Tag Archives: Non-fiction

You

You. You were overly stylish for a doctor, with hipster-style thick-framed glasses and Saks Fifth Avenue shoes. I suppose you were handsome too.

You were the “Neurology Consult,” my Oncologist had asked for your opinion regarding my leg. My left femoral nerve had been damaged during my abdominal surgery. Made no sense to me at the time, but apparently when your body is splayed out on an operating table for nine hours it sometimes rebels in strange ways. My Oncologist wasn’t sure I would ever walk normally again, so he called you.

You. Who sauntered in; swagger for days, like a Hip-Hop artist in his prime.

Me, ninety four pounds and pale. Sweating, because my reproductive system had been hacked out. Hair wild, matted and un-washed. A bag full of urine hanging from my bed and my stoma spewing waste into another bag, hidden under my gown. But I wasn’t a complete savage. Each morning I cleaned my face with facial wipes, brushed my teeth over a cardboard bowl and applied a tinted lip balm. Putting on “my face” was the only thing I could still do on my own; it was my daily routine that spoke to the little shreds of hope that still lingered within me. The shreds that whispered, “don’t worry, you’re going to be okay.”

You. You lacked warmth and empathy and you obviously got off on the power you wielded. You were like that character in one of those movies where the villain is stylish, has a closet full of identical grey suits and enjoys cutting up women.

You flicked a pencil on my leg and said, “hard to know how much damage has been done. Maybe you’ll walk normally again, maybe not. You might have a limp. You might have to use a cane.” You flicked the pencil again on my leg. You appeared to be conducting some sort of test. But all I could think was, “is this the most sophisticated test I’m going to get? A pencil test?!”

Despite the fact that you sickened me, I was a trained people pleaser, especially with men. So I said breezily, “Oh well, I’m just happy to be alive. And they’re going to send me to physical therapy, so that might help.” I smiled widely with my tinted lip-balmed lips.

You glanced at me, a bored, dismissive, vaguely disgusted look on your face. You flicked your pencil a third time on my leg and it shattered, leaving little pencil shards all over me.

Then you left without another word. Off to humiliate another unsuspecting patient. Or perhaps to steal medical instruments to use later that night to dismember the woman’s body you currently had chilling on ice in your swanky condo.

Minutes passed. I sat, frozen, trying not to cry. One of my favorite nurses appeared, “how’d the consult go?” she asked, as she drained urine from my bag. I pointed to the pencil scraps on my leg. “What?! He just left you with pencil pieces all over you?!” She kindly swept them away and said something under her breath that I couldn’t make out.

You. You better hope that I never see you on the street. Because I can walk now, without a limp, without a cane. My leg healed itself because it knew that one day I might need it. I might need it to run towards you. To run towards you and un-leash my rage. And to un-leash the rage of all the other patients whom you treated so badly.

I’m just a girl with incurable cancer, I have nothing to lose. So I will run towards you and before you know what’s happening, there will be a torrential downpour of pencil shards (it’s my fantasy, so on this particular day, when I see you – perhaps outside of the hospital where I still go for cat scans – I will just happen to be carrying a giant sack of pencil bits and slivers ). And the pencil shards will cover you and poke you and fall into your five hundred dollar loafers. And the nurses and doctors who are outside the hospital drinking coffee and having a smoke will not help you. You will be alone and you will feel vulnerable. What’s that saying? Oh yeah, “Karma’s a bitch.”

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Urethra, Where Art Thou?

My surgical oncologist, a fantastically tall and freakishly young looking Doctor, told me exactly what to expect after my surgery:

  • He told me I would feel like I had been hit by a truck.  Lovely.
  • He said that he would be giving me a stoma/ileostomy, since he was performing a resection on my bowel.  Disgusting.
  • The hot chemo that he would be pouring into my abdomen while I lay on the operating table, (called HIPEC), would cause some hair loss.  Thank God I was starting off with 80’s style Big Hair.
  • He added that, unfortunately, he would have to perform a hysterectomy so I would go into early menopause.  Fuckety Fuck Fuck.

I remember taking a Xanax while he rambled on, but I also took diligent notes in my little spiral notebook, adding lots of exclamation marks and angry faces.  As hellish as this whole ordeal sounded, at least I knew what to expect.  Or so I thought.

