Leaving the Planet: Stryker Beds and Aliens, and a Brilliant Elf from the South

 After my first two operations, my Connecticut doctors knew they were out of their depth with whatever was happening, and they sent me to one of the top two specialists in "failed back surgeries" in the country. Dr. D. had all the patients on an entire floor of a small hospital outside of Boston. Boston was just under two hours away, so that was the final deciding factor to use him, rather than the other doctor, who was in D.C.

Daddy took me there, and when these two met there was some sort of unspoken recognition. They were only a month apart in age, and both had the demeanor of old-fashioned gentlemen and yet an undercurrent of something altogether outrageous. And they flirted the same way to young women--without an ounce of serious intent. (Dad philandered, but not with "children," as he put it. "I'm an SOB, but it's not about feeling young with young women. I'll let you know if I ever understand why I'm such a bastard."  But I digress. Big surprise.)

I met Dr. D. at the height of the foliage season.  I don't know why it has mattered to me that this was when I met him. Perhaps it's that I have started many changes of direction in Autumn. He had already read my file, examined the three discogram and myelograms I had had, and greeted me with, "It is one hell of a gorgeous day to be having to go through this much ... well. I should not use such language with a young lady whom I do not know." I think it was that he used the word "whom" that Daddy liked him so. I simply loved the kindness etched into his face. That, and the fact that this man had had six back surgeries himself in the forties, had studied in Paris to learn what they knew back then. Paris doctors had been the experts when he'd had his troubles.  He went into the field to spare patients the years of insanity he'd gone through; although, as he said, most of the time the damage that had been done by the time he saw patients led him to despair.

I was to be scheduled for three operations in one hospital stay at the end of March.  By this time, Mark and I had committed to one another, but were keeping it fairly low key.  I didn't want it official until I was finished with the surgeries. Dr. D. had pulled no punches about what was coming, and it was clear that every operation held danger. When I asked what the alternatives were, he held my hand and said very simply, "One of two things: paralysis or death. There is too much free-floating matter in your spinal canal, and there is some sort of hard matter slowly cutting your spinal cord in two.  We need to get in there and clean it out, my dear. Then we will know more about what the future may hold for you.  Not the news any 29 year old, vibrant young woman wants to hear." He turned to Dad and added, "Perhaps it is worse for you, sir. If she were mine, I'd be terrified, but really. I am the best there is, and so is the neurosurgeon and vascular surgeon I always have at my side. NOTHING I do will not have at least two more opinions behind it." Humility was not part of Dr. D's vernacular; he was a surgeon.

I knew my own body well enough to know that I was weakening almost daily, and that I could not bear the pain I was already in. I hated feeling drugged. I hated struggling simply to stand.  I wanted more out of life than what I had. I missed the freedom of being able to dance, to jump, to stretch. I missed feeling alive. I had already learned that I did not care to die, so it also angered me to know how fragile I was. I didn't DO fragile. But it was what it was. Dr. D. kissed my hand when I left his office and my father did something wholly uncharacteristic. He hugged Dr. D., and he said, "For God's sake, fix my little girl. You don't know what a prism she is."

"I rather think I already do, Sir," said my doc. "She will be far from home, but we'll take care of her."

I balked and said, "You two old farts stop talking about me like I'm eight. I'll be fine. When push comes to shove, you guys, the only one who can make sure I survive is ME."

That took them both aback, but they laughed. I did not see my doc again until it was time for the deed.

And So It began

One morning in mid-March my father loaded four down pillows in the car, and me on top of them, and we were off. The world was brown and raw, and the wind did not yet bear that something that promised Spring. It was still too cold.  Boston was no different, just a little grayer, maybe. While there were rumors of an early spring, such things held no meaning for me. I would not see the outside for at least six weeks, I knew.  My world would be white, hospital green, metal. That was my thinking.

I was immediately referred to as “221’s Back in Bed B.”  It took me very little time to impress upon the nurses that I was Jeannette, not some Back in Bed B. I was enough of a pro to realize that it was necessary to establish my identity immediately, before the gown and bracelet were on. I have never been known for my tact, so my approach went like this: "I swear to God, someone will be injured if you all come in here and refer to me that way one more time. I am not a difficult patient, but that's a deal-breaker. I AM JEANNETTE."

