Ch 14: This Witch is Healing her Cancer

Appendicitis - Seriously?

Art by Beverly Galante

I’ve been having a hard time settling down to do this post. I’ve been having a hard time sitting down to write, period. I’m 9-10 weeks away from radiation and haven’t felt right since. I was in so much pain Friday, May 17^th, when I looked in the mirror, the edges of my body’d disappeared. I tried reiki, I tried a castor oil pack, I tried reiki and a castor oil pack. Nothing worked. Part of me was afraid I was going to die; the other part of me didn’t care. The only reason I got in my car sat may 18th at 5 am and drove round the corner to O’Connor Hospital was because my dead father was poking at me and wouldn’t stop.

I don’t remember walking down the steps to the car and I don’t remember the drive. I do remember the young woman in admitting. I told her I was 9 to 10 weeks away from 6 weeks of radiation and I wasn’t sure if the pain was some kind of horrific side effect, or something else entirely. I was immediately walked to a bay and given a hospital gown. In case you don’t know – a hospital room has walls, a door, windows, and a bathroom. A hospital bay is a space surrounded by curtains that slide on a pole, like a shower curtain. Theoretically, the curtain gives the patient needed privacy while they are being examined before they are sent off to whatever department can best serve their needs. I changed out of my clothes and lay down on the bed.

—

“I’m Laurie your nurse.”

She looks tired and like she’s not in a good mood.

“Coffee,” I say. “You look like you need coffee.”

Laurie smiles, clips a plastic thingy to my finger, and runs another plastic thingy over my forehead taking my temperature. She cuffs me to take my blood pressure.

“Your vitals are good but your blood pressure is low.”

“My blood pressure is always low.”

“Hmmm.” Laurie’s tying off my arm for bloodwork.

“My veins turn.”

“No problem.”

One poke she was in, but it hurt so bad I kicked one of my legs into the air. I’m tasting salt in the back of my throat.

“Saline?”

“Yes, and antibiotics.”

“I desperately need a pain killer.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

—

I texted my friend Catherine….

“I’m in the hospital.”

I texted Gary…

“I’m in the hospital.”

I texted Sarah and Brad.

“I’m in the hospital.”

—

Catherine showed ten minutes later, put her arms around me, and I started to cry. Deep, gulping, painful sobs. How was this happening? I have no experience with being unwell. I’ve been unwell more in one year than I have in 70 years on the planet, and I can’t understand why my chart says I’m 71.

“I’m Elizabeth,” says another nurse says, coming into the room. “It’s time for your Cat Scan.”

“Are you giving me contrast?”

“Yes.”

“I won’t be able to keep it down.”

“It’s going in the arm; you’re not drinking it.”

—

Unlike the first one almost a year ago, the Cat Scan was easy. Back in the bay, and Gary shows up.

“Hello Betty.”

“Hello Bob,” Catherine replies.

(Gary and Catherine have been calling each other Betty and Bob ever since they forgot each other’s names.)

“How are you?” Gary wants to know.

“Fucked.”

“You curse a lot,” Laurie the nurse says. “We like that. I’m giving you a shot of dilaudid.”

“What sign are you?” I ask Laurie.

“Aries,” she says.

The Dilaudid hits. I can feel it rushing through my veins and its delicious.

“Oh Lord, I am surrounded by Aries. You, (Catherine) you, (Gary) and you, (Laurie) are all Aries.”

“Do you have children, Katherine?” Laurie wants to know.

“A son, a daughter-in-love, and a grandchild. Do you have children?”

“A daughter. She works at Delhi Animal Hospital.”

“I’m going to switch vets. I’m going to find her and tell what a great mother she has.”

Oh yeah, I was definitely enjoying the dilaudid.

—

Another nurse enters the bay.

“Some bad news,” she says, dancing from foot to foot. “You have appendicitis. We’re going to ambulance you to Cooperstown for surgery. They’ll be here in an hour.”

Bad news or not, at least I knew what was wrong.

“Do you want me to get you some clean underwear? Catherine asks.

“I do. What about my car? I drove my car here.”

Bob and Betty look at each other.

“We’ll take care of it, not to worry.”

—

The EMT/Ambulance drivers are young, burly men, probably in their early 30’s. They strap me onto a gurney, and it feels slightly off. Everything I’ve ever sat or laid on that was supposed to be ergonomically correct for the body has always felt slightly off. Clearly, there’s a standard size used to determine the ergonomically correct chair, bike, gurney, exercise equipment, etc.  Clearly, I am not ergonomically designed. Catherine places the price chopper shopping bag, with my clean underwear in it, alongside my legs.

