Blood lines

My two thick wrinkle lines that had stretched from nose to mouth had been replaced by two red lines. My eyes had red streaks beneath them, some crumbles of (I supposed) dried blood and they were pulled. I thought, "I don’t want them to look so pulled when I get better." Blue bruises above the eyes but I still saw the traces of all that overhanging flesh Dr. Delos had called attention to, that he had intended to eliminate. If it is still there now, where is it going to go a month from now?

Snow White . . . NOT

So naturally I went into the bathroom to check. Nothing to pass out about. Nothing as upsetting as the sight of a needle. But no Miss America contender either. Yes, ET was a good description. A fluffy cotton snow cap that trundled down from the top of my head and over my ears and down bordering the left and right sides of my mouth (unsmiling, because I still couldn’t smile due to the numbing effect of the anesthesia). It extended below my chin and covered more than half of my neck. The ends were tucked away at the back of my head somewhere.

I don’t know where most of my hair was but part of it stuck out of an opening in the top of my head at the back.

The operation

At about noon Blondie came in and said, "Now it’s your turn." It felt very unhospital-like to trot after her in my bare feet and my little white babydoll nightgown. Shouldn’t I be on a stretcher or at least a wheelchair? We walked the few steps across the hall to the operating block and I obediently lay down on the operating table. That was already a gas; how often do you get to WALK to your own operation?

I don’t recall Dr. Delos being in the room, though he may have been. The anesthesiologist was on my right and he asked me to hold out my arm. I knew what was coming; I welcomed the anesthesia (considering the alternative), but felt obliged to tell them about my psychological aversion to needles. "You should know I have a problem with needles. I faint when I see them. So I will look the other way." He gave me a piqueur. The nurse said, "Now really that didn’t hurt so much." I agreed but pointed out that psychological reactions are beyond our direct control and have little to do with "pain". That’s all I remember.

Bloody business

I asked the doctor why he wasn’t familiar with the insulin equipment we’d used and his response was textbook French: "Madame, I am a doctor, not a nurse. If I need to know a patient’s blood sugar, I ask the nurse to do it. Also, I am an anesthesiologist. A specialization in diabetes is not within my purview. Chaq’un a son competence."

Murderously I thought to myself, "YOU are a doctor, asshole, which is more than I am. YOU knew or should have known that my husband is a diabetic. You BET it is your business."

Sugar shot

The doctor had brought a needle for the insulin but I didn’t want him to administer anything before knowing how much/what strength Nando needed. My husband was coherent enough to insist that I fetch his testing instrument from the toiletry bag in the bathroom. The doctor and nurse hadn’t a clue how to use it. So he explained to me in English and I did it (except for the blood prick itself) and gave the results to the doctor. His sugar was 264.

That’s high, said Nando, concerned in spite of his buzz. When the others asked what was normal, he told them "120 or so." Meanwhile, I dug the grey insulin pen out of my husband's medicine bag, and the doctor set it on 8 as per Nando’s instructions, and administered the dose. Then they left, with the nurse promising to bring him some food immediately.

Pepperone nose

Nando, meanwhile, was laughing. "What a trip!" he kept saying. "Boy am I stoned. I am a pepperone. I want to scratch my nose but I can’t find my nose. Hahaha."

He wanted to know where he was and where I was and what time it was -- the latter question he repeated often. He also kept insisting that his nose itched but he couldn’t find it. So I scratched it for him while he laughed delightedly.

As stoned as he was -- and he DID realize he was stoned -- he had the wherewithal to insist that his blood sugar be tested with his portable tester. So the anesthesiologist was rounded up, along with a nurse, to help Nando figure out the correct insulin dose and administer it.

Raccoon man

When I was led back to our room, five steps away, Nando was lying in the bed. Without my contact lenses or glasses, I had a hard time figuring out what, if any, had changed. His eyes looked darker, as if he had two black eyes. When he insisted on closer inspection, I put on my glasses and saw that his eyes were in fact blackened, lightly swollen, with little flecks of blood along the rims of the eyes. I wasn’t sickened by the sight so much as frustrated by my inability to comprehend what had happened.

Hello, baby dolly

While Helene had me sign the same form as Nando, she explained that he would be taken first. That had already been established (in my mind) because of his insulin problem. We had discussed it with the anesthesiologist in October.

Then there would be a young person who had a quick intervention. Then me. Best for last?

A few minutes after they had breezed off, a blonde nurse came in and led me to the room outside the block, the operating room catty-corner across the hall from our bedroom. I was wearing my little white lace-trimmed nightgown, baby-doll style. “Is this okay for my operation?” I asked her. I figured the white might not be practical -- blood drips and all -- but it did look hygenic. Plus the neck was scooped and there were two buttons as well, so it wouldn’t pose problems if I had to pull it over my head and my head were . . . sensitive. “Ça c’est parfait,” announced the nurse.