One of the nurses, Carol, ripped the sign from the foot of my bed and, in red marker, wrote, "Warning: Call by name, JEANNETTE." She told me that she would put it on my chart, but that I had better live up to my description of not being difficult. Fair enough. They called me by my name. I have no idea whether or not I was difficult.

 In 1982, insurance companies had not yet told us we were happier checking in the day of surgery, so I had the night to mentally prepare for surgery.  While I understand that some people prefer checking in a couple of hours before surgery, I have never liked it before a long operation. My stays were always weeks, not days, and I needed to claim my turf. (Most stays were four weeks.)  I don't like to think how things might have gone had I had surgery a decade later. One may argue that the old ways were worse; that my surgeries were too extensive, that they kept me in too long. For my part, five days after each operation, I needed transfusions, and nearly died three times when I lost blood. Had I been home when the bleeding came, well. I'd rather not think about it.  All I can say is that I had done what research I could and there was plenty of information on Dr. D. His reputation was worldwide. For this series of three operations, I had nine MD's working with him at one point or another.  I felt that I had all that medical science offered at the time.

... And I can walk, albeit shakily, thirty years later.  I am alive, thirty years later. Neither of these was considered an option for me back then. I am "one for the record books." I am grateful, and that is enough.

Gratitude Was the Least of It Then...

I hated having people with me the evening before surgery, so I was happy Bed A was empty.  I got to choose the bed by the window, where I looked out over lawn, and could just make out houses across the street. The world outside my window was just like the world at home, tired, gray, brown, begging for spring.  Just like me, perhaps.

 My room was blue, though -- a lovely switch from hospital sterility of Manchester. I began my rituals,  arranging the rolling bed table just so: small brush, make up, deodorant, soap, tooth brush, tooth paste, floss, pens, and  address book in the drawer. Pad and book on top. Check. Check. I made three phone calls: to Mark and the children who would become mine, to my parents, and to Jean Ellen. She was terrified I would never come home, and had told me she'd dreamed I was dead three times, so I left her for the last.

I told no one that I was afraid I'd not go home either. I could have done without hearing my sister's fear, but she had always felt she could and should tell me everything. Funny. There seemed to be so much I did not tell her back then. I wondered whether it would be easier for everyone if I didn't wake up. I had an expensive "hospitalization" policy that would cover a flat 80% of everything. Dad paid the premiums, but I would pay the debt. Jean Ellen had made it plain she really didn't want me living with her any more, but knew she had to "cope with it all" until I was married. Did Mark want to marry me out of pity? Did he just fancy the idea of catching and rescuing the wild woman? I was so far from home, why not just fly away altogether? Would anyone really care that much? I shook it off, and reminded myself of what I'd already survived, and that I wanted to live, if for no reason other than to show my Connecticut doctors they were wrong.

Finally, meditation and positive thoughts took me part of the way to peace, and demerol and a sleeping pill took me the rest of the way.

Prep or a Lack Thereof...

I was awakened at 5:00 for surgery prep and Doctor D. came into my room an hour before surgery.  He sang old songs to me and I joined in on the harmonies: "Seeing Nellie Home," and "I love you truly." We laughed and talked a bit. He was not conventional and he talked about his family, while I talked about my marriage coming up in six months. Dr. D. always seemed like an elf to me, the mornings of surgery, done up in his hospital greens. My magical, surrogate daddy elf. Maybe he crossed the professional lines, but he did so tastefully and it helped me every time.

He took my face in my hands, and with his southern accent said, "My sweet child, I've been on both sides of this, remember, and that's why I do this. You are too young to be going to another land, so don't let it enter your mind again. I will read the stupid list of what might happen because I have to, but after each one, say to your self, 'not happening.' We'll have only two surgeons with me this time. You'll wake up in your body cast."

"What cast?"

A cloud flew across his face and stopped in the middle. "One moment."

