You, again?
This morning, like most mornings, I woke up in pain. The pain didn’t wake me up, though, my nurse did. She meant well, coming in to wrap a band around my arm and put a widget on my finger to make sure I still have a pulse and some blood pressure. Today she brought a little friend with her who introduced herself and puttered around and then sat down next to me. She seemed inoffensive enough so I gave her a look that said “yes, it’s ok if you sit there.”
She took out a notepad and I knew what was going on. This isn’t my first stay in a hospital and she isn’t the first student I’ve met who wanted to listen to my heartbeat and my sad story.
First question: What brings me here? I have no idea, honestly, but I swear to God I hope it’s not another cancer. I’ll do anything for this to just be some run of the mill diarrhea. Something I got from one of the grandkids or from a drink I had at someone’s house. I’ll do anything for this to all blow over soon. I’ll be better about taking my meds, I’ll figure out the insurance stuff, I think I’ll try to eat better, I’ll find an oral surgeon so I can get those dentures, whatever I have to do, just please let me have some good news today. Anyway, that’s not how I answered her question. I just told her I was here for the diarrhea.
I like this kid – she’s laughing at my jokes and she’s sticking around. I showed her pictures of my grandkids and she showed me a picture of her nephew – he looks like one of mine. The clock’s ticking and I’ve got the procedures scheduled for today. First they’ll go down one end and then they’ll go up the other. They told me it’ll happen at 1pm but come on, doesn’t that really mean 4pm? I want to put it off, but I also want to get it over with.
My nursing student asks me if I have any questions or worries about the procedure. Ha! Can I get that Ativan now?
I’m wearing a diaper, by the way. I’m 45 years old and I’m wearing a diaper, it’s humiliating. All I can think about is what’s going to happen when I get into the operating room and they knock me out and I shit all over myself. What do they do if it all just explodes onto the table? I’m mortified about what they’re going to see. Not just my diarrhea, but what’s lurking behind it. What’s coming next to torment me?
Anyway, I didn’t tell my student all that, but I think she gets that I’m nervous as hell. She asks her other questions and I have the feeling that she really does want to get to know me – know my fears, know what I love, know that my high school sweetheart left me when I got my diagnosis, know how disappointed I was when the transplant didn’t take 12 years ago. Of course they tell you about graft-versus-host disease before you get your transplant, but you just think ‘that won’t happen to me.’ And then it happens to you – and don’t you feel dumb? That’s what I told my nursing student and she told me she was sorry and I told her she didn’t have to be sorry about nothing. Then we were quiet for a while, but it wasn’t uncomfortable, just pleasant.
I’ll be damned, they came to get me early. I asked my RN if my new little friend can come with me, and she said she can.
We wait an hour together on another floor. My student asks to see my sclerosis again, to take a look at the spot where the GVHD keeps eating away at my cholecystectomy scar. She asks me a question about my sex life. I’m flattered. Who are you kidding, sweetheart?
She wants to see how they’ve placed the ECG leads on my chest. I unsnap one of my sleeves – have at it. I can tell my student is excited to see a procedure and I’m happy to have someone distracting me in the moments leading up to this thing. We need each other today.
They’re wheeling me in now, we’re moving slowly but my heart is racing. They get me into position, I’m laying on my side. They come at me with a mouth guard for the endoscopy—I guess we’re starting at the top. An IV line is rubbing against my cheek but I’m getting too sleepy to move it out of the way. What’s next? What are they going to see? And… I’m out.
But just like that I’m up again and I’ve somehow made it into the recovery room. This kid is still here with me. I’m groggy, I have a nasty cramp in my belly, and my whole body aches, but I manage to ask the obvious question: “Did they find anything?”
Of course my nursing student can’t answer that, I knew she wouldn’t know, but I had to ask. I doze off and an hour later I’m brought back to my room on the 11th floor. My little buddy is there to greet me.
“Oh, you again?” I joke. We’re old friends now.
About Rachel
Rachel Blatt received her BA in Anthropology from Brown University in 2009, where she wrote an award-winning thesis on bioethical considerations in India’s commercial surrogacy industry. After graduating, she moved to Bangalore, India, working as an ethnographer for a startup that helped India’s informal working sector find jobs. She went on to work for TED Talks, Forbes Magazine, and several other media companies before returning to her calling in women’s health in 2015. Prior to making the Yale School of Nursing her home, Rachel worked as a full spectrum doula and midwife’s assistant in New York City, providing women and families with support through pregnancy, loss, birth and postpartum. She is currently in her GEPN year and will graduate as a Certified Nurse Midwife and Women’s Health NP in 2020.