Feed your faith and your fears will starve to death.  ~Author Unknown

And Then I Woke Up

Waking up from anesthesia isn’t like waking up from normal sleep.  It’s hard!  Awake in the operating room, I blinked my eyes a few times, the harsh bright lights, the cold sterility of the room, doctors and nurses in scrubs and funny blue caps.  I started to giggle…but it hurt my throat…oh yes…the breathing tube was there not too long ago…

I remember searching for my CD walkman…yes…right on my chest where I left it.  Someone wheeled me out of the O.R. and into recovery.  I fell asleep again.  For how long, I don’t know.  When I woke up again, I opened my eyes to see mom, dad and Sharon.  Sharon and dad came over and kissed me.  Dad squeezed my hand…an infusion of love and strength washed over me.  Mom took up a chair and sat next to me…holding onto my other hand assuring me she’d never let go. 

Mom stroked my face and asked, “What time did you wake up?”

It struck my still drugged out mind as the strangest and stupidest question I’d ever heard.  I’m awake right now.  And I thought and thought and thought some more,  ”Well, what time did I wake up? ”

As if I just announced some major breakthrough in erradicting disease, poverty, and war, I answered very matter-of-factly, “When I woke up.” 

I never heard three people laugh so hard at something I gave serious and profound thought to.  One of the nurses came over with Seven-Up and graham crackers…and became the fourth person to have a good belly laugh at my expense. 

Dr. Matory eventually stopped by to check on me. 

“How are you feeling?” she asked in that velvety chocolate voice of hers.

“Ok.”  I replied, full sentences still eluding me.

“Do you remember talking to me?” she asked, checking the monitor I was hooked to.

We talked?  I don’t remember talking to her.  Nope.  No card file in the brain. 

“Uh…no…we talked?” My face must have looked like a squished up question mark.

Dr. Matory quietly laughed, “Surgeon humor…I talk to all my patients in post op, some remember, but most don’t.”

Clearly, I’m in the don’t column!  Dr. Matory began speaking to my parents as telling me any discharge information would likely be quickly forgotten.  After she was finished, she touched my arm, “and I’ll see you in a week for a follow up.”

“Ok.”

Dr. Matory left and the nurse returned.  “Well, Princess,” she said,”it’s time to move you to the recovery chair.  You up for that?”

Princess?  She’s calling me Princess?  I nodded my head, “yeah…but why am I a Princess?”

More laughter.  “Because,” she replied,  pointing to my three parents, “your Court is here.”

Mom laughed with her, “that’s right…Princesssssssss…”

Mom and the nurse helped get me out of bed and into the chair.  Perhaps another hour went by, along with another Seven-Up and a few more graham crackers, before I was ready for the nurse to disconnect me from the IV and the monitor.  Mom helped me change from my designer hospital gown into my clothes.  I got a free wheel-chair ride to the lobby of Brigham and Women’s and in true Princess fashion, the nurse helped me into Dad’s Murano. 

On the long ride home, I though only one thought – “And now the wait begins.”  The breast tissue that Dr. Matory removed would go to pathology.  I would know in seven days if she got all the cancer or not.  And if not, my next surgery would be a mastectomy to remove my breast.

Through the passenger side window, I watched the Boston skyline recede as we headed north on I93.  Inside my head worries and doubts taunted my frevent hope that Dr. Matory’s magical surgical knife removed every cancer cell in my breast.  So I hoped…

and I prayed.

© Peggy Nolan, 2009