Apparently his orders to have me fitted for a cast the day before had been overlooked. Since I was going to wake up with my entire fusion having been removed and the bone in a bone bank, this was a rather significant oversight. I could hear his voice, but not his words in the hall. When he returned, the cloud was gone.

Some version or other of the bed.

"An unfortunate incident has occurred. I'm afraid you will have to wake up in a Stryker Bed, strapped down. I need for you to understand you will not be able to move your head or any part of your spine. In fact, you will only be able to move your forearms. Think of it this way. You'll be like a jellyfish, with no bony structure to support your lower spine. Don't be afraid, but you need to understand how it will be until your next surgery. We will have to fit you while you are lying down."

Fortunately, I didn't know enough to have this concern me. I figured I would focus on the living part. Besides, the drugs were kicking in and they came to wheel me downstairs. Dr. D. had to excuse himself to go get ready. The last thing I saw when I went under was his face, and I heard him singing. I believe I was smiling.

Life or Death In the Recovery Room

The first thing I saw was a nurse's face three inches from mine. "What are the medications you are allergic to?" The face had a pimple right at the left bow of its lip. The make up was caked on it grotesquely.  "Did you say dilantin?"

I knew that wasn't right, but I was in the recovery room and could not speak. My head said dilaudid, but my mouth said dilantin. Then I began to hallucinate. Monsters were in the corners and they were carrying dead animals toward me. I felt very odd, as if I was trying to leave myself. That nurse's face blocked the dead animals, but she was shouting. "Why didn't you SAY Dilaudid?"

There was a fight, someone was fired, the angry face went away and someone kind was there. But she said, "Dear, you are in shock and we cannot give you anything for the pain. The nurse gave you the wrong medicine. It is NOT your fault. But we have to keep you here for a few hours." Panic smacked me upside the head. I don't remember too much.

I was in the Stryker bed I think, because I could not move. I was on my back, tilted just enough so that I could see people running around, but as the hours passed, I thought that I was being eaten from behind.  Seventy-four pins ripping into my flesh and I was strapped down. "Jimmy, STOP IT!" I screamed. Three nurses told me there was no one there. It was the remnants of the medicine. I was feeling my staples. I was having strange thoughts of Jim. (Remember, this is pre-therapy. I did not remember what my childhood was.)  I was tied down and could not move.

I heard someone with my voice screaming, "Fucking zap 37 staples in God, stick HIM in a Stryker Bed with no pain meds and see how Well HE takes it!"

Apparently, the voice was mine, which surprised me. I knew it was because the kind nurse turned back to me, smiling, and said, "Trust me. If God were a man going through your hell, He'd be doing worse than you, honey. And guess what! You get your shot now!"

Blessedly, the world went away, and so did I. Unfortunately, I came back, and was still in the damned bed, and this was only day three.

Drugs, Detachment, and Drift

I woke up in the blue room at last. Home.  (Whenever I travel or spend the night someplace else, I refer to the place where my bed is as "home.") I've included a picture, but I am not sure whether that's how Stryker beds looked back then. I was in one, so the view was limited. I didn't know what day it was. Someone was in Bed A—The Hip in Bed A. I freaked her out for some reason. I know my head was strapped so I could not turn it. It all felt bizarre.

I remember the fitting for my body cast because every two seconds someone reminded me not to move my spine, which was tricky, since they had to measure me while I was lying on it flat, staples grinding into every nerve in my back. They would tell me to log roll over the tape,  so they could get the other end, and then would gasp because it was risky.

They commented on the enormous difference between my rib cage and waist and hips. I was somewhat emaciated by then, with a 23" waist, but STILL 37" hips! My rib cage itself was also 37 inches.  One particularly sensitive person said I had boney haunches, not hips.  Had I been able to speak, I'd have eviscerated him. They commented on how odd a shape the cast would be. All I knew was that I wanted this to be over.

One of the delights of being in hospitals too long is the tendency, after only a few days, to feel as if you disappear. I was only in day three, but people knew I would be there a long time and had already started talking around and through me. The scary thing now, as I look back, is that I had already begun to accept that. Besides, no one familiar was with me the day of that first operation.

