About A Brush With Chaos

As some of you may know, we recently had a “spot of bother” that had to be weathered. My blogging partner was utterly swamped by her job and family commitments, and I was blind-sided by a bit of medical mayhem. I could launch into a tirade about a health-care system that seems to be far less interested in caring for the patient than in watching out for the bottom- line, but I won’t. At least not this time.

On January 15th I took my friend to the hospital for what was supposed to have been a “routine” operation. A one hour surgery that might have her out the door later that evening—at the absolute latest, the next morning. My friend, a red-haired tornado possessing the stubbornness of a mule-team (I say this with the utmost loving conviction- having known her for thirty years) had insisted that I would be dropping her off at the hospital. Fortunately, I also possess mule-like stubbornness and completely ignored her request.

In our thirty years, we’ve been through a lot. Together we faced things young girls should never have to face. As we got older we were there for each other through marriages, pregnancies, miscarriages, fertility problems, divorce, and deployments. We’ve cried together and shared a lot of laughter too. So, being divorced, when she was asked to fill out her HIPA form and Health-Care Proxy it was natural for her to give those rights to information and decision making to me. Thank God.

That one hour surgery stretched into a surreal blur lasting twelve hours… and ultimately lasting two weeks. After the first 2 ½ hours passed, panic began to set in. When I finally found someone with information they asked me to wait to speak with the doctor. Never a good sign. Low blood pressure… 60/40… low hematocrit… “we’ll be keeping her in recovery a few hours longer”… “had to fix the bladder that was punctured during surgery”… “don’t leave—too many unknowns”.

Have you ever felt like the world was falling out from beneath your feet??? My first thought was of her seventeen year old daughter... at home... alone. What was I going to tell her? I pictured her as the feisty two-year old she’d been, insisting on taking a bath for the second time in an afternoon… reaching up to me with those dancing eyes and devilish smile… winding those sweet little arms around my neck…

1 ½ hours later my cell-phone rang. A nurse told me she would be connecting me with the “attending”. Never a good sign. I insisted on talking to the doctor face-to-face. I arrived to a flurry of activity. The anesthesiologist was consulting with a colleague. The words “pressure falling” drifted over me. A nurse handed me a box of tissues. The doctor explained that my friend’s pressure and hematocrit were dropping fast. They needed to go in again. Immediately. Did I know if she had any bleeding disorders?

The second surgery over, and four long hours later I was allowed to see her in the Surgical Intensive Care unit. Swollen to twice her normal size and ghostly white, she lay connected to monitors, tubes and drains snaking from her battered body. As the nurse escorted me in he asked if my friend, the red-haired tornado six weeks older than me, was my mother…

Little did I know that question was the beginning of another layer to the nightmarish hell we’d entered. Suddenly staff was questioning me, “Who EXACTLY are you again?” The fact that my name was on the paperwork meant little to them. My questions were met with raised brows, my presence regarded with smirks and suspicion. The idea that we were close friends was inconceivable. So inconceivable that the next morning the doctor questioned her as to our relationship. Worse yet, the anesthesiologist interrogated her so brutally that my friend became hysterical. After having lost 18… count ‘em… 18 pints of blood … still in ICU, playing a macabre game of hide-n-seek with death… my friend was subjected to this for what reason???

While I realize it was at least partially due to a “cover-your-ass” mentality that kicked in due to the fact that my friend had suffered, among other things, a cut artery in the first surgery that had gone undetected, I also believe it was due to close-minded, disconnected people who couldn’t comprehend a long-term bond between two women that didn’t entail sexual intimacy.

What a profoundly sad testament this is for our culture… have we become so disconnected that we are that distrustful of human caring? Are we capable of understanding relationships only within a sexual framework? If this is truly what we have become, then it’s no wonder we’re in trouble. Turn off the TV, unplug from your I-Pod, get out and connect in a meaningful way with the world. Rediscover the richness of human contact. Revel in it. And if you already have it, savor it… and count your blessings for the precious gift you’ve been given.

E