You can tell a lot about a doctor from their waiting room. If it’s packed full of people, the usual assumption is they’re a good doctor.
But break down the crowd before you start giving out that title. Are the patients on the verge of a revolt? Constantly asking the nurses how much longer? Or is it just packed and people are regularly called back?
To the latter—congrats, great doc, keep them at all costs.
To the former—they think they’re God, run for the hills.
Dr. Darlington’s waiting room is, unfortunately, the first one, as much as I would like to believe it was the second. The dark-paneled walls loom over us and seem to push us closer, a cauldron at the boiling point. Coffman is part museum, part hospital, but someone seemed to have selected the most boring pieces they could find for this floor.
My leg bounces as I try to rein everything in. Ryan’s advice is still front and center, and it has to be lack of sleep that I’m actually considering his plan.
Mom eyes me over the top of her cross-stitch pattern but doesn’t comment.
“What are you working on?” I ask.
She turns the hoop around to let me see the saying she’s working on. Doctors Are Angels on Earth.
“That will pair perfectly with my Darlington Is a Dick,” I say, willing to take another test of if Mom and I can still be okay.
“Why do you think I started it?” Mom and I have a tradition of displaying conflicting sayings we stitched. Hers are always annoyingly positive and mine are more real-world. The best part about this tradition is that they never go on the blog. I guess they don’t fit in with her online image, so this thing is completely ours.
A nurse calls a patient back, ending my brief reprieve from impending surgery. Am I really going to trust Darlington? To put my faith in what he and Mom think? Nerves getting the better of me, I open my phone and text my medical coach. Let’s see if he’s as good as his ego.
Ellie
You there?
Medical Coach
Hit me.
Ellie
Nothing yet. Just waiting.
Medical Coach
Pregame is just as important.
Go in with an open mind.
Ellie
That the best you got?
Medical Coach
Visualize getting back home.
Eyes on the prize.
Ellie
Anything not out of Quotes for Coaches?
Medical Coach
Remember they’re on your team.
I click my phone off. Oh. Right. #TeamEllie. It’s always been Mom, Darlington, and all the other docs—World Cup hopefuls right here. I let out a breath that ruffles my bangs. Me a part of that team. Sure, that’s possible.
I believe that.
Maybe.
At least, I would like to.
Ryan does, can’t that be enough?
Mom ties off a string and puts her project down. She’s going to say something and I force a smile, hoping she finally has an answer on if I can go to Morelands this weekend. I talked to her about it a bit last night before bed, and she said she’d think about it. Now every time she opens her mouth I live in fear that she will tell me no. No mall equals no Jack.
Jack was on my team. When you let him, my brain says. Well, this weekend he can be on my team, because in no way will I let him try out for the hospital team.
Medical Coach
Get out of your head.
How’s that for originality?
My name is called before Mom says what she wants. I look down at the message from Ryan. I hope he’s right. Mom and I follow the nurse down the hall to an exam room. Lights outside the door are flipped on. She ushers us in and closes the door.
We’re doing this.
I’m doing this. My breath snakes in and out and the whole world feels hyperfocused, but I remain jazzy at the edges. Not quite fitting in and only just standing out.
Ryan’s message to me blinks up from the screen.
There’s no time to question because the door opens. Dr. Darlington enters and shakes hands with my mom. They’re on my team. I stick my hand out, ready to play ball. Darlington stops and looks at my hand. He sucks in his bottom lip as if he can’t decide what I’m playing at. Whatever he decides, he shakes my hand too. I take a deep, steadying breath. I can do this. I repeat the words from my medical coach, again and again, trying to calm myself down.
“We are here to talk surgery,” Darlington says, seating himself behind the desk. He pulls up my scans. “I’ve already talked to Dr. Carlyle about getting set up with your other doctors.”
I nod along. Dr. Carlyle is my internist. He oversees everything that goes on inside me and is sort of the Ellie-Haycock-organ-know-it-all. And he’s maybe my favorite doctor ever. We’ve been on this wild ride and he never forgets to check in with me. To make a Coffman visit the best it can be.
“Great,” Mom says, taking notes on her phone. “We’re still good with next week?”
Sweat breaks out over my body. It’s now or never. Mom is running this conversation, acting like I’ve already agreed. Blood tests are being ordered. My kidney doctor wants another look at my lone organ before it all goes down—because I haven’t seen her in, what? Five years?
Surgical prep is always a wild few days, going through this checklist, and assuming all things are my brand of normal I’ll be cleared for surgery. They don’t want to cut me open without making sure I’ll survive.