In fact, I spent two more days completely alone. Mark came on the weekend and could not hide his horror of seeing me trussed up like a dinner meat. He tried to smile but it didn't work too well. Now, Mark always found it difficult to take command of a conversation. Once, during courtship,  we played a game with a bunch of friends where we all had to do animals that represented us. Mark walked around the room silently, pretending to munch pictures on the wall. He was a giraffe. People supposed it was his height. I looked at him and smiled, then said, "It's cause they do not make much sound."

Bingo. Mostly he read the paper and read the editorials aloud. Since I could not really turn my head, his voice was disembodied and hard for me to focus on. Occasionally he'd get up and lean over me, so that I could see his eyes, and he would say, "I love you." And he would find something on my face disturbing, then sit down again. He was there the whole day Saturday, but left that night and told me he would be back "when he could." He would have the kids the following weekend and felt he couldn't leave them. They were already bonding to me and were scared. He told me that he couldn't have them see me like this.

Fortunately, I could not shrug, but I'm afraid I would have. So I simply told him he was right, and pretended it was for the kids' sake. Somewhere inside, I probably knew that, but mostly all I felt was relief.

A couple of friends came Sunday but got bored after telling me the latest gossip in our group. They left in an hour because they had tickets to something or other in Boston. "We decided if we had to come into the hospital, we might as well reward ourselves for it all." They didn't come back. I didn't care.

Jean Ellen was the last to visit that weekend.  She was loath to leave, but staying was worse.  "Don't worry, Jetty. I'll let people know they shouldn't visit you. You can call, though, right? Please don't die."

I wanted to say, "Whatever." Instead I summoned a smile and said, "Well, I'll do my best."

That was at about 3:00. No one else came, and, once again, I was relieved.  Have you ever noticed that, if you are in the hospital long enough people come in expecting you to make them comfortable?  My friends wanted me to smile. They wanted me to tell a funny story, the way I had about other surgeries.  They were nervous about my immobility.  I was simply tired.  One friend actually said, "I came two hours here to see you; can't you manage to keep your eyes open?"

No. I couldn't. By day seven I had counted all the holes in the ceiling tiles. I had studied the linoleum floor tile patterns. I had recited every poem I knew in my head, and had moved on to commercial jingles. I figured I would save the Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins songs for later, and haul out Ronstadt and Gracie Slick when I was in real trouble.

I ate through a straw because the nurses did not have time to actually feed me. Sometimes they tipped me toward the table at the side, so that I could sort of slurp my food a bit, but never for long. One time Carol actually brought me a Friendly's Big Beef Bacon Cheeseburger, rare. At least I think that was it.  She cut it into little pieces and she fed me on her own dinner break.

Mostly, though, I was a roast suckling Jetty, being flipped to make sure the blood flowed properly. Once my call button dropped.  The Hip in Bed A had been moved out of the room that first night, so I was alone in the room all day, every day.  When the call button dropped I panicked. I could not see my bracelet to remember who I was. It was flipped, and I could not move the right arm and the left in a way so that I could really get at it.

The Alien In Bed B

My parents did not come when I was in the Stryker bed. Not once in two weeks. Mom's "knees were bad," Dad said. I had already given up trying to have anyone be honest about what "bad knees" were. Benders. Drunken stupors that had her on the floor, passed out until she woke up. Whatever.

My second surgery was not scheduled until the following Tuesday, so I was to remain in that bed, alone in my bright blue prison. Luckily, something about blood pressure happened, so that I was in and out of it, and had no awareness of time for a couple of days. I didn't ask.  Nurses came in to change blood bags and my sheets, to give me injections, to flip the bed, and to be sure water was in reach of my mouth. My entire left arm was strapped down to keep the IV site stable.  Sometimes they would read me the television guide so that I could watch t.v. if I wanted. The problem was that half the time they forgot to put my glasses on my face, so everything was a blur. Thirty years later, I feel the tightness in my chest, remembering.  Thirty years later, I still try to forget in a moment, days that lasted eternities.