“I’ll feed your cats,” she says.

There is nothing like a friend who knows exactly what you need.

—

“I’m 70. I don’t understand why the chart says I’m 71,” I tell T, one of the EMT’s. T is sitting alongside me in the back of the ambulance. His partner D is driving. T is a Cancer and grew up in Germany; his whole family is from Germany. He’s an introvert, loves winter, loathes summer. D has 6 children: 2 stepchildren, one foster, one adopted, and 3 biological.

“I used to work at Cooperstown,” T says. “do you want to know what they’re going to do to you?”

“I do.”

“It’s a laparoscopic procedure.  They will cut you here, here, and here.” He shows me on his own body –  naval, pubic line, and waist on the left side. “Then, they’ll shoot you full of gas.”

“Gas?”

“Carbon dioxide. It widens the space around everything, and they can see better. Then they suck the appendix out, not from the right, where the appendix is, but from the left side.”

“They pull it across the body?”

“Uh huh.”

 “Ow. Can I have something to drink?”

“No, you have surgery. After surgery you have to walk and fart.”

“Walk and fart?”

“That’s what gets the gas out. The walking and the farting.”

“I’m falling asleep, T.”

—

The dilaudid was wearing off, and the pain was coming back. If appendicitis was a planet, it’d be Mars – hot, screaming, red pain. Think molten lava. If cancer was a planet, it’d be Pluto; frigid cold, and dark. Pluto is the Lord of the Underworld. Think scared-shit-sleepless-nights and throw-up on the floor fear – that’s Pluto. Pluto also represents the journey into the dark self, our unconscious and subconscious shadow and desires, and rebirth. People with a lot of Pluto (Scorpios) in their chart are fully determined to drag the dark inside out into the light and make sense of it.

—

T wheels me into Cooperstown Hospital. Loud, lively, and busy. Daytime workers leaving and the night shift is coming in.  Lots of hello’s, goodbyes, and see-ya-laters. T wheels me into a bay; a nurse is stocking supplies. Her face lights up, his face lights up, and they’re flirting, giving each other a good-natured hard time, while they help me off the gurney and onto a bed. Bassett Health Care has damn good beds with real cotton sheets.

“Who’s doing surgery tonight?” T asks.

“Dr O,” the nurse says.

Oh fuck, I think. He’s the surgeon I saw when I was first diagnosed and I was quite rude to him.

“He’s the best,” T tells me.

I know that now. I’ve been asking nurses and they say he’s the best. I trust most nurses like I trust gravity and way before doctors.

“Thanks for everything, T.”

A one finger salute he’s gone.

The nurse puts the pulse ox on my finger, runs a TAT across my forehead.

(A TAT in case you don’t know is a “temporal artery thermometer, and uses an infrared scanner to measure the temperature of the temporal artery, a blood vessel that runs across the forehead just below the skin…A pulse ox is an “electronic device that measures the saturation of oxygen carried in your red blood cells…” Earlier I referred to both as the plastic thingys. I think I’m still going to call them plastic thingys.)

“I’ve started Katherine’s vitals,” she tells the next nurse when he comes in. “Katherine, this is Q, he’ll be your nurse till they wheel you downstairs for surgery.”

—

Q doesn’t seem to be having a good day and is quite dramatically beside himself because my blood pressure is so low.

“My blood pressure is always low,” I tell him, “and it’s never been a problem. Why is this a problem now?”

“Because your white blood cell count is high.”

“And that means?”

Q shakes his head.

“I’ll bicycle my legs and see if I can get my pressure up,” I said. My brain screaming Ow! Ow! Ow! But really, he’s so upset, the man might implode.

“Will someone turn the overhead light off, it’s giving me a headache,” the woman in the curtained-off bay next to me moans.

Q stands. “I’m going to find a more sensitive blood pressure cuff. Stop bicycling your legs. The resident will be in shortly to explain the procedure to you.”

“I’ve got a hideous migraine. Is anybody going to turn the light off?!” The woman in the curtained off bay next to me calls out.

I seriously doubt anyone can hear her given the clamorous commotion of comings and goings in the hallway.

—

Q does find a more sensitive cuff and is able to get my blood pressure. The resident enters my bay and Q scurries away. You know how you look at someone and think…not my people?

“I’m Dr. R and I am here to determine whether or not you have appendicitis.”

 I think - I was sent here by ambulance from O’Connor, for surgery after a Cat Scan revealed appendicitis, and you have to determine if I in fact have appendicitis. Hmmm.

