My surgeon turned out to be a bit of a guardian angel. He was available before the oncologist so I went to see him first. He showed me the MRI and talked about how its location in a language region made it impossible to remove. He suggested a needle biopsy and could schedule it the next week. I had a lot of questions and he was willing to answer all of them. At this point I knew that the suggested diagnosis was bad and that total removal was my best bet for living longer. I was understandably upset that he thought it was inoperable. I asked him about how long I would survive and he said patients like this usually live ten to twenty years. I went home with a cloud over my head.
We told our families about the diagnosis and arranged for my in-laws to stay at our house with the kids during surgery. I told my son I was sick and needed to go to the hospital to get better. He was five so that’s the extent of what I thought made sense to share. I cried a bit each day.
The next week my husband took me to the hospital. They had me take showers with antibacterial soap at home.
At the hospital I had about two hours of preparation to do. First I had to do a wipe down of my whole body with alcohol wipes to prevent infection. This was after two showers with an antibacterial soap, hibiclens, the night before and on the morning of surgery. I had to change into a gown, go over my medical history again with a nurse, have a blood and urine sample taken, and talk to the surgeon, and the PA. At some point a nurse realized I didn’t have any mark on my head. Apparently they are very serious about writing in marker (initialing) the side of the head for surgery. I suppose drilling into the wrong side would be quite bad, and I imagine it happened somewhere at some point. They had to call the PA and get her back to my gurney so she could write her initials on my left temple. I have since spent days trying to rub off the permanent marker.
I left my husband and was wheeled down to the OR by Jerry who called me his Uber driver. I told him I would give him five stars. The OR itself was cold and frightening. It was in a brightly lit basement room like something out of a SciFi movie. There were large, circular contraptions hanging from the ceiling everywhere. Lights I assume, to make the shaving, drilling, and seeing of the brain easier. I was lifted by a machine with hooks to the operating table and immediately started shivering violently. I was so cold in my little gown and socks. The nurse and anesthesiologist covered me with blankets right out of the oven and I relaxed a bit. The anesthesiologist asked if I was active because my heart rate was so low, 62, but it took me a minute to realize he was talking to me. I had lost my sense of subjectivity. Everything around me made me feel very much the object of something, no longer in control. I told him I was a runner just before I was given oxygen and he pumped the anesthesia into my IV. I tried to keep my eyes open, but was out in seconds.
When I woke up I had mild pain behind my ear and I was shaking with cold again. The anesthesiologist accompanied me to the PACU (post anesthesia care unit) with a very sweet nurse named Karen. They bundled me up with even more blankets and asked me some questions. I was relieved that I could talk and understand them immediately. They wanted me awake quickly so they could do neurological tests. After a few of their questions the anesthesiologist left and Karen and I conversed casually for forty minutes as we waited for my room to be ready. She had been a nurse for twenty-seven years and had traveled around the country until she and her husband, also a nurse, decided to settle in Seattle. I told her I had not done anything for twenty-seven years straight. With this diagnosis I desperately want to be able to say that some day I have had a career, or been married, or been a mother for that long and I’m still going.
Alexis Yelton 