There’s always that to worry about. Death. My vision narrows and I’m pulled into that dark place where I’m alone and doctors in gowns are ready to carve into me.
My mouth goes dry. How do I butt into a conversation that is about me? Mom always leads the doctor convos and I just go along. All right, Coach, you’re up.
Ellie
What do I ask?
Medical Coach
What does he think the surgery will do?
What is the recovery time?
What happens in the worst-case scenario?
Mom’s dominating the conversation, her fingers still going. I hope her notes are for Dad, but honestly I figure they’re probably for her blog.
“… we’ll go in laparoscopically,” Darlington says. The MRI of my chest is on the screen, and he points out the three places where they’ll make the incisions.
“And—” A cough cracks my voice and does a good job of bringing everyone’s attention to me.
“She’s feeling a bit nervous,” Mom says, and as if suddenly remembering, she adds, “Didn’t you have some questions for Dr. Darlington?”
My fingers wrap tight around the phone in my hand. This doesn’t feel like talking with my hand surgeon or even my spine surgeon. I have known those doctors since before my conscious memory kicked in. Darlington is new. “Worst case … what happens…” My tongue stumbles over words that my brain can’t seem to put in the correct order.
“What’s the worst-case scenario?” Darlington finishes for me, an oil-slick smile back on his face.
I nod and force out a cough to cover everything. I don’t want him to get the sense that I’m afraid of him.
“Well, if we can’t get at this laparoscopically, the alternative is to do a full thoracotomy.” He hits a few buttons on the computer and pulls up a different set of pictures. I turn to my mom, accusatory face in place. Dr. Darlington holds up a hand to calm me down.
“And that means?” I ask, not taking my eyes off Mom.
“In a thoracotomy we’d make a larger incision and open up your back.”
Jaw drop.
What.
Excuse me?
Does Darlington understand how detached from patient reality he is? That’s his plan to calm me down—I wish I had videoed this so I could play it back for Ryan. Darlington should lose his license for his bedside manner alone. The last time they just casually split open my back I was fourteen months old and it was to fuse my spine.
“My entire back?” My words squeak out, but no one seems to register my terror. I don’t remember my back surgery, a combination of good drugs and being too young for memories to stick. But I’ve heard the horror stories, and while my mind has blocked it out my body remembers. I was in the ICU. They opened up my whole back. Carved up under my ribs. I have the involuntary urge to get up and move as far away from Darlington and Mom as possible, as if they’re already trying to hurt me.
“It would require a longer recovery time.”
With that much trauma—duh. I’ll end up in the ICU. If that’s the option, there’ll be no way I can get back in time for Brooke’s party. I’ll be stranded in the hospital or the Home until the end of the year—at the earliest. And then? There will be no way to get Jack back before he’s just done with me. With all that scarring, I’ll miss the rest of speech season, there will be no state, no nationals. I’ll be lucky to have a few shreds of a life when I return home.
Mom is still all for surgery and doesn’t seem to know how freaked out I am. Without even looking at my phone, I type the words back to Ryan.
“Is that … I mean that sounds extreme.”
Darlington sits back in his chair, steepling his fingers. He addresses Mom only. “It is a more invasive procedure. Because of where the cyst is on Eleanor’s bronchial tubes, there is no other way to get at it if we cannot remove it with the lap.”
Medical Coach
What are the chances of this?
My mind is so far gone I don’t know how to ask that question. Ryan’s clear message blinks up at me, grounding me, pulling me out of the darkness of an unregistered memory and back into this space.
“And the chances of this happening?” I ask. Buffered by Ryan’s questions, I feel more at ease inserting myself into the conversation. They help to cut through the shock and noise in my head.
“Given what I’ve seen of your scans, I think this is exactly the sort of procedure we can do with a lap. Now there’s always a chance we would have to do the other, but I would say it’s less than twenty percent.”
The number feels high. This isn’t an X-ray where it’s just a few more exposures to radioactive material or another blood draw. This is surgery, and while I’ve had a lot of them and I know the jargon, when it comes to crossing into the OR, I freeze. I need a push.
Ellie
Less than 20%.
Medical Coach
Do it.
Nothing’s 100% sure.
They know what they’re doing.
I’m not surprised by Ryan’s response. Do it. That’s been his MO since he stepped into my life.
Ellie
I want to believe.…
Medical Coach
Try trusting him.
What does your head say now?
I swallow. Trust Darlington? My gut twists at the idea of surgery and all the what-ifs that it holds.
“There’s always some risk,” Mom says, echoing the words that Ryan told me.
Both adults in the room look back to me. As if I’m finally to be included in this decision.
