I hadn't had much of a real appetite for quite a while.
Before my brain surgery, whatever eating I did was dutiful (stay healthy for the surgery) or compensatory (I'll just stuff all those feelings down with more food!). Weighing in at around 200 pounds, I was also heavier than I ever had been before. Bloating from hormone imbalances had swollen me up like a Pufferfish.
When I woke up at Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore in the middle of the night after a marathon twelve hours of surgery, they wouldn't even let me have water for quite a while. Once I could eat, I mostly didn't want to.
I spent the first two nights and days in the Intensive Care Unit. What you don't know about being in an ICU unless you've been there is how UTTERLY NOISY IT IS!!
I was hooked up to six different machines, all of which sighed, beeped, chirped or chuffed, and all of which have alarms that go off if you look at them wrong or start to fall asleep.
I'm not kidding about the sleep part.
I was tubed to the bed by IV's and monitors, and the bed was kept at a constant angle of 30 degrees. I was always on my back, with an oxygen thingie hanging off my face that didn't fit. The surgeon went up through my nose for the surgery, so the standard oxygen canula tubing that fits over your ears and under your nose wasn't an option. Instead, they just hung this big plastic oxygen cup somewhere south of my mouth, with not much benefit to my blood oxygen level. So when I would start falling asleep, the little clamp on my finger would sense my shallower breathing and set off an alarm... BEEP!...BEEP!... BEEP!!... until I was completely awake and cursing and a nurse came to shut it off.
Repeat every fifteen minutes, all night long, two nights in a row.
Bottom line, I spent twelve hours in surgery, followed by two nights and days in ICU with NO sleep at all!
So when they finally told me on day two that I could have a 'regular diet', I laughed at them through my hallucinations.
I was also experiencing a nasty little hormonal syndrome at the time called Diabetes Insipidus, where your mouth feels like sand no matter what you put in it. They brought a tray in the morning with cereal and milk, and it's the only time in my life when a half cup of cereal swimming in a cup of milk felt so dry I couldn't swallow it.
Pain also squashes appetite, and I had a lot of that, too, so with all that was going on, my desire for food was a distant memory. I told Betsy I was on the Johns Hopkins Brain Surgery Weight Loss Diet.
On day three they moved me off ICU, up to the neurosurgery floor into a double room without a roommate. Shortly after I arrived, in came a nice lady with a lunch tray who I learned would always talk to me in endearments: "Here, Sweetheart...", "Food for you, Love...", "Here you go, Darlin'". The trays she put in front of me had the absolutely most awful hospital food on them I've ever tried to eat, and I am a veteran of hospital food. Canned meat, instant potatoes, tired vegetables, big chunks of sugary dessert, and caffeine of some kind with every meal. Yuk!
Fortunately, Betsy was staying at a hotel with a Whole Foods Market right across the street, so she
started smuggling me in some lunch and dinner foods. She learned to bring them in doll-house portions, because that's all I could eat. A spoonful of this, a fork-full of that, I'm done. I had a hard time getting it down even when it was good.
The only thing I had an appetite for was those four little pills I got every four hours that would take away about 70% of the pain for a while. Those I could get down. I had terrible post-surgical pain in my head and my neck, and could not sit upright or get up.
I started getting a little sleep in my new room, but it only came in catnaps because the staff was always on me wanting something. Many tests and procedures were scheduled for me at four-hour intervals, and if it had all been due at the same fourth hour, OK, but every item was off-time from every other item, creating nearly constant interruption.
Follow my finger with your eyes. Stick out your tongue and wiggle it. Squeeze my fingers and pull. Push. Raise your leg. Give me your arm for a blood draw. I need to check the machine that is draining some of your spinal fluid. On and on, blah, blah, blah. All very necessary.
Betsy was getting worried about my low food intake; for me it was still all about sleep.