Fast forward to three weeks post-surgery.  After various complications, including a couple of days of being delusional where I was convinced that my mind was being taken over by something called “Crowd Sourcing,” – LOL! – I finally graduated from the ICU, to the Step-Down unit, to my own regular hospital room.

Throughout this period I had a catheter, since I was too weak and sick to get out of bed. Plus, my left leg no longer worked.  I had awoken from surgery to find that the femoral nerves had been damaged.  Are you fucking kidding me?! Apparently I had been splayed out on the operating table for so long that some of the nerves had checked out.  My surgeon reassured me that “most likely” I would regain full mobility.  NICE.  Could this get any worse?  Why yes, actually, it could.

One day my nurse said “let’s have you pee in a bed pan!”  She said it with an air of excitement, like we were about to go see our favourite band perform.  It sounded like a reasonable enough suggestion, though I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to pull myself up.  But I was game to start peeing again, I hated looking at the giant bag of urine attached to my bed.  So I tried.  But nothing came out. Not even one freaking drop. “Don’t worry,” said the nurse, “your bladder is just waking up.  We’ll try again tomorrow.”

After five weeks in the hospital – and no peeing on my own – I was transferred to the Rehab Hospital to work on regaining strength and learning to walk again. The nurses there were hardcore – they were like the Gangsters of Nurses – they immediately yanked out my catheter and started “bladder training.”  I had to try peeing on my own every two hours.  But nothing came out and I was in major discomfort.  After six-eight hours a nurse would scan my bladder – “it’s completely full!”  Really?!  How shocking!  Then the nurse would perform an “In and Out,” which is basically sticking a well-lubed skinny tube up my urethra and draining out the urine into a pan.  Cue “The Glamorous Life” by Sheila E.

I loved most of my nurses, but there was one crazy-assed broad who I hated. She acted like it was my fault that I wasn’t peeing and that it was a major imposition on her to have to perform an “In and Out.”  Instead of properly sterilizing my urethra, she would just THROW sterilized water – from a far distance – on my entire vagina.  Then she would start searching for a flashlight because she couldn’t find my urethra.  LOL.  Often she would attempt to put the tube in, but instead she would jam it up my vagina.  OMFG!  Are you kidding me?!  Where did this nurse go to school?!

At this point my cancer wasn’t even my main concern.  All I could think about was the fact that I was a ninety pound skeleton with thinning hair who couldn’t pee or poop.  Were it not for the support of my amazing partner, family & friends I would have surely slid into a deep, bottom-less depression.  Then came the day when one of my favorite nurses dropped The Bomb: “so, today I’m going to teach you how to do your own In & Out.”  Noooooooo!!!!!!!  This can’t be happening.  This can’t be my life.  How is it possible that after leaving a crappy marriage and finally meeting the love of my life, I now have terminal cancer, my bowel sticking out of my tummy and I have to stick a tube up my f-ing urethra every time I need to pee?!  “Are you there God?  It’s me, Mary Ellen.  This is bullshit!  Thanks for nothing!”

Thus began a chapter in my life called “Finding Urethra.”  Because if you want to drain your urine, you first need to find the hole that it comes out of.  And by hole, I mean a really tiny, almost imperceptable slit that is kind of hidden by the rest of the female bits.  I now understood the crazy-assed nurse’s need for a flashlight.  Maybe I’m in the minority and I missed a crucial health class back in grade school, but I honestly didn’t really understand where the urethra was. Yes, I have a degree from The University of Toronto, but I studied Philosophy and Religion, trust me, urethras were not covered.  So I looked at google images of the female anatomy.  I used a mirror to watch what the nurses did.  When I couldn’t sleep, I used the light from my cell phone to search for my elusive urethra.  And then, finally, “The Big Reveal.”  Just like those reality makeover shows where the formerly dumpy looking woman with Sister Wives hair walks out on stage to great applause, looking chic & fab, I excitedly and with great fanfare, found my urethra and drained my own urine!   I basked in the glory of the moment, telling every single person I encountered about my ninja-nurse like abilities.  I was a Rock Star.

A few days later I was discharged from the hospital with a supply of pee sticks, lube, a giant splint on my leg and a cane.  It would be six more months until my bladder woke up.  I became a pro at self-catheterizing, my urethra and I were besties.  Then, one day, my bladder awoke from its epic long sleep.  I sat down on the toilet and heard a beautiful noise – the swoosh of urine hitting the toilet bowl.  OMG I am peeing!