August 4, 2015
The metal railings on the sides of the recovery room gurney are chilling to my right hand. The beeping is back. I can also make out what sounds like the clack-clacking of shopping cart wheels. The ceiling is moving like a fun-house tunnel and I have to close my eyes to make it stop.
I feel as if I am flying . . . an imaginary aircraft banking left, then right. This film is playing in my opioid-infused brain. Where have I seen this image before? Oh yes. The last scene in the movie version of The World According to Garp. Garp is coaching wrestling and then Pooh shoots him at point-blank range. He’s being airlifted by medivac helicopter to a trauma center. He’s dying but he believes he’s flying in an imaginary airplane—he’s flying!—right before he dies.
Holy hell! No! I’m flying—but not dying! My words come out as a desperate shout: “I’m not dying, right?”
I am terribly afraid. My left hand suddenly feels very warm. I open my eyes once more. It’s Connie. My partner. She is holding my hand. I squeeze it. She squeezes back.
The vision vanishes. Garp is gone and I relax into another deep sleep.
August 6, 2015
For some ludicrous reason, I was actually looking forward to this surgery when it was first scheduled. It’s hard to sleep knowing that evil cells are dividing within you. There’s something about seeing cancer inside of you—actually being able to look at pictures of the tumors inside your body on a CAT scan—that makes you want to grab a scalpel and just get it out yourself. It mutes much of the trepidation you might have about general anesthetic or going under the knife. And in my case, the rest of the fear was addressed by reading dozens of articles about the actual procedure I would be receiving.
Back in the medieval days of prostate surgery (which lasted until at least 2001), removing a cancerous prostate gland usually included horrific collateral damage to the thoracic region of the patient’s body and resulted in permanent incontinence and lack of sexual function. This new, laparoscopic, robotic surgery avoids both of those complications and the recovery process is quicker and easier than ever before. Most patients are able to resume normal activities within two to three weeks of the surgery and are able to go home within twenty-four hours after surgery. So the thought of being instantly cancer-free while enjoying a few days with some great drugs was, strangely enough, enticing.
I was an idiot. Seventy-two hours after my surgery, I was still in the hospital and things were not going well.
Within twenty-four hours of the surgery, the doctors and nurses wanted me to walk around. It’s considered required therapy; it gets the blood and the bowels moving and avoids complications. Unfortunately, each time I tried walking through the hospital’s corridors, one small, labored, shuffling step at a time, I would be overcome by nausea. The result was a frighteningly loud and uncontrollable retching that triggered an urgent response from nurses who would come running with plastic buckets to catch whatever might come out while I resisted the urge to fall down.
Once they were confident I wouldn’t topple over, the nurses would escort me back to my room and work together to get my large six-foot-six frame into my hospital bed, like Lilliputians carting Gulliver into their capital city. They would fuss and rearrange things until I was sufficiently comfortable, all the while talking to each other in whispered tones that were not at all comforting. It turns out, the powerful anesthetics I’d been given had worked so well that they not only numbed my pain but they also paralyzed my intestines.
This was not good. Our intestines are about twenty-eight feet long. This means the foods we eat have a long way to travel before they’re fully digested or excreted. Our intestines complete this job by moving in a wavelike motion known as peristalsis. The muscle contractions move our digested food forward. However, if something (opioids, for example) slows down or blocks this motion, the result can be a blockage in the intestines. The medical term for this lack of movement is an ileus. An ileus can lead to an intestinal obstruction that prevents food material, gas, or liquids from getting through. Without treatment, an ileus can perforate or tear the intestine, which can lead to bowel contents, which have high levels of bacteria, leaking into your abdomen, which in turn can lead to sepsis.
This can be deadly.
This was why everyone around me was whispering in loud voices.
This was why I was paralyzed with fear.