Too Much of Spring: The Second Half

 Note: This is directly tied to Leaving the Planet, about a seven-week hospital stint in 1982. This is no less difficult than that entry, so I get it if you might want to time your reading, or just skip it.  I had to write this all because it is how I breathe through my life. I write. It occurs to me for the zillionth time, though, just how glad I am that I blog, for MY sake. Thank you for slogging through these entries. I learn about writing, about who I am NOW, and the entries are the final let go before I decide whether they go into a memoir or in a file.

Thank you all for helping me remember what I needed to. I am alive. I walk. I love the spring with a passion beyond logic. I am alive. Dr. D is not. Except here on this blog and in my heart. I am alive and I still walk.

Here goes...

Post-Op Re entry

I woke up briefly in the Recovery Room. The kind nurse was there again. This time I noticed she had soft, hazel eyes with eyelashes that really were unfairly long and thick. "Well, that's just not fair," I said and she was startled.

"How can you be talking?"

"I opened my mouth?" I was startled by her comment. "What do you mean?"

"Your blood pressure is 65/35! It's not possible."

It would appear that she was right, because when I awakened next, I was in my blue room, my bed table there, in reach, everything on it, just so. I could move my arms and my head!

Only some twelve-year-old nurse named Mandi was looking very stern as she shouted, "Cough! You know you have to cough for us."

I took a deep breath.  Oops. No, no deep breath was forthcoming. I could not fill my lungs without pain and enormous pressure, but the cough was a chokey, shallow, pitiful excuse for a post-op cough. Usually I just coughed a couple of good ones and all that had to be cleared was done and that was it.

Mandi, a ranting chipmunk, was yarping at me, when I tried to say that it hurt to breathe. "Well, of COURSE it hurts. You want pneumonia? Do you want to be on an IV for days? You have to cough and move things around so your bowel sounds come back and your lungs do not fill."

"I know that. I am telling you that I can't."

I got the "whatever" sigh I already knew from Mark's kids and other friends' teenagers. I kind of remembered it myself, from my own youth, only we tended to tag the sigh with "groovy."

Funny. I was twenty-nine and thinking my youth was over, remembering it the way my parents spoke of their own youth. Something was weird in that, but the thought drifted off as most thoughts did during that stay.

All that stayed with me was that I could see my legs because I could bend them. The body cast, however, was horribly tight, I thought. Perhaps they could loosen the side Velcro. Normally the things attached in the back. Mine attached on the left side, over my staples. Something about the fitting of it, someone said. Anyway, instead of lying on the flexible flap, I was lying on lined, rigid vinyl with a thin compacted foam rubber lining. I could not see it, but I felt holes, regularly spaced like ceiling tiles. What, so it could breathe? Ironic, I thought.

The Velcro strapping pressed directly on the incision. Staples everywhere, stabbing me. Bone-deep throbbing. Pressure, pressure, everywhere.  I reminded myself it beat the hell out of a Stryker bed, like a mantra. I chanted, "It's better than the bed, it's better than the bed."

I was right. It was.  Mark was there, but we were almost never alone.  I guess he was worn out. He had to leave that night, but his last words were, "Don't ever go away like that again, sweetheart. We need you home. Look at all these cards here. See how many love you."

Cards?

On my bed table were about fifty envelopes, and I decided to sort them by day. Apparently it took time for my mail to find me. Why they had not given me these for those ten days, I'll never know, but I had them now. A wealth of love, all in one cacophony of cards. The next two and half hours the nurses simply let me be. They checked on me, read the cards I showed them, laughed, and let me be.

But my breathing got worse and I felt as if someone were stabbing my chest, just like the staples everywhere else. Sometimes the cards blurred and I would clean my glasses.

Carol came for the late shift that day, looked once at me, frowning, then at the cards, smiling. She disappeared, and around 11:00 pm some maintenance person appeared with a large bulletin board and two nails. She came back in the room and by midnight, I had a field of dopey and pretty cards to look at across the room, and a long piece of string taped on the side wall, holding about a dozen more cards. She rigged up a bag on the side of my table to hold the rest.

"There. Next time you think you're an alien, look at these. Although, you are beyond weird." She left the room before I could find something to throw.

Between the Dark and the Light

What followed starting at about 5:00 a.m., though, were eight hours of nurses yelling at me to breathe and to cough, and doctors trying to figure out why I couldn't give them a deep breath. They worried that someone had nicked something. I don't know. I longed for my planetary pod at that point.

And I was hungry. All I'd had in almost two weeks was broth, so I asked for food. Some idiot nurse gave me some because she did not bother to check the no food order on my door, I learned later. I had had no bowel sounds yet. None. I had only just been given water to drink, to start stimulating something or other. I think. Hell, I was in no position to think about it at the time. I knew only that someone brought me food that I could chew. Bread and butter. Pudding.

