The snake pit

Let me just start by saying: I really love my plastic surgeon, Jeffrey Ascherman. He has been my plastic surgeon since three years ago, when I had my double mastectomy and reconstruction. He has been incredibly patient and decent and also quite the artist. In fact, I love all of the doctors I have had at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital - Dawn Hershman, my medical oncologist, Sandra Russo, my radiation oncologist, Freya Schnabel, my breast surgeon (surgical oncologist). Each of them was willing to listen to me, to communicate with me and to allow me to be a part of planning my treatment.

And, perhaps surprisingly, I have truly enjoyed every hospital stay at Columbia (this one excluded). I have been pampered and taken care of and basically treated like a queen. There were the four days I spent after my double mastectomy and reconstruction. There were the five days I spent when I had orbital cellulitis and neutropenia (the result of six months of chemo basically destroying my white cells such that I couldn't fight infection - even something as seemingly mundane as a sty in my eye). There were the experiences I had with outpatient surery - liposuction, oophorectomy. There were the many days I spent at the chemo infusion center as well. All were really good experiences, save for the occasional glitch (like when I tried to get admitted for my eye infection and had to endure having have my eyes examined by no fewer than three doctors and spend more than 18 hours waiting to get a room).

But apparently, a good experience in a hospital, even Columbia, is far from a guarantee. This time around, I got to see hospitalization at its God-awful worst.

Nothing quite went as I had hoped or planned, right from the beginning. I had been really looking forward to the anesthesia because my experience with general anesthesia up until now has been so wonderful - basically, the doctor leads you into the OR, which is a clean, cold white room with lots of monitors and lots of people all dressed in white and blue and all of whom are there just to take care of YOU. You get yourself up on the operating table, and someone covers you with this wonderful, puffy warming blanket - it feels like a warm cloud. Then someone inserts a needle into your vein, and someone else starts to push a sedative, and before you know it, you're feeling kind of giggly and goofy, and then you start to drift off, knowing you are in good hands.

Well, this time, it didn't quite go like that. For whatever reason, they could not get a good vein in my left arm (and I can only use my left arm for needle sticks - because I am at risk for lymphedema in my right arm due to the lymph node dissection I had three years ago). Now, I say "for whatever reason", knowing full well that the "reason" is that my veins are about as viable as those of a heroin addict, as a result of chemo, which flattens the veins and makes them a "difficult stick". But the thing is, a good phlebotemist will be able to get a "good stick" anyway. An experienced blood-drawer will warm the flesh and pat the flesh and massage it a bit, and eventually, a good vein will pop up.

But just my luck, they chose to let a resident practice on me. I have no idea why I didn't protest, knowing what I know about my veins. But I didn't, and so, I laid there wincing in pain as said resident stuck me three separate times, failing each time to get an IV going. The anesthesiologist finally took over and got it on the first try. After that, I remember them putting an oxygen mask on my face and telling me to take deep breaths. No giggles, no goofy grin. The next thing was simply darkness.

I tend to awaken from anesthesia quite alert, and this was no exception. Only it would have been better in this case if I had been more groggy because the pain was pretty bad. Fentanyl didn't do much to help. Nor did Percoset or Darvon. It took still another pain medication for me to finally get some rest. So far, not so good, eh?

But now, I feel compelled to interrupt my regularly programmed bitching to qualify all of the above with: Yes, I know I did this to myself (elective surgery and all) and YES, I am thankful just to have woken up after surgery, alive and well....

Anyway, what happened over the next few hours in the recovery room is a bit of a blur. But here is what I remember: I was all alone. My mom had promised to come to be with me in recovery and to drive me home, but in the midst of my drug-induced haze, I realized that she was not there, and I have a vague recollection of being told that my SISTER had called to say that my mom couldn't come and neither could she (despite that she lives a mere 10 blocks away from Columbia) and that my husband was going to come to pick me up around 8 p.m. I had no idea why my mom wasn't coming, and why my sister was calling for her, but now my understanding (still hazy though) is that this had to do with the fact that my dad had an appointment the next day at Columbia with HIS oncologist to find out the results of his post-chemo CT scans (dad has locally advanced lung cancer, but he actually is doing super well with his treatment), and my mom was too stressed out to come to the hospital twice.

I was too drugged up to be upset about any of this, but when my husband called to say he was picking me up at 8 and that he planned to have me helping with the kids, etc., I had enough of my wits about me to know that I was better off staying overnight at the hospital.

So, the next step was to get me admitted, which meant that I had to wait in the recovery room until a bed opened up somewhere in the hospital. Unfortunately, that meant that I was the last person left in recovery, and I had to say goodbye to the nice, sweet nurse who had been there with me since the beginning of the day and hello to a stern-faced, rough-voiced fascist caretaker who threatened to take away my cell phone if it rang again.