“Well, Ellie,” Mom starts, “what do you think?”
“And this laparoscopic thing—it will get me back to normal?”
“You’ll be in the hospital one, maybe two days, and your GP at home can remove the stitches.”
I swallow and feel the burn of a cough ignite deep in my chest. This is my chance to be healthy again. To get my life back. Yet my body is screaming no.
My phone buzzes in my hand.
I expect Ryan, but instead, it’s Brooke.
Brooke
WHAT HAPPENED WITH YOU AND JACK????????
If Ryan’s texts weren’t enough, Brooke brought it home for the team. Jack. I need to fix things with him. Seeing him this weekend would be a step in the right direction.
Mom smiles at me encouragingly.
I can do this. I need to.
“Let’s do it.” I force a smile I don’t totally feel but am going on a little faith.
A smile pricks the corners of Dr. Darlington’s lips, and my stomach does flip-flops. Is he happy that I’ve chosen surgery? I look down at my phone again and all the positive messages from Ryan. He may be new to this, but he’s in control of his medical programming.
“We’ll get everything set up.” Darlington raps his knuckles on the table and walks out without another glance at us.
“Don’t they usually say goodbye?” I ask, stating the obvious to test Mom. Will she side with me or Darlington?
Mom gives me a one-armed hug. “He’s very busy, Ellie.” I want to sink into her comfort because I want to believe that I made the right choice even if it means facing the nightmares that lurk in the corners of my mind.
Released, Mom gets the new list of appointments and we make our way out of the labyrinth of hallways and exam rooms.
I’m going to have surgery and get my boyfriend back. My life can return to the way it was. Ryan deserves a big high five.
And yet I feel like I just stepped on thin ice and plunged into the freezing water below.
VATERs Like Water
This is the fallout, pt. 2
Age: 5 yrs, 5 mos. Entry #400
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By the time Ellie was school-age, I thought I had come across every possible slight. I’d lost friends, my job—so many parts of my identity were just gone, scarred over and left to be dealt with another day. I could and would take on so much for my daughter.
Anything she wanted, needed—I would find. There is nothing scarier on this earth than a mother on a mission.
I thought the worst day of my life was behind me. I thought each time I gave my tiny baby over to doctors and nurses that someday this suffering would end. We would both be able to put Coffman behind us and head for new adventures. Times at the hospital would fade to those rose-colored stories you tell to your friends. The ones you can’t laugh at in the moment but later are the funniest things you’ve ever done.
I was so sure Ellie’s first surgeries—those long, agonizing eight- and twelve-hour waiting periods where I couldn’t protect my daughter—would be the worst moments of my life. Every one felt worse than the last. Every one had the potential to be the End. Her end. And then if it wasn’t, there was the constant question that seemed to lurk behind every step—did we choose right?
I met a woman at the Family Care Home with a child several years older than Ellie. One night, I told her all my fears, explained the surgeries, and we commiserated on how best to argue with insurance agents. I told her these nights, with Ellie in the hospital, were some of the worst nights of my life. The woman, bless her, looked at me over the rim of her glass and chuckled.
When I say I was livid.
She apologized, of course, saying she didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that this was the start of a very long race.
I wasn’t sure what she meant. I thought I was doing everything pretty well so far. There was nothing that could possibly beat out what we were already facing.
“Just wait until Ellie goes to school” was all she told me.
We didn’t talk much the rest of that trip, and I’m not sure what happened to her or her child. Just one of those friendships that comes on quick, goes deep, but doesn’t take hold. I didn’t think about it again until years later. Ellie was in kindergarten, as happy and as healthy as she could be. It felt like for the first time I could breathe.
Surgeries were down to a trickle, and we only needed to make a trip to Coffman twice a year. A new normal had finally found us. Ellie was in school and for all intents and purposes she was thriving.
An innocent birthday party invitation would be my undoing. Now I’m not that mom who is about to say you have to invite every kid in the class. BUT if you’re going to invite every kid but my kid—then yes, you’re going to have a problem with me.
Ellie came home in tears, because everyone else was talking about the party—except her. I held my sobbing child and finally understood what the mother meant. The hospital was just the start, and I would give anything to have that be the end of things. This wasn’t the last time this happened to Ellie. And every time it broke my heart.
What do you tell your child when she looks at you wanting to know what’s wrong with her? Why people treat her this way? My heart shattered because I didn’t have answers for her, and even worse—I was probably the cause of it.
Me.
I had done this to my daughter.
And what’s worse—I couldn’t fix it. I had no answers. Nothing that would heal her broken heart.
Still searching for answers,
Gwen