I say, “What do you need to know?”

“When did the pain start and how long have you had it?”

“It started Thursday…”

“So three days?”

“I’m nine maybe 10 weeks out of radiation.  I haven’t been right since radiation and it’s hard for me to gage what’s going on with my body…”

“May I examine you?”

I nod, lifting my gown. Dr. R. presses my abs and I almost jump off the bed.

“That hurts?”

No shit sherlock. I can barely speak; my body’s broken out in a sweat it hurt so bad.

“Ok,” Dr. R says, “I’m convinced you have appendicitis.”

 I am tempted to fist pump, whoopee!

“You might be able to cure this with antibiotics, Katherine.”

 Is this guy an idiot?

“I want it out.”

“When was the last time you ate?”

“Maybe 3 days ago, I haven’t been able to keep anything down.”

“Will somebody please turn the overhead light out!” the woman in the bay next to me hollers.

“It’s a laparoscopic procedure,” Dr. R. says, launching into exactly what T told me in the ambulance, but nowhere near as entertaining. “Now, the risks, Miss Tupman: If the appendix has ruptured, we’ll have to cut you, and you’ll wake up with a drain in your side….”

“A drain?”

“To drain out all the puss. There’s also a chance the cancer is in the appendix.”

I think, it’s not in the appendix. I think, it’s not perforated, because I’d be dead. I thank the resident for his time and consideration and given his utter lack of human skills, wonder why in hell he chose medicine as a life path. Dr. R. stands to leave.

“The transporter will be here shortly,” he says.

Goddess was I grateful Dr. R wasn’t doing my surgery. I hear the woman in the bay next to me still moaning about the light.

“Dr. R., do you think you could turn off the overhead light for the woman in the bay next door?”

He looked a little offended, but he did it anyway.

—

Transporters are responsible for wheeling the bed (my bed) to wherever the doctor orders you to go, Transporters all look like retired military men - gray and grizzled, with straight back posture – wearing burgundy scrubs. (I come from a long line of military men, my father and my Uncles are all buried in Arlington Cemetery) Unlike the nurses transporters are not a chatty bunch. The transporter wheels me down a hall and into an elevator going down. I catch sight of a clock on the wall. It’s almost 6 pm.

—

The elevator opens. We’re underground, in a room about half the size of a football field. Nurses station, computers and desks in the center of the field. Empty bays running along the outside perimeter of the field. The lights are low, it’s quiet, peaceful, with the occasional blinking red light and a mellow beep. This is the room where people wait for surgery and recover afterwards. I feel like I’m in a submarine, a very calm, cosmic submarine devoted to healing what hurts.

“Bay 6,” the nurse tells the transporter.

C, my latest nurse, is yet another Aries, with sparkling brown eyes, and he tells me quite cheerfully I am in fact 71. (I’ll still have to call my brother and Rosanne to make sure.) C’s wife is also an ER nurse and they both love Reiki.

As C takes my vitals, I wonder if I could teach Reiki to the nurses at Cooperstown. I desperately need a job. The readings I’m doing these days have never been better, I’m just not doing enough of them.

C, leaving for the day, turns me over to M. M is a Libra and has two children. A daughter who is very much Daddy’s girl and a son who is autistic. We talk about the programs available for her son.

—

“Katherine is it? I’m Dr B, your anesthesiologist. Did you know we can use brain waves to determine how much anesthesia to use? It’s individualized that way; you see?”

“I see.”  

The woman is a force of nature – feral hair, older, blue eyes made anime size because of her glasses.

“We’re going to tilt you, legs higher than your head for surgery. Your lungs may feel heavy after surgery. More mucous.”   

I decide she’s a genius. (I can hear my brother – Kathy you can’t just decide someone’s a genius. To which I’d respond – yes I can, especially when I know they are.)

“I like your shamrock.”

She fingers the charm. “I bought it at Pandora. I had to go elsewhere to find the right necklace for it, something sturdy that wouldnt’t break. I believe in luck. I surround myself with symbols of luck.”

“Do you think radiation triggered the appendicitis?” I ask. “I had pelvic radiation.”

The question turns her sad and tired.

“You never know how something like that will affect the body,” she says.

—

When the surgery actually happens, it’s fast. They wheel you to the operating room – fast – they move you off the bed onto a gurney – fast -. “I’m going to knock you out now,” the very good-looking man said.  I wondered what happened to Dr. B. Maybe she’s the head anesthesiologist, maybe she runs the department, and the verygood-looking man is in the department. And that, my darlings, is the last thing I remember.