Twenty minutes later, I was projectile vomiting. I remember some ten-year-old in my body went, "Cool. I wonder how far I can puke." And the 29-year-old went, "GROSS." Sigh. Groovy.

All that is relevant is that I could not stop it, I could not breathe deeply, and I could not bend at the waist to accommodate the cramping. Carol was SCREAMING at someone outside the door, probably the girl who had brought me food.

"My GOD! What the hell else can we put this young woman through? If she doesn't sue us for just about everything this nursing staff has done, we will be luckier than you know! Damn it!" The yelling faded. Everything faded. I could no longer see or hear. I could not feel. The room blessedly disappeared into a blur of color and bright lights and voices that faded into whispers that came and went. Some of them were Carol and Dr. D., but mostly just strange voices. One of them was not in the room.

"103.5. This is not right."
"But her breathing is shallow. Why can't she just cough?"
You are never going home.
"We need to get the fever down."
You know no one cares if you die. 
"104? What the HELL is this? "
Death.

I made it go quiet when I could. Quiet and dark and all alone so no one would bomb me with words I could not find. Pain occasionally ripped through the lights or the dark, at will, along with the voice.

This was four years before I remembered my childhood, before therapy.  But something was starting. Here in hell, more hell began.

A familiar face, out of focus. A laugh. One needle sticks me, like familiar needles from a time beyond my reach, a thousand needles, over and over, beyond my control, everywhere beyond an arm, a leg, everywhere, over and over. Something ominous, hiding in corners of a dark mind. My mind. Someone's. Dark. Bright. Dark bright. Quiet. Noise. Quiet. Noise. Screams like me, but silent. Somewhere else. Blurring in and out of Hell.

Then suddenly large blue eyes. A face. Carol. I know the face. I do not want to see clearly. But I know her face. Her eyes too shiny and she's all full of lights.

"Don't you dare go! DON'T you dare go. LEAVE HER HERE! Don't you TAKE HER!" The eyes darting all over the place. Then drilling into me too bright.

Who? Take me where? Who's she yelling at?

Dark. Nothing at all.

Suddenly, sound tearing through, forcing me here. Velcro ripping with Carol's fortissimo accompaniment,a battering trumpet in my brain.

"Get this FUCKING THING OFF HER! How stupid can anyone be?"

Hands everywhere, flipping me. Am I in the bed again? What are all the hands? Jimmy, leave me alone. But no. Not Jimmy. Different. Jimmy? What am I saying? Who? A clatter and my eyes opened as my body cast hit the far blue.

White on blue, Carol on silence.

"They didn't leave room for her DIAPHRAGM! They MEASURED the thing when she EXHALED!"

And I coughed and I coughed and I gasped and I coughed and I vomited and I cried and I breathed and hands held me stiff with Carol at my head, there. Always there.

"It's okay, it's okay. YOU'RE okay."

Ice on the head and  wrists. The rhythms of the coughing slow. The woman in the bed surrounded, but only one head shining. Carol's. She is old enough for shiny silver hair? The woman in the bed, so small when the coughing stops at last. I see her clearly there, so small, entirely without colors.

"Thank GOD. 100. She can live with that. Jeannette. Jeannette, come back. Earth to planet Jeannette."

The woman laughs, I fall, crash landing into dark once more. A different dark. I think they call it sleep.

Gone Quiet

It was dark when I awoke, so I was not sure whether it was the room or me, but there was Carol, holding my hand. At my head. There, always there.

"How many shifts are you working, there, woman?" I asked. I realized that I was all in the same place again.

She simply smiled, but was holding my hand. "You let me worry about that. Listen. You listen to me, BACK in BED B. Look into my eyes and listen! I am telling you you MUST lie still today. Your cast has been sent to cut a hole for your diaphragm." She seemed upset, suddenly.  Her voice quieted as she leaned in closer. "Alien dear, you have to be still. We have strapped you in here, but you can move your arms and your head. It's not the bed. It's your bed. See? The doctor said that the anterior fusion is tight, so you don't have to be frozen. But if you don't pay attention, you have to go back to the planet Hell, and you've had enough, don't you think?"

"Yes. Frankly, I am so tired, Carol, I don't want to move. I don't think I can move.  I am so tired." I didn't know I could sound so small. I didn't mean to cry. I wanted to be strong, but strong was nowhere to be found. She stayed until the drugs put me back to sleep and in the morning, for the first time in forever, all the me's inside were together, there. In one body. In one place. One very blue place.