I was an alien smack in the middle of a Dali painting for that week. Not even Mark came the following weekend. I had tried to make some calls, but everyone said I was weird, not myself. I became interested in finding numerical patterns in the number of venetian blinds per window, holes per tile, and the number of straps holding my body in place. I wondered whether this was some holy ritual of some kind before I would be jettisoned into space. One thing I could always count on in myself; I never became bored. If there was a story to make up, I found it. I do not know whether it was a gift or a curse. But I do know that I freaked out sometimes, not being able to see the bracelet on my left wrist on account of the IVs. I could not see the feet, either. I could not touch this body. Have you ever gone two weeks without being able to clasp your hands, touch your lips, touch your own face? Even the right arm chafed at the hinge when it moved, although the pain gave me some sense that the arm belonged to me. If there was an itch on the body I told myself I was not there, so it could not itch. I started to talk outloud to God, just to hear a voice. Mine, not God's. God didn't talk back.

When they tell you you're not alone in all this, about operations? The nurses, the doctors, when they all tell you they are there for you? And voices on the other end of the phone say "I'm with you in spirit?" Well, bull. Ultimately, it's just you there, in a bed, in a room, two hundred miles from anywhere you know. I had never been so alone, so lost, so terrified. When they turned the lights out at night, I made them leave a back light on. At night there was a reflection from something across the room, and the light hit it, and sometimes I could see a bit of me. I would move the right arm and wave to me. That way, you know, I knew for a moment that I was actually there.

By the time Mark came back and I had been alone for eight days, I was afraid. I was an alien from an unnamed planet, you see.  Jeannette had been ousted and something else was in my body.  I pictured a giant conveyor belt somewhere in space, where I'd been dumped off, stamped "DEFECTIVE."

When Mark kissed me,  he saw my fear.  My skin was too sensitive to take his stroking my arm, and I could not see him next to me at all. I had stopped using my peripheral vision because there was nothing left to see.

There was such a long silence. He said, at last, "Honey, don't you know me? Do you know where you are at all? Baby please!"

My Hero and My Home

I remember saying, "You're Mark." I remember that my voice was flat, but something inside awakened. I didn't want to awaken. I wanted him to go, but he was crying. He leaned over me and held my face so that I could not escape his eyes. Softness. I came home for just a moment. Softness in the metal world.  I was so tired.

"I've run out of tiles to count, Mark. I've run out." That was all I could say and he stepped back a moment.

He kissed me on the forehead and said, "Your body cast came, honey." He held it up. I seemed to remember something about jellyfish and body casts, but it was hazy. I felt me leaving again, but he took my face again, willing me to stay.

"Sweetheart, after tomorrow, you will be walking again. After tomorrow, you will not be eating through a straw and you will be allowed to turn your head."

He did not understand. I was not there any more. He did not get it and I could not explain it. I had a world with blue and metal, with 30 6-inch tiles in one direction, and 20 in the other.  Every tile had alternating rows of 12 and 11 holes in them. Mark entered my world from someplace with colors, I thought. And my world had echoes, liquids, smells and cold.  Straps and hours of a silence that ripped through my brain the way staples rip through flesh.

"Walking? I don't have any legs any more. I cannot see them and I do not move. Do I have them? Can  you read my bracelet please?"

The horror in Mark's eyes made me want to believe him as he read my name over and over. "You are right here, honey. You're right here." He looked terrified, but his voice was so soft. I knew that voice.  Then he put his hands on my toes and I felt his touch again. I knew those hands. I had toes! I started to shake again, and he touched legs that were clearly mine because I knew those hands. He unstrapped my right arm and I touched his face with my hand, and Jeannette re-entered this world with a terrified rush.

No matter what the miseries that followed, the pain, the cruelty he showed eventually, that night he was the greatest hero who ever lived. By Tuesday morning, when the team arrived to prep me, Jeannette was already prepped in the ways that counted.

Once again, As Dr. D. laid out his tools and the doctors introduced themselves to me, I focused on the names of the people I loved. The list had grown in two years, so I couldn't even get through them all before I was asleep.