On Friday, day four, the docs came in and said, "If your blood-work looks good today, you can go tomorrow." I also got a roommate who liked to constantly watch Fox news. Would I murder someone with my last sleepless breath, or would I be peacefully discharged? It was hard to tell.
We knew we had to get me out of bed and able to move if there was any hope of getting me out of the hospital, so I wobbled the long journey of two steps over from the bed to the chair and sat down. The crate of nails and nerves that was my head followed me there, and I sat with clenched teeth for an hour, counting the minutes until I could lie down again.
Back in bed, needles, voices, mini-naps, and here comes Betsy again, with "dinner". A salad this time, and they praised me the same way you praise your infant for each bite when he puts the food in his mouth instead of on the floor. O-o-o-o, good Doug! They even brought cookies that I coudn't eat.
Saturday dawned, and Betsy arrived early. Today was the day. We were going to spring my sore ass out of this place, even if I had to crawl.
Breakfast tray arrives, "Just for you lover..." from my tray server. It sits. "Oh, you didn't eat anything", she says when she picks it up, just like always.
The nurse comes in for what turns out to be my big discharge test; can I walk a circuit around the halls? If yes, I can go, if not, I stay.
I smiled through the pain, called up every reserve I had and shuffled 63 steps (yes, I counted) around the nursing station and back to my room to qualify for release. Betsy helped me into shorts and a shirt, and they lowered me into a wheelchair.
Every little bump in the chair was pain, but I was good; we rolled out the front door and I slid head-first into a Yellow Cab and lay down. Betsy got in front and prevailed upon the driver to drive extremely slowly back to the hotel.
When we arrived, hotel staff was lined up to greet me with smiles and nods. They had been getting updates about me (sweet people!), and were glad I was back. They rolled me into the elevator, and when my brain caught up with the acceleration of that, we were rolling off at the eleventh floor, into our room.
So quiet. so clean and peaceful. A great big soft bed for me to slide into and pass out on after taking four little pills. All that lost sleep. Yes.
I would awake, pee into a urinal without getting up, wave to Betsy and go back to sleep. Twice the first day I would shuffle out to the living room for mini-meals; a little rice with an egg, a bite or two of fish with a salad. And I was way more stoned than I ever remember being in the sixties. Sleepy was all I could do.
Then in the middle of the night, I woke up tossed a little bit. Betsy, so sensitive in those days to what was going on with me, said, "What, Love? Anything I can do?"
"What time is it?"
"1:30", she said.
"I'm a little hungry for something, but I don't know what", I said.
"Wait here", she said.
I dozed off, then woke up again as she slid into bed. I heard the clink of a spoon on a bowl as she snuggled in beside me, and she said, "try this."
I dimly saw a spoon in front of me, and something sweet and cold slid into my mouth... ice cream! Mint ice cream!!
It was, at that moment, about the very best thing I had ever tasted. We finished nearly a pint (she got
two or three bites) of Haagen Dazs Mint Chip ice cream, and my mouth was alive again.
In the morning, she went to Whole Foods and got me some strawberry kefir -- liquid yogurt. I poured it over fresh orange slices and thought I'd gone to heaven. She also brought back more Mint Chip ice cream, and we got into it again at 3:00 the following morning.
I got clean, sitting in the unplugged tub while shower water poured over me, for the first time since before the surgery. Betsy washing away at the blood-stiff hair around the three holes in my scalp where they had screwed my head into a frame to keep it still during surgery. Washing my back, so sore from just lying on it for days.
I slept, rested, ate, and on Wednesday morning was strong enough for Betsy to drive us back home to Richmond.
Home: arguably the most powerful word in language.
And yesterday -- Sunday -- I cooked food for our Memorial Day weekend. Cold
Macaroni Salad with vegetables, big, thick, bone-in pork chops on the grill. New corn on the cob, steamed just right.
And for dessert, Haagen Dazs Mint Chip ice cream.
Life is so very good, so Mighty Alright.
- The Acolyte