A Quiet Crash of Spring

With metal. White uniforms, with an occasional jacket of color. New nurses. Mandi again. And there was someone in Bed A. She was nice, but when she said she'd got there Friday, I realized it was six days after surgery, and the weekend was nearly gone.

Dr. D came in the afternoon, which seemed to shock the nurses.

"Have you had any visitors this weekend?"

I shook my head. He held my hand a moment then asked, "When was the last time your folks came to see you?"

I teared up and told him they'd never come. Basically, no one came except Mark, because I was too scary.

"May I borrow your little address book, Miss Jeannette?" Perhaps I was wrong to let him have it. Perhaps he was wrong to ask, but I didn't care. I really didn't care about anything. Lunch came and there was chicken. Dr. D. came back into the room with a hot fudge sundae and my address book about an hour later.  He took me for a stroll, the first since the night before my first surgery, and when I looked out the hall window, I started to cry.

A film of green had covered the world while I was sleeping.

"You'll be out there before the lilacs, dear. I promise you. Before the lilacs."

Lilacs seemed so far away, but he was the kindest man I'd ever known, and he had prepared me for every step.

I didn't believe a word. He was no fool; he knew that I didn't believe him. Funny. He did not try to convince me or tell me to buck up. He did not think that it was odd that I was so detached.

All he said was, "Do what you have to, Jeannette. You still have the new posterior fusion to endure, and all I can say is that if anyone screws things up for you again, heads will roll. Some already have, but I'm sick to death of the mistakes because some people have not done their jobs, and I do not mean your floor nurses. You stay in whatever place you have to be, just like the Stryker bed, honey. Go where you must. But hear me when I say, you WILL see the lilacs bloom."

The Final Cut, the Final Wait

I had to wait for the last operation until the incision could withstand the last surgery on the back. I had no clue what that meant. It seemed silly to me, to wait for something to heal just to slash it open again, but then, it kind of seemed like my life. One wound would start to heal and another would land before the process was done. Why not?

I did not like my cynicism, but I did not care to try for improvement just then. It was Wednesday and no one had come except Judy, who lived near by. It turns out she'd been there three times last week, but I could not remember. She wisely did not describe what she saw; she simply sat quietly by me, reading, occasionally holding my hand. But we'd been friends since we were born, summers in the same play pen. Our connection reached past words.

The last surgery was a piece of cake. Except for the hematomas. The second morning after surgery, the nurses wanted my blood pressure to build, so they sat me on the edge of the bed. We were going to go for a walk, they said. The nurse took my blood pressure, and went, "Oh my GOD. 50 over 30? Why aren't you dead?"

Irony everywhere. All the hovering over the woman again. Hands, IVs. Bottles. "Preppy blood, she calls it." Rolling machine. Something hurts my heart, makes it jump. I leave the room.

When I had my first transfusion a lifetime before, I'd had a reaction. So I had to have "washed and buffy packed cells." Buffy cells. The only way I could remember to remind staff of this was to say I needed "preppy cells." By the time I had had my eighth operation, a year and a half later, the whole staff called packed cells "Buffy Cells." I'd made my contribution to the medical community.

When I returned, opening my eyes with me behind them, it was dark again, but I had not clue what day it was. One of the regular nurses, Janice, I think, said, "This is getting really old, Jeannette. Will you stop dying on us please?"

"What day is this?"

"Friday, dear."

"What day was the surgery?"

"Tuesday. Mark is outside the room. He's been here since yesterday."

The hazel eyes were tired, but they stayed soft and close, and Mark's hand did not leave me once through the night. They did not make him leave.  I had company all weekend, even Jean Ellen. Gail came. Mark went home and came back with the kids. Three of my other friends. Judy again.

It was lovely to be alone again on Monday, but I did not speak that thought. It was too late. The people who came had too much light and too many colors. It was not safe. Nothing was safe. It was time to walk again, they said. I had too much to do to absorb all those colors and the noises of the weekend. I had to walk again they said, so I could go home this week.

Go home this week.

Home? Jean Ellen said she had been painting in my room, but had moved the easel out again, to make room for me. She said that Mark and Daddy had moved my bed in at last, so I did not have to use the foldout any more. Home? It was not my home, not now. I had no home. It was Jean Ellen's home. Before that it was my friend's home. I remembered that last Connecticut operation, living with my friend, her telling me on the phone that her boyfriend had moved in and could they put my stuff in the garage until I knew where I was moving ... My calling Jean Ellen to move back into the apartment, and her saying, "But I just got it to myself last year! Your room is my studio." And Daddy saying I could not live back home with them because of Mom's "knees." He was right; no way I could live there. I was one day out of surgery with nowhere to go home to. Jean Ellen had said yes, but only if I left my stuff in storage. No one had wanted me. Here I was only four months later; it was too late for talk of beds and home.

