairs (and I normally run) is easier than walking down stairs. I was expecting the reverse. Sometimes I take it one step at a time (put left foot on step, put right foot on same step, repeat), sometimes I do better than that (put left foot on step, put right foot on next step, repeat).

The bane of my existence and the source of most of my discomfort are the three surgical drains that are still attached to me.

(GROSSNESS ALERT!!

A short diversion on the purpose and substance of surgical drains: Frequently after major surgery, the surgeon wishes to ensure that fluids do not collect in the surgical area or along the incision. These pockets of fluid are usually lymph and a bit of blood and whatever. Fluid build up can cause pressure on the incision, it can become infected, and is not a good thing.

A surgical drain is essentially a plastic tube with one end in the surgical field or along the incision and the other end routed out of the body to a clear plastic bulb about the size and general shape of a hand grenade. The fluid collects in the bulb instead of the incision and everyone is happy. The patient, or a nurse if you are still in the hospital, empties out the drains two or three times a day and measures the output.

So I have three ball-like contraptions dangling from plastic tubes coming out of the lowest part of my abdomen. They are sutured in place and I can pin them to my clothing as long as I pin them lower than where they exit.

I shall be blunt. I feel like a man with three testicles. These #$%^%@* things interfere with walking, are uncomfortable when they are resting against my leg, are uncomfortable anywhere else, and are the biggest pain in the ass of this whole experience. End of alert.)

I have an appointment Friday morning with Dr. Schwartz and, please dear baby Jesus, he will remove them then. This depends on how much fluid is still being collected.

So, where shall I start on the whole surgical experience?

First and foremost, New York Presbyterian Hospital is the most professional and best-run hospital I have ever been in. Everyone who came to visit me commented on how clean and nice it was. From the surgeons to the cleaning staff, everyone was cheerful and eager to help me get better. Even the doctors asked me if there was anything I needed.

I had hot and cold running medical students seeing me several times a day. NYP is the teaching hospital of Cornell’s medical school (excuse me, the Joan and Sanford I. Weil Medical College of Cornell University) and I had these three sweet kids looking in on me. Their main job was to take me for walks, including on Wednesday, the first day after surgery.

The student I got to know best was Ida Wong, a graduate of the University of California at San Diego. I asked her why she was going into medicine. She told me she decided to be a doctor because she came down with leukemia while she was a teenager. Ida was cheerful, funny, scary bright, and very nice. She will make a superb doctor. Her cohorts were Jake McSparron (I think I got his name right) and Veronica, whose last name escapes me completely. Jake was a card. As Ida and Veronica were helping me out of bed for the first time, for my first walk, he said he wanted to stretch because he didn’t want to pull a hamstring keeping up with me.

Now, down to the nitty gritty.

I had to be at NYP at 7:15 a.m. last Tuesday. On Monday, Dr. Luo, Dr. Caputo’s associate called me and asked me if I had any last minute questions, which I did.

My brother Mike drove me in and we went to the Admit-Day surgical unit. I told Mike to stick around for about 45 minutes and to go home once I was settled in. I spent too many hours waiting at hospitals during surgery while Bernie was alive and there is almost not really good reason to do it.

I put on the hospital gown and took off my watch and glasses and put them in the duffle bag containing all my stuff. They weighed me. I waited. Several other people were meandering around in hospital gowns. It was the world’s most boring pajama party.

At around 9:30, I was told that Dr. Caputo was done with his previous surgery and I walked down a couple of hallways to the surgical suite. No wheelchair, no gurney, just me walking. Again, stand around and wait.

Dr. Caputo came out in the hall and we chatted for a bit. I asked a couple of last minute questions and we chatted.

Dr. Schwartz came around and I stepped into the operating room so that he could mark up my belly with hieroglyphics or graffiti.

My last memory is getting up on the table and saying something about the egg-crate foam mattress. I don’t think I finished the sentence.

My next memory is being in the recovery room and being told that everything was very clean. I felt like a dump truck had run over me several dozen times but even then I thought that it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting and as long as I laid in the slightly head-up, slightly foot-up position I was in, I would be fine.

What I didn’t know was that it was around 9:30 at night. My brother Mike had started to get worried around 3 p.m. when he hadn’t heard anything. Dr. Caputo called him a couple of hours later to give him a report.

My friend Lori Beninson is an EMT at NYP. Actually, I think she is in charge of EMTs there. She knew I was having the surgery and stopped by the recovery area a couple of times and started to get worried when I didn’t show up by around 5. I finally showed up and started to come out of the anesthesia

The next day I was pretty groggy. I was never really awake, even during the walk, but I was never really asleep. The first thing I know is that Dr. Frank Chervenak pops in to see me with a big grin and the news that Dr. Caputo thought everything had gone extremely well. Frank is Judy Chervenak’s husband and is also head of OB/GYN at NYP and Weill Cornell.

Frank popped in to see me almost each day I was there and, each day he came, he brought me a Diet Coke and the New York Times. He is just the happiest, nicest man on the planet and I could not quite tell him that I hate diet soda. (Friday and Saturday, he skipped since he was taking his oldest son down to Atlanta to visit Emory University. I joked with Judy that he was going to visit the Coca Cola headquarters. He actually did.)

A couple of hours later, Judy popped in to say hello. She also brought me the most beautiful scarab necklace to replace the one that she gave me from Egypt that I briefly thought I lost. She was scared that she had given me bad luck Talk about friends!! If I so much as whispered that I might need something, Judy went and got it. I would kiss the ground that those two walk on if I could bend over that far without hurting.

I spent most of Wednesday in a blur, partly because of the meds and partly because my duffle bag still had not been brought to my room and I didn’t have my glasses. The bag finally arrived.

I was off to a good start and things went better from there. Friends stopped in to visit. Joan brought me lovely white flowers and read to me from a hysterically funny obit in the New York Times. Yes, she came to my hospital bed to read me an obituary, but she knows I love interesting ones. This was the widow of a man named Nudie who was famous for creating over-the-top rhinestone suits for country musicians. Her name was Nudie, too.

That evening, my cousins Virginia, Denise, and Michele came by with my Uncle Micky. They brought this rabbit doll that sang and danced to “Singing in the Rain.” And they sang and danced as they brought it in. I had to beg them to stop because it really hurt when I laughed.

I shall continue this tomorrow.