Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
The Night before Surgery
My son has a steel pin through his knee that is hooked on to a rope that loops over a high metal rod and is anchored by twenty-five pounds of steel weights. His bare leg and foot rest on a small stack of pillows and I wonder how he is not screaming in frustration. He can’t move. He can’t go anywhere, he can’t go to work or play ball. The next time he is upright, he will be in crutches, a walker. My unruly son, with his wild hair and wilder beard, will be walking in a walker, up and down a hall somewhere for days or weeks.
Tonight he eats chocolate pudding brought to him by his girlfriend, the person who knows him better than his mother, she knows he wants a thick layer of whipped cream. I would have left it off, never thought of it. Pudding by itself seems indulgence enough. But she knows this thing and many others about him and it is her eyes he seeks when the pain soars. Unless she’s not there and then it’s mine.
I am so grateful for this. That my son has this person who knows about the whipped cream, who can talk to him in close, perfect whispers. She smooths his rough beard with her hands and I cross my hands over my chest and I’m grateful and relieved. He belongs to someone else.
He is having surgery to repair his shattered pelvis tomorrow. When the doctors told him he would be receiving a blood transfusion during surgery, I wondered about his blood type. Was he A+ like me? If he is I thought, I could donate my own blood and then we would have some biology in common. I could do that, have my blood in my adopted son. It seemed silly and sophomoric like when my best friend in 4th grade and I became blood sisters by pricking our fingers and mixing our blood. So I put the idea away. We aren’t going to be any more related than we are already. We’re done with forging a bond. This is what we have.
I am so grateful for this and for him surviving a terrible car crash and for the five homeless men who pulled him out of a burning car and for the doctors and nurses who cut off his jeans and his underwear to tend to his wounds and who gave him medicine to stop his incredible pain and, hopefully, have figured out how to make him right again.
11 Comments on “The Night before Surgery”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Oh god. I’m so glad he came through. Holding you and your son in my thoughts, and those 5 men, too.
Thanks DM
I am sure a Jan pie will aid in recovery or at least help the nurses do their job better! This is such karma. All the good deeds you and your family has done, has come back to you.
Hi Jan, I went through the traction experience from a head on motorcycle accident when I was fifteen. Your son will be fine. Make sure he gets lots of fruit the first thing that he eats in the day, and not to eat anything else for half an hour after eating fruit, and then never to eat fruit after eating anything else. Also, only eat proteins with proteins, and starches with starches. Never mix the two. Your son must eat this way for the next year, in order to optimize his body’s healing potential. Don’t worry, he will end up being ten times as strong a man as he would have been not having suffered the accident. “what doesn’t kill you…makes you stronger” I”m new to this post, so not sure if this is a recent accident or not, but in any event, the diet advice is good for anytime in anyone’s life. Best, Kevin.
Jan, I am sobbing. This hit me really hard and I don’t know why. I am just so grateful to those men who saved your son’s life.
best of luck to him, and he’s shown what a lucky person he is already, with all of these special people who have been in his life to help him to get through this –
I wish you the best. I can’t imagine how nerve racking and anxiety filled you must feel. Hang in there. We are rooting for you.
All the best to all of you as he goes down his road of recovery.
Wishing your son the best. In my young nurse days, I took care of a lot of patients in the traction you describe. Not a lot of fun for the patient.
Best wishes to your son for a healthy recovery. What wonderful people indeed, to have jumped into action so selflessly.
I felt really serious and quiet on the day I had surgery I knew I was with God and I think He heard me when I talked to him.