Alone. Alone. Always a burden, never at home. What do they mean, so you can go home?

That voice again. I shook it off. I had to walk today.

I sat on the edge of the bed. The blood pressure was 104/55. Not great, but okay, they said. I had Carol on one side and Janice on the other. I was taller than Carol now, which shocked me.

"Well, kid, you are standing up straight." I was. We stopped in the bathroom and my face was in the top half of the mirror now. At least I think it was my face. She was pale and her cheeks had caverns beneath. I would not look at the eyes.

Death is not pretty, huh, Jeannette.

I shook it off again.

We walked down the hall. An armchair was by the window at the end of a tunnel that would get longer, then shorter. Dark. Light. Dark. Light. Ceiling tiles above again. Familiar patterns. Dark. Light.

We reached the window where I could look out directly into Spring.  This is how it looked to me.

I shouted in a whisper, "Too bright."

Carol said, "Breathe. Just sit down and breathe." I looked at her and she was crying. "Soon you will be out in the colors again. It's been too long for you here, in with all this sterile crap."

What is that color? Magenta? Too many lights. Sunny. Too bright. Laughing somewhere not from the hallway.

Then the voice came. Stop talking about home. I'm dying you  know. Apparently the voice is jumping out from me, this time. It occurs to me once more that I am the woman in the mirror, but it doesn't really matter.

Carol started, then came in close, blue eyes staring into me straight at the voice. Then only dark again.

The Daddies Get Me Home

A hematoma had burst. I remember absolutely nothing at all from the two days that followed. Nothing. I had finally learned to simply leave the scene entirely. What I know is that I awakened exhausted, but quiet. The voice had fled at last.

I would live. But sorrow wrapped me like my flannel robe. My colors had fled my body, the building, my world. Even the blue of my room was gray.  I awakened at peace, in a black and white film. Three surgeries, four near death experiences, seventeen transfusions, hands with phlebitis, wounds like a heroine addict dotting the veins of my arms, like marching white ants.

Carol at my side. I asked for the date, but all I heard was May. I had missed my dad's birthday. Why was that all I registered? When had I come? M. March. The other M month. Lilacs.

Dr. D tried to apologize for something. I looked at him blankly, not understanding why he was saying he was sorry. Somewhere in a place I'd never seen another voice was speaking,  You are alive. You are alive. It's done. You are alive.

An older voice. Older than me. Older than Dr. D or Daddy. I smiled at him and said, "I'm here, Doc D. I'm alive. I can walk."

And then I felt something missing inside as well. For the first time since 1979 that feeling at my core was gone. Something weak and sapping at my core. The pain beyond "1 to 10" was gone. I smiled at Dr. D. and said, "I'll be okay." For the first time, I meant it. He simply squeezed my hand.

Wisely, they did not walk me toward windows. I did not care to see. I had lost track of so many days that I did not bother to try to count. Not tiles, not holes, not minutes. I simply breathed through whatever came.

At last Daddy came and Dr. D. pushed the wheelchair piled high with me, and pillows Jean Ellen had brought from home, and cards, and instructions. It was hard to sit. The cast dug in. Something to get used to. Whatever. I was so tired. Carol kissed me on my forehead and said, "Brace yourself. It's Spring for real. It's okay."

I took her face in my hands though, when she kissed me. I looked her full in the eyes, trying to find regular life words, but said, "You were the only color I saw." The chair pulled me away, while my face adjusted to what smiling felt like.

I stood up to walk out the door, then froze. "Daddy, TURN THE COLORS OFF!" This is how it looked to me.

 

It had rained a few hours before, and now the sun shone full upon the world and all I could see was a world too alive for me to know. Too alive for my black and white soul to absorb or to bear.

My father turned me so gently to him, arms holding me, my face hidden. "It's okay, Jetty. Just breathe. Let's get you to the car." The station wagon back seat was lined with pillows. Mommy's afghan was there, pastels against pale lavender. 

Before I got in I turned to Daddy again and said, "I missed your birthday."

He teared up and kissed me on my hair and said, "No. Not even close, Jetty." 

He drove us up a side street in the town,where the houses were dappled in shade and light, but it was alive with life, growing. Colors, softer, glowing. I wanted to stay lying down, but he had me sit up and climbed in beside me from the other side. "Just take a look out the window, Jetty, for just a few minutes. I'm right here." I leaned back against him and breathed.

The place was the closest place to Heaven here that my father could find.

 

He sang silly songs the rest of the way home—our songs, not Dr. D's—and when we turned up my street, I smiled.  The corner house's lilacs were just in bloom.