- Home
- /
- Latest Voices
- /
- Page 39
Latest Voices
Wishing I Were Still Waiting
The fountain, meant to evoke a spa-like environment in the waiting room, tinkled loudly enough to be distracting. Still, I persevered with my reading, the downtime a welcome postwork/precommute break while I waited for my annual gynecologist appointment. As an extra treat, I had plans to meet my brother afterward for coffee.
A History of Complications
A tonsillectomy at age nine that led to hemorrhaging and a return to the OR. An operation on four impacted wisdom teeth at age sixteen that kept me in a coma for three days. A hysterectomy at age thirty-six that involved the wound opening up, internal bleeding, and two additional hospital admits.
There’s more!
October More Voices: Surgery
Dear Pulse readers,
I’m very disappointed.
I was scheduled to have a surgical procedure this past Tuesday. Knowing that October’s More Voices theme would be Surgery, I was planning, in this letter, to recount lurid details of the operation and of my postoperative pain or delirium, depending upon how many narcotic pills I was ingesting.
Alas, my procedure was postponed for a week.
Ground In
I lay on the pavement weeping, my bicycle on its side. I’d received the blue Schwinn on my 9th birthday, and it was still too big for me—a small-built girl with weak legs, just recovered from mono after a year spent sitting out most activities. No jump-rope, hopscotch, or bicycle, the pediatrician said. For months, I just sat on the patio (for fresh air, mother said) reading or drawing.
The Body Keeps the Time
Have ever felt that sense of unease on a cellular level? Like something is amiss. Like nothing feels quite right in a visceral way. That feeling sneaks up on me at certain points it the year. Like when it is time to transition back to school. Or, deep in winter. Or, the anniversary of a difficult event.
The Clock Can Keep Ticking!
I was out of this clinic for almost four months.
When I came back, I realized that everyone was unsettled and upset. Apparently, this clinic was closing, another one was opening in the same space, and many of the staff were leaving. There was one recurring theme amongst the worried staff and providers, as time ticked on, relentlessly, towards D-Day. What will happen to all these patients who will fall through the cracks?
Precious Minutes
He has sharp right abdominal pain.
The pain comes and goes. It started as dull and general, but he feels it’s now concentrated on his right side. He had a similar pain a year ago, he adds. It’s worse now, so he came to the hospital.
He has a cough due to COVID.
The cough has been going on for a couple months. He had COVID in November, and it resolved. But he got COVID again in February and since then has had this lingering cough. He’s vaccinated and boosted.
A New Life Clock Begins
10:15 a.m.
We return from a routine morning on the dock—me with a good book and an empty coffee cup, my husband refreshed from a 1-mile swim—and trek up our steep driveway.
10:20 a.m.
My husband emerges from the bathroom. “I don’t feel right.” An unlikely admission from him. He walks to a chair in the living room. I tick off signs and symptoms: chest tightness, shortness of breath, sweating, mid-thoracic back pain, shallow pulse.
Count Down
Back in May, after two doctor visits, a scan, X-rays and a foot MRI, it was determined that the excruciating pain beneath my left ankle was due to two cysts pressing against a nerve. My orthopedist set me up for an operation the following week to remove them.
Anesthesia would be required, so the surgery would take place in the outpatient section of a nearby hospital. The operation was scheduled for 3:30 p.m., and I was told to be there at 2 for the prep work.
