People who undergo major surgery look like death afterwards. It's one of the many things the medical dramas don't really prepare you for—nor anybody in the actually existing health-care system, for instance the surgeon (affectless by some inscrutable combination of temperament and policy) who has primary charge of your Mom's case and who will disappear behind the wall of his answering service once (actually, well before) the last suture has closed.

I'm back home in Chicago, having spent pretty much every waking hour the last three days in the fluorescent maze of Missouri Baptist, the hospital in suburban St. Louis where my Mom was given a kind of bypass surgery, to correct a condition known as portal hypertension. (It's a form of high blood pressure specific to the liver—I hadn't even been aware there was such a thing as an organ system-specific hypertension.) One waiting room after another, each with its useless ritual cackle of television (which one doesn't dare turn off), a pre-op room, a post-op recovery room, an ICU room, two more dingy semi-private rooms (two, because nobody checked the first for necessary equipment till after they'd moved my Mom into it). Mom's well on her way to mending now, as it seems (though she hasn't started eating yet, which will be a test, since she runs the risk of encephalopathy if her liver is more compromised than it's thought to be), but it's been a tough few days. Saturday afternoon and evening were especially rocky, after she was transferred (with none-too-careful bed technique) from ICU: she had a spike of fever, and though she seemed lucid when she was awake she couldn't remain awake (more than 36 hours after surgery) for even a couple of minutes at a time—her speech would slur, and she'd drop off in mid-sentence, mid-word. Her breath when she slept came rough, each intake preceded by a motionless few seconds, then a shudder of effort or pain, or both. We (my younger sisters and I, prompted by the nurses) were worried about pneumonia, since she wasn't moving about or doing the breathing exercises that would keep fluid from building in the lungs (post-op pneumonia is a significant risk); I worried to myself about stroke. Nor was there any realistic hope of seeing or even speaking to a doctor until next morning's rounds.

But the fever broke overnight, and by morning the nurses had already helped Mom get into a bedside chair, and she was making jokes (though she hadn't stopped, really, even at the worst the day before) about her lack of makeup and the pre-op hairdo that was going to waste, and she had the strength to stay awake and interact. (A strength that at that point I could barely summon myself.) She ate a cherry popsicle that was the best thing she'd ever tasted. I'm going to spend the day—the best spring day Chicago is capable of, from the looks of it—enjoying my (provisional) relief. For some unknown (but blessed) time longer, there are dreadful things I don't yet have to face. The dreadful things of politics and the affairs of the world can wait a bit.

posted by michael  9:51:02 AM  
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