The surgery was over. Or that's what I understood. I can dimly, dimly remember being in the post-op room and hearing someone clapping hands and saying "Mark, Mark, wake up Mark!" Apparently I did wake up to the satisfaction of the individual exhorting me to do so, but after that, I don't remember anything else about that day.
What I do remember is waking up around 10 a.m. the next morning and seeing Mrs. D's face. She was looking intently at me.
"Good morning," she said.
"So how long have you been here?" I asked.
"I got here a little while ago -- I had to get the kids on the bus for school. The nurse says you had a good night and that you were watching CNN this morning and making comments on the news."
Well, that sounded like me, but I had no idea that I'd done that. I was only slowly beginning to understand where I was. I was in the ICU at United Hospital, on the edge of downtown St. Paul, with multiple monitors hooked up to me. I could feel the compression wraps on my legs, which are designed to keep clots from forming -- something I had asked about at the outset, remembering what had happened to my dad nearly 17 years before. And I also noticed that both nostrils were completely stuffed with gauze. Lots and lots of gauze.
It felt like my face weighed fifty pounds. I wasn't sure that the Allied Expeditionary Force could have gotten through all the gauze.
The doctors had explained the reasons for the full nose before I had the surgery. Since the otolarynologist had to do a little busting up of my sinuses to allow space for the neurosurgeon to get to my pituitary gland, things needed to heal up. More importantly, open nasal passages could lead to a sneeze, which could rip open any sutures and cause a very, very bad result. So things had to heal and my nose would be filled with gauze and packing for at least a few days.
I couldn't even imagine what I must have looked like with my face blown up like a float in the Macy's Parade. It shouldn't have mattered, but for some reason I started to worry about my appearance. "So do I look ridiculous?" I asked.
"You look fine," Mrs. D replied. Ever the diplomat.
A little while later, I got a report on the surgery. It had been successful, but more importantly it had been timely. The pituitary tumor had started to bleed, likely during that last, awful headache, a condition known as pituitary apoplexy. All of the symptoms I'd experienced, including the horrific headache and the visual impairment, were present. It was a very good thing the surgery took place.
As the day went on, a few other things became evident. I wasn't going anywhere, since I was tethered to just about every medical device that I'd ever seen watching episodes of ER. There were more monitors in the room, it seemed, than on the trading floor at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. I would have to breathe and, eventually eat through my mouth for a while. It's a very good thing that nature provides us with redundant systems for taking in oxygen. I would also learn later on that it's tough to eat and breathe at the same time, but on the first day, that wasn't a concern because I would be sustained with the IV. And just for laughs, I was strapped up with a Foley catheter, because there was no chance I would be able to get to the bathroom any time soon.
An intensive care unit is a busy place and it seemed like everyone who worked at the hospital was in to visit at one point or another, checking charts, looking at me, writing things down. The one thing that puzzled me is that the nurses were checking what looked to be a high-tech version of a carpenter's level at various times. Eventually I asked about it.
"We need to use this to keep your body equalized so that you don't have a drain of spinal fluid," a nurse explained. If you end up out of proper position, you'll have a leak and it would be a big problem for you. At a minimum, you'd have a horrible headache."
Well, I was used to that, but I didn't want to find out what horrible meant in the context of an intensive care unit.
"Okay, I'll try to stay on the level," I said.
"Good thinking, sir," the nurse replied.
It's difficult to remember much about that first day after surgery. I apparently did sleep a lot, but it seemed like when I awoke, my wife was always there, with the same, steady gaze. Some 15 1/2 years before, at an old Polish parish in the heart of Frogtown, we had promised to love each other, for better or for worse. I had to wonder if things could get any worse than the moment we were living through. Or were we headed for better days?
Next -- Good Friday, Holy Communion and a room with a Cathedral view
4 comments:
when i was fifteen, i had surgery to remove tumors from my sinuses (a perpetual nosebleed gave them away).
3ft of 1" gauze packed into each nostril was the result. i felt your pain.
i still remember all the discomfort that you speak of, and feeling/thinking that my nose was larger than my whole face.
I've been enjoying these posts. Both because you are a friend, but also because it relates a part of my life, visiting folks in the hospital. This is an extra peek into what's happening. Thanks.
When I came out of the anesthetic in December I had just spent nearly five hours with my body turned upside down, causing the blood to rush to my head and expanding my already robust visage. The Reverend Mother and Tiger Lilly were still pleased to see me, and amused at my attempts to get the brain cylinders firing again.
You gotta love that warm, floaty feeling the first day after surgery, though I'm sure you like it a lot better in retrospect than when you were experiencing it.
Mrs. Bubba can comment on what happens if you lose spinal fluid--more or less, it's called a "spinal headache" and is generally cured with something called a "blood patch." More or less, they insert a clot made out of your own blood. She had this after #6 was born from the spinal block she had for the C section.
It was actually probably among the more minor things they had to worry about while you were there. Hurts like anything, though--we're talking a Percocet headache, not a Tylenol headache.
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