Assuming
that God is good and Obama (and not the forces of greed and idiocy) will win
this election, I set those worries aside to log in a momentous week. For it was not just the week that Robin flew back here from the east coast two
days after Sandy had skimmed his conference center, not just the week of the big Giants victory parade in SF and not just the week of Halloween and my
brother’s 60th birthday, it was the week that the ol’ gallbladder
decided to give up the ghost at last.
What an
unispiring little organ is the gallbladder: hearts, livers and lungs have all
the romance! It is, however, the center
of what P. G. Wodehouse calls “dyspepsia,” which he describes in the opening
pages of “The Smile That Wins,” in Mulliner
Nights as creating in the sufferer “all the emotions of one who has
carelessly swallowed a family of scorpions.”
The scorpions have flared up from time to time in the past, but
especially recently, perhaps been collecting venom from all the stress.
A surgeon
back said last spring that the dratted thing should come out, and soon, “before
it becomes inflamed and you have to have emergency surgery,” but really, is
there ever a good time to spend $1000
on that lovely first deductible? And who
chooses to go in and try their hand
at getting a nice, simple surgery with no regrettable side-effects? So when?
The wonderful nurse at the old home clinic had told me “you’ll know when
it’s time to take it out” and by 10:00 p.m. Thursday night, I knew h-hour (or
more like w-weekend) had arrived.
Let us
skip over the couple of hours of agony in the emergency waiting room at Alta
Bates, shall we? And not mention the
crazies who like to congregate in such places at that time of night? Let’s say nothing of the unfortunate presence
of two young healthy boys (no doubt waiting patiently for Mom, inside
Emergency) munching on their dinners just opposite, where they could best
admire the writhing and moaning of not just me but also another lady who had
just arrived, doubled over at the waist!
Let us not dwell on the hours in the little examining room, or the hour
in Ultra-sound, in which the (mercifully sedated) scorpions were subjected to
much pressure. Instead, let us hurry on
to the long-awaited moment when, at about 4:00 p.m. Friday, the nice
anaesthesiologist arrived in Pre-Op, told me what was going to happen, then
injected a little something into my I.V. and then…
All at
once I was waking up in Recovery at about 5:30 p.m. Friday, the words of the
surgeon echoing in my ears, “It was really, really bad!” – the gallbladder, not
the surgery, which went “by the book” – and the recovery nurses were bustling
around, saying how awake I was.
(“Ha! If you only knew!” I was
thinking.) A snoozy night and day with
cheery visits followed and, having already spent my deductible in the Emergency
Room, the surgeon suggested I stay Saturday night, too, because once the
morphine wore off I would feel as if I “had been hit by a truck” and if I were
at home I might think of coming back to the hospital that night, anyway. She was quite right, of course!
Has
anyone else noticed how smart your average surgeon is? Or how considerate, hard-working and
generally terrific? This fine lady, once
she discovered I was from College Station, TX, hurried to assure me that she
had trained with TAMU’s Dr. Red Duke, himself, as well as at Houston’s bouquet
of great hospitals, just in case I had no faith in California physicians, I
suppose. And she took the time between
surgeries on Sunday to intervene with an obstructive pharmacist, so that I
would be pain-free overnight. Let ’em
have their huge fees, I say!
To sum
up: it was awful, but necessary, and
things are now improving rapidly, but the curious thing is that there seems not
to have been a better moment in recent history for such a temporary disaster
than right now. The spouse was in town and
is not tied down by teaching duties. I
am no longer Head of School, with all eyes anxiously fixed upon me for strength
and solace. We have sweet neighbors here,
good friends all over, and handy family members willing to visit and help.
It
couldn’t have been better timed if we HAD chosen the moment. Thank God for serendipity…and everything else!
