Surgery

My father came through his surgery for an abdominal aneurysm. The aneurysm was 5.4 cm at one end and 7.2 cm at the other. It was big enough to write "Happy Birthday!" on. It had been discovered by accident when he was having his lungs checked for the remnenats of last year's bout with pneumonia. At that time, the pneumonia was diagnosed, but it was not fully treated. Then it reappearred in August, 2006. For some reasons, the hospital had him in a tuberculosis quarantine. At least it was a private room. We had to wear masks and regalia when we went in. That was the weekend of Katrina; the week of growing disbelief, waiting until Thursday until we broke down and got those people out of the Super Dome. Major surgery is incredible. We waited all day for surgery to be done, then for him to leave the recovery room, then to await his arrival in the ICU. His journey to the ICU was a series of about 6 or 7 half hour intervals, each initialed by a report to us that he would be in the ICU within 30 minutes. As time wore on, we retreated to our private and frantic thoughts. I went with my mother to the ICU when we were allowed to see him. Of course, he was still feeling the effects of the anaethesia. He had a tube down his throat for breathing, and he was so pale. He looked as weak and fragile as a baby bird, newly born, unseeing and confused. My mother-in-law had looked like that when she neared death. She was infinitely small and birdlike, blind eyes, gasping for breath to the left, then to the right. There was no drip in that country. They gave us this wonderful gift to last us the rest of our lives. The night of the surgery, my mother and I went to my home. We had offered to lodge my mother's cat, too, but she insisted that my wife go to Port Desespoir and nanny. (This backfired, since the cat likes she-who-must-be-obeyed, and my mother feared for alienation of affection.) Well, the next morning my father was awake and had a good color. Thank God. He still had the tube down his throat and could not talk. He needed something and tried to write it. FInally I leaned over and he poked me in the glasses. He wanted his glasses. Of course, we had left them at home, but home was only 11 miles away. Each day got better. Lots of hospital stuff going on. I sat around telling nurses their horoscopes and such things. I had written down some questions about my father on a thin, long slip of paper and took it to the Nurses' station. The nurse there saw the paper and asked if it was a fortune from a fortune cookie. So I said she would be meeting an oriental gentleman. She looked at me with amazement, and accused me of hanging around the water cooler or the coffee machine with Beth and LaWanda from MRI, talking about her sex life! She was going out with a doctor that evening, a doctor of Chinese heritage. I said that if it had been something she did not already know, I would have charged her for it. The next morning she threw a bed pan at me. As I ducked, I saw her scowling in my direction. "Hey!", I said. "Darn you and your oriental gentleman!", she said. I tried to keep from laughing, trying to look puzzled. "I take it the date was...not......great?" She laughed. "Keep your fortunes to yourself, buddy." As I ducked into the room, I said "I coulda told ya." I heard a urine jug bonk emptily against the door. Yesterday my father told me "We got through it, buddy." This reminded me of something else intuited about him and me, but I think I shall keep it to another time.