Cut to me finally being wheeled into my hospital room at 9:30 p.m., too late to have phone service turned on. That felt a bit scary to me - to be out of touch with my kids, my husband, the outside world. I did have my cell, but the battery was just about to give out.

Things in the room started off on a bad foot, not surprisingly. My roommate's nurse was a large, imposing man, and when he came into the room to see her, he would stand in my space, despite the curtains dividing the room. I felt violated. Another source of distress was that my nurse was not responding to my calls, and I was long overdue for pain meds. At some point, I fell into a fitful sleep but was awakened by the alarming sensation of having a steady stream of water being sprayed all over me and my bed. It only took an instant to realize that my IV had come out of my vein (remember, the problem veins...well, apparently, the IV's needle was too large for my veins) and was spraying all over me. I pressed the "call" button for my nurse, but I got no response. Meanwhile, the IV tubing was like a wild garden hose, flopping about, spraying everything in its path. I pressed the call button again. What was in my IV anyway? Saline? Antibiotics? Pain meds? Who knew? I began pressing the call button with more urgency, and when I still got no response, I began to use my voice: "HELP!" "EMERGENCY HERE" "PLEASE HELP"............

It was a horrible, helpless, pathetic feeling. Soon, a stony-faced woman appeared at my door - not my nurse, not anyone's nurse, but an aide of some sort. "What's your problem?" she asked coldly. I stared at her in disbelief. This is the way she addressed a patient crying out for help? "Who are you? Where's my nurse?" I asked. "She's not here," Bitch-From-Hell answered. That was helpful. Er, not. Long story short, I finally got my wits about me and ordered Bitch-from-Hell to take her attitude and get the hell out of my room. That's when my nurse finally showed up. Thank God.

Now, despite her unavailability, Jennie was a nice enough nurse. She calmed me down and she got me a new IV, and when a crazy lady from across the hall barged into my room to tell me to "shut up and stop being such a baby," Jennie stroked my hand and told me everything was going to be okay. Unfortunately, the fact that we were ignoring her seemed to infuriate Crazy Lady even more, inspiring a continued tirade: "I have cancer" she screamed at me (I guess she thought she was the only one...), "so I don't need to hear you screaming when you're just being a baby" (I guess nothing compares to the problems of a cancer patient...oh wait, I've been a cancer patient, and I never acted like that...). "Get yourself a private duty nurse," she went on, "I have one. It costs $189 a night. Then we won't have to listen to you being a baby."

I didn't even bother to tell her that I have had cancer too and that when I was in the hospital for it, I didn't barge into other patients' rooms, ordering them around. But I did quietly tell her, "Not everyone can afford a private duty nurse." She promptly threatened to "report me". Ooooooookay.

If this seems funny now (and I am not sure it even does), it certainly wasn't funny at the time, and in spite of how nice Jennie was, I still didn't have my pain meds, and I still didn't have some other things I needed, like water, a bedpan, a breath exerciser (to get the lungs working after being intubated and extubated), and I had no idea when I was going to get them. I dozed off for a bit while I was waiting, only to be awakened by the screams and moans of yet another patient down the hall. This time, it was not Crazy Lady, but Another Crazy Lady. Another Crazy Lady was screaming in Spanish, something about "aqua frio" (cold water) and other stuff that (thankfully) escapes my recall.

Realizing that despite that it was already 11:30 at night and I still didn't have my pain meds, realizing that my entire family had basically abandoned me, realizing that the hospital did not feel like the safe place that I had up until that moment thought it was, realizing that everyone around me was just as sick and scared as me, if not moreso, I called my husband with the last bit of battery left on my cellphone and cried hysterically to him. And he was surprisingly calming. He said that a week from now, I wouldn't remember this, that even if I did, none of this would matter, and I just had to get through this night and get the hell out of the hospital.

A little while later, my pain meds finally arrived, along with assorted other sundries that I needed and for which I had waited many hours. And with that, I fell asleep.

The next day, my parents came to the hospital for my dad's appointment with his medical team. And luckily, he got good news. His cancer was in retreat, if not exactly remission. He wasn't going to even have to see his doctor for another three months. YAY!!! Mom and dad helped me to get dressed and get ready to leave. Then we ordered a wheelchair for me and waited for it to come so that I could leave the hospital safely.

The wheelchair never came. After 45 minutes, I hobbled out of the hospital hunched over a Columbia Presbyterian pillow to support my abdomen.

I'm keeping the pillow.

YC