I came to, back in bay 6 in the submarine room.  R and another nurse – S – were with me. I’m in between the realms listening. They’re talking about how much better it is to work nights than days, and S is having a terrible time with her diabetes.

“Hey y’all,” I croak.

“You’re awake. How are you feeling?”

“Pretty good.”

Actually, I felt great because nothing hurt.  Unlike quite a few of my nearest and dearest, anesthesia doesn’t make me ill. It breaks the hamster in the wheel thinking in my brain, and I’m grateful for anything that does that.

 “We’ve got a room for you upstairs.”

“But I want to stay down here. I’m happy here, with y’all.”

The transporter arrives.

—

J is my new nurse and after checking my IV and the lines, she quite literally tucks me in. At some point in the night, another woman was wheeled into the room and the curtain between her bed and mine drawn for privacy. Like me she has been assigned a nurse but it’s not J. It’s a guy and he is loudly explaining everything J told me.

“He left out the dopp kit,” I think.

—

It’s hard to sleep in a hospital even when you’re loaded down with oxy. You doze, catching 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there of real sleep. I don’t like oxy; I don’t like the way it makes me feel, I don’t like the bad taste it leaves in my mouth, and as a pain killer it’s not that fucking good. My roomie snores like a water buffalo and I have to pee. I figure I’ll roll my IV pole along with me like they do on T.V. The IV pole is attached to something though, because I can’t pull it past the middle of my bed. Fuck.  I wonder if I’ll die if I pull out the needle in my hand, that is feeding me the contents of 3 different bags hanging happy. I decide it won’t and pull.  Blood shoots out of where the needle was. I bleed all over the bathroom floor and after I pee, wash up the blood.

Back in bed, I poke at the nurse’s button till J arrives. That I didn’t call her in the beginning I attribute to drugs and a preternatural character defect of having to do everything myself.

“I think I pulled my IV out when I was asleep,” I tell her.

“I can start a new one,” J says.

She is so sweet and I’m pretty sure she knows I’m lying. I don’t even feel the needle go in. So fast and pain free!

“That was amazing,” I say.

“I heard that,” my roomie says.

I’m no longer mad at her for snoring like a water buffalo. I snore like a water buffalo.

“You ok over there?” I ask, after J leaves.

“Labor was easier,” she says.

I love her.

—

Mutual curiosity took over the next morning.

“Can I open the curtain?” I ask.

“I wish you would,” she answered.

“I’m Kat.”

“Brenda.”

“What are you in for?”

Gallbladder,

“They do it yet?

“Later today. What are you in for?”

“Appendectomy, they did it yesterday.”

“My God that view is spectacular.”

“That’s another reason I wanted to open the curtain so you could see it from your bed. Your nurse didn’t tell you about the dopp kit. Your’s is right there under your T.V. that fat navy blue plastic envelop. It’s got shampoo and all that, but what I like the most about it is this little sleep shade here, and the ear plugs.”

“I thought I was going to die, I was in so much pain.”

“I know, honey. I know. The edges of my body disappeared.”

—

In between spontaneous naps and telling stories (we literally fall asleep in the middle of our stories) Brenda and I are laughing and getting loud. Nurses peer in to see what’s going on and I tell Brenda’s nurse to put her bed where mine is after I’ve gone because she should have the view.

The day-time staff crashes in, think the difference between smooth jazz and hard rock. J introduces me to my new nurse, and I am struck by how perfectly I’ve been taken care of during this entire process.  From the EMT’s to my nurses. There is nothing wrong with the new nurse – she’s a dynamo –  but T, D,  L, C, M, and S, were my heart and soul saviors. Somebody on the other side hooked up the perfect alignment for me, and it smacks of angels and military precision.

“You been busy, Daddy,” I say.

—

Sunday June 2, 2024

Hard to believe 2 weeks ago today Sarah brought me home from the hospital. Catherine met us here at the house, easy talk, nothing forced, and I can’t really remember what was said, but I do remember laughing. of being seen and heard and the feeling of home. It’s always been as important to me to see and hear as it is to be seen and heard. It’s my feeding loop of sustenance and nurture.

After they left, the terror of “now what?” that I’ve lived with ever since I was diagnosed with cancer floated to surface.  I have no idea how I’m supposed to negotiate any of this anymore, which may be exactly where I need to be.

Live loud, love fierce, and suffer no fools, Kat x0x0x0

Art by Agnes Lawrence Pelton