Good things

Because it’s after the storm, today’s big storm, and certainly the biggest storm in two Fridays. Though compared to three Fridays ago, it was a cool Santa Ana breeze (oh the laughter, the howls of laughter). Seriously it wasn’t bad, the storm of it was the worry. The Fear. You know, that post below me if you’re reading in normal bloggy order. Once Y sensei told me what they were going to do, I had time to worry about how it would all go down for hours before Yuaaz nurse showed up and wheeled me down to the second floor. There I first met a young doctor all in green scrubs with English he had to summon from the recesses of his memory. He explained the procedure and where they were going in, between two ribs, where according to his drawing it would breach the bottom of the gall bladder. Through the ribs, yow, wasn’t that going to be—hold on, because he explained what could go wrong with this and then some, so first let’s explain why it they were going in through this point. See, from any higher, which I saw by his drawing, they would be skirting my tumorous liver, not something they wanted to do. I agreed. Suddenly going between two ribs didn’t seem like a big deal. Of course that was before Green Scrubs went through his catastrophe list of all that could go wrong. I was groaning with fear and probably pale by the end of it. So the shot shouldn’t be too bad, but maybe once the needle for draining the gall bladder got in deep there might be pain. 

My God pain in deep that sounds so terrible but they’ll stop it then right? 

Oh no, you have to gaman, don’t flop around in agony too much. Gaman means endure. It’s probably one of the worst words you want to hear coming from out of a doctor’s mouth. 

So you can imagine I wasn’t too reassured after this. He went on.

It could be worse, he told me, I could start bleeding from the point of puncture and then they’d have to stop the procedure. 

Bleeding? 

It’s very unlikely.

Unlikely, that's good. 

It could be worse.

Worse?

Well, we could spill your gall bladder’s pus into the  stomach.

Seriously?

This is really unlikely. 

Basically me at the time: ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! As in Pink from Comfortably Numb. Okay, so here’s a preview of some of the good things to come. It’s the Yuaaz Nurse, there to wheel me to my doom and handhold me through it. Her smiling sympathetic face (wearing a cold mask but her eyes smiled which says something right there) helped me through the doctor’s catastrophe explanation. There would be more. 

But now came the needle procedure itself. We left Green Scrubs looking exhausted himself, as if he was imagining what would happen to Onomichi if a 3/11 earthquake struck (think it was all the English he had to summon, about fifteen words or so).

So we got to the room and thanks to Green Scrubs I was prepared for the worst. Armed for it? Seriously at this point I didn’t know, but that bed was an awfully narrow thing. And the doctor inside wasn’t Green Scrubs. Can you believe it, this worried me at first. Well, we went through the explanation together…

Oh my God I’m so glad it wasn’t him. A guy like that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. Instead I got a sober older gentleman in a neat suit and glasses. He kind of looked like he was pressed himself and I would turn out to like this about him. The dude was calm steady and precise. Quiet. No discontented murmurs, no okaashi na. He did minimal explanation. This is the cool jelly for the sonogram, this is the iodine swab, this the shot, breathe deep—whoa I felt something there—breathe out—oh that’s okay then—even as he kept threading it in. Later he talked to his nurse about a piece of equipment he needed and she could find in the locker. Normally I’d be all asking what’s wrong, what do they need, but his calm manner belayed that. Yes, I asked the question, maybe more than once, but I didn’t go crazy with it. All eyes on the sonogram, it didn’t look like anything wrong was going on, they were simply following this swirly grainy movie I couldn’t see (screen turned away from me) like they were watching the Matrix unfold from that rain of green symbols shit. And that’s how it went at the ribs and through them. It was easy, but longer than the five minutes Green Scrubs had promised, the one piece of good news he let slip. 

The only real problem was that damn narrow bed. Of course I had to keep still, what do you think it is, sonny, a disco? Still. Still meant keeping my arm in place, 12 and 6 on the dial, my right stretched over me into the abyss and my left hugging the edge of the you know, very fucking narrow bed. This was the hard part. Keeping them there. And here again, Yuaaz Nurse was a pillar, helping me hold my left to the bed. Did I tell you it was a very fucking narrow bed. Okay it’s not a real bed, more of a hospital slab thing (stop with the technical language, I beg of you) but it’s got a pillow. And I believe even for a hospital slab thing it was not inordinately wide. By the end of it, the arm hanging over was getting numb. She couldn’t do anything for it, but again, the sympathy of her eyes above her cold mask meant something. Clean Press Sensei and a young assistant in dramatic rectangle glasses who hung over my chest were watching the Matrix of my sonogram unfold, Clean Press sensei while he held the threading in place. The me who lives outside the Matrix of my gall bladder was invisible to them. So it was nice to have somebody see me, and see me as a human. This is what I mean by the Angels, and they are irreplaceable to this or any hospital. To all those Angels out there, you rule. 

Back to the procedure and it’s finished. Luckily there isn’t anything dramatic to write here, the procedure simply wound down to success with the pus amount shrunk and the needle pulled out without any pain or gushes of blood. I was stretchered back to the sixth floor where I was deposited from said stretcher back to my bed. There was a little scooching of me involved and a lot of hefting by the nurses. Let’s Go/Ganbatte Nurse, who’s nice but not Angel level, said I ganbatta, which would translate literally to I did well. Hell, I’ll accept it. She even gave me a hanamaru, a flower circle, like a gold star you give to students, except no one stops loving getting one. That’s a bad sentence but you get the point. So a hanamaru for me. Naturally I gave out one to Yuaaz Nurse, she more than earned it today. She even cheered at getting one. Then they left and I had to wait for three hours lying down flat on my back, no elevation, no movement. 

Did I tell you about that?

I mean it kind of sucked yeah, thought I’d have more hours. If you’re a writer you can’t be pleased when you find your beautiful writing hours snatched away from you. Still, it wasn’t so bad except for my lower back. I Youtubed up some Floyd, Wish You Were Here in particular. Yuaaz Nurse came in later to change both bags, I looked at some email, some Facebook, had to piss as the second hour rolled around, and finished the hours off with Floyd, Darkside, only up to the middle of Money before it hit 3:00. Then I did the elevation thing on my Paramount bed (angel choir) and was ready to piss. A minute later Yuaaz nurse shows up (she had set her timer, I mean come on, if that isn’t high on the hierarchy Angel-like nothing is) and helps lead me to the bathroom, makes sure nothing happens to me or my recently needled side and I was good to go. I gave her her second hanamaru, and she cheered again.

So now I have my peach tea, one of the few things allowed to me (no food for the rest of the day I’m sure, no yogurt drinks, but sports drinks and tea are okay, ergo my bit o happiness). 

Good things.