Cosmic versus cosmetic

“Do I really look that awful? I always kinda liked my smile."

"This facelift is not a moment too soon,” he assured me.

Next day, reading about the situation in Afghanistan, I was reminded of the way life has of putting things in context. A little over a week ago I was fretting about a banal blood test. The seemingly inexhaustible supply of horrors on the nightly news is a reminder that it hardly seems worthwhile to waste one’s energies thinking about a stupid medical procedure -- and a voluntary one at that.

Dog-docs

The nurse admonished me to stay lying down for five minutes until she came back to approve of my departure. Otherwise, she said, I’d faint anyway and undo all the good done by lying down in the first place. She must have seen how white I’d gotten during the procedure.

I then raced out to change places with Nando. He got the documents, I got the dog.

The test results -- having to do with how fast our blood clots, yuck I don’t want to think about it -- will be ready Thursday.

Drawing blood

We had our blood test this morning. This was a big ordeal for me. We decided to walk to the hospital, about 2.5 km away, perhaps less. Because we were bringing the dog, I woke up at 7 to feed him so we’d be ready to go by 7:30. We were at the hospital by about 8:10. Nando waited outside with Homer so I could go first. The first line had seven persons ahead of me, the second line had 23, but it moved faster. When it was my turn, I looked the nurse boldly in the eye and said, "I faint with shots. I need to lie down when you draw the blood."

"Lie down all the way?"

"All the way."

So there was another five minute wait between the time they led me to the bed & blood room, and the time two nurses appeared to do the job. They were good, I have to admit, and it was fast. And no, it didn’t hurt. But that’s besides the point in terms of my psychological reaction.

Dog eat dog

"What happened?" I asked the man, who was watching his dog who was watching Homer -- who was too busy sniffing around to be on his guard. "My dog was attacked by a pit bull. By two pit bulls, a male and a female. He is a pit bull too but he couldn’t fight both of them off."

"But did this just happen?" I was staring at all the blood marks. Surely a vet would have cleaned up the victim better than this unless it had just happened.

Dinosaur dreams

Today, August 7, was the day! I finally called Dr. Delos’ office. I had been staring at that phone number for weeks but I was literally afraid to make that call. In my mind, picking up the phone was akin to picking up the knife, and dialing the number was tantamount to making the first incisions in my scalp.

What actually drove me to do it? The dreams, maybe. The fact that I survived, queasily, the blood test last week. Or maybe I was spurred on by my upcoming birthday -- I would turn 54 in four days. I didn’t FEEL 54, it didn’t weigh heavily on me . . . until I looked in the mirror. Then I could see that my crow’s feet had become dinosaur tracks and my jowls were approaching bloodhound-like dimensions.

Tilting tubes

I didn’t need to be prompted to ask questions of the second nurse. I needed to know when to pick up the test results, where to pick them up, how much they would cost, all that stuff. She didn’t have many of the answers, but telling me what she did know took all the time required for the blood sampling. "Is that it?" I was surprised. One tube only? When they had drawn blood for benchmark testing in France, I had lain there for four tubes’ worth and thought I would pass out by the fourth in spite of my horizontal position.

"Different countries do it different ways," explained the nurse. She was relieved that I hadn’t created any untoward problems. "We do all the tests with this one tube."

"Fine," I thought. Better for me. Hope the accuracy isn’t adversely affected. Driving back home, still feeling a bit queasy, I wondered how I would ever get the nerve to do a full-scale facelift if just one tube’s worth of blood threw me into absolute tilt.

Bloody emotion

When I was called, I immediately set out my criteria: MUST lie down and must be in my right arm. I am left-handed and don’t like anyone to mess around with that arm. No problem, I was told. The receiving nurse led me to a hospital bed in a back room (so I didn’t have to see or smell other blood exchanges going on) and I lay down. There were two nurses, and one said to me, "My colleague will keep you busy while I do the drawing. IS your problem physical (she meant veins that don’t stay up) or emotional?"

"It’s emotional," I admitted, embarrassed, "but it can become a real physical problem anyway."

Blood test

I walked Homer early in the morning of August 1, then drove to the hospital, arriving there around 8:40 for an appointment scheduled between 8-10 am. I was startled to see a large number of persons in the waiting room, milling around. Italian lines are not a model of efficiency so I was nervous about having to mill around with them, getting more nervous still as patients streamed out of the laboratory, holding gauze to their arms. The smell, the heat, the confusion, my high anxiety. No, this was not a healthy situation for me. But there was a nurse near the door who checked everyone’s paperwork. Mine meant that I could avoid one line (the longest) entirely. Another was just for blood work, and the number the nurse gave me was 84. Number 72 was already inside and things seemed to go quickly so my optimism returned.