Autobiography of a Face (3 page)

As the evening wore on, I could no longer pretend the toothache wasn't there. Finally I went to my mother and confessed my pain in the guarded tone I might use to admit the loss or destruction of something valuable. As I had expected, she was angry. Of course, she was angry at the situation, at the bother, at the possible cost, but at that age I had no way to distinguish such subtle gradations. I painfully presumed that her anger was directed at me alone.

Only when my father walked into the room and asked what was going on did I remember my collision earlier in the day. This new information seemed to irritate my mother even more, especially when my father, characteristically trying to dissolve the tension of the situation, ventured the prognosis "She's just got a cold in her tooth, that's all. She'll be fine in the morning."

He meant well, but his dismissal of the problem confirmed my mother's belief that she was the only one in the family who faced facts. This was true in a sense, but she never recognized that her anger scared all of us into retreat. By churning problems through her own personal mill, she kept us from ever discussing a problem outright, which, in turn, exacerbated the problem. My mother was always particularly annoyed when my father put on his good-fellow-Irishman act and dispensed comforting misinformation about the world, such as the backward notion that a tooth could have a cold in it. I was sent off to bed with two aspirins and a promise of reappraisal.

 

"You've got lockjaw!"

My brothers pronounced this happily the next morning, obviously excited by the idea.

I mumbled back to them as best I could.

They were only too pleased to describe in detail how I would never open my mouth again, that everything I ate from now on would have to come through a straw. It was true that I had woken up with my jaw swollen and seemingly locked—it didn't hurt when I tried to open it so much as it appeared to be stuck—but a diet of milk-shakes didn't seem like such an awful fate. Primarily, however, I was excited by the idea that something really
was
wrong with me, that I hadn't been overacting the previous night, as I had allowed myself to believe; I was authentically sick—no school
definitely.
I felt cheerful. My mother made an appointment for me to see the family doctor later that morning.

 

"Well, considering the swelling and this immobility and that she had a hard knock, I'd say it's probably fractured."

A broken jaw. This would be the first of many diagnoses and surely the one most completely off course. Dr. Cantor explained plainly to me that if it was broken I'd have to have it wired shut so it could heal, but first I had to go over to the hospital to have it x-rayed. I wasn't particularly thrilled with the wired-shut part, but I was too involved with the idea of venturing off to a hospital emergency room to think much about it. My two absolute, hands-down favorite television programs were
Emergency!
and
Medical Center,
and the possibility of personally living out one of these thirty-minute dramas elated me. My mother kindly indulged me as I sat on a trolley in one of the curtained cubicles, humoring me about what an adventure it all was and how jealous my brothers would be that I was the principal player in such a drama. She told me how brave I and how lucky we all were that this had happened to me and not Sarah, my twin sister, an avowed scaredy-cat. Sarah would have cried horrendously, but I was courageous and didn't cry and thus was good. It seemed a natural enough equation at the time.

The x-rays came back: it wasn't a broken jaw, but something called a dental cyst, probably caused by the blow to my jaw forcing one of my back molars down into the gum, nicking the mandible. It was nothing serious, but they would have to operate and remove the cyst right away to avoid an infection. I went back home with my mother to collect my pajamas, and off we went to Pascack Valley Hospital, a small community hospital in the next town over. Surgery was scheduled for the following day.

What I remember most from that first night in the hospital is that I didn't sleep very much. I devoted most of the time to a silly conversation about David Cassidy with the girl in the bed across from me. Also I had to have my temperature taken throughout the night to monitor possible infection, and much to the delight of my neighbor, who stood up in her bed to watch, my nurse insisted on taking it rectally without bothering to draw the curtain. My neighbor giggled and I thought her a fool, but I didn't yet have enough resources of dignity to do anything except giggle along with her at my absurd situation. At midnight a nurse came along and taped an NPO sign to my bed: Nil Per Oral, nothing by mouth. I felt special, singled out, and I allowed myself a condescending tone as I explained to my neighbor what it meant, just as the nurse had explained it to me thirty seconds before.

 

Every hospital has its own quirky protocol. Some hospitals make you put on the surgical gown in your room, some make you wait until you reach the O.R. Some anesthesia departments have rooms in which you are put to sleep, others take you tight on into the operating room itself. Pascack Valley Hospital subscribed to the latter and also, bless their hearts, to the theory that it's best to knock the patient out as quickly as possible and
then
assign the IV's and other assorted needles and tubes to their final bodily destinations. Medically this isn't the most desirable procedure, as there should be instant access to the blood and airway systems in case anything goes suddenly awry during the initial stages of administering gas. Presumably this small pediatrics department figured it wasn't worth all the tears, screams, and struggling: get the conscious entity out of the way as quickly as possible, then insert instruments to your heart's content.

Still living in the fantasy of a television show, and slightly dopey both from the pre-op medication and from my sleepless night, I was impressed with the sight of a real live operating room, just as I had been pleased by my view of the corridor ceiling during the trolley ride down there. I was somewhat disappointed when I failed to detect a glass-domed amphitheater through which row after row of doctors would peer down, intrigued by my fascinating case, but the gleaming metal and impressive lights, exactly as I'd anticipated, placated me. My first authentic surgically masked face peered down at me, blocking the bright light from the overhead lamp.

"I'm going to put this mask over your face and give you some air to make you sleepy, it might smell a little funny."

Funny was an understatement. Through the black rubber mask came chemical fumes, so alien to me that I could never have imagined such a smell existed. I thought I would suffocate. I struggled slightly, trying to turn my head away and reach for the mask with my hands. Someone I couldn't see reached out and grasped my hands, squeezing them too tightly, while someone else put his hand on my forehead. This last gesture calmed me instantly.

"Now I want you to close your eyes and breathe and relax and think about some nice things. Do you have any pets?"

I began to list the names of the menagerie back home, aware that a faint buzzing was growing louder and louder. The things around me began to lose their borders. The doctor's face and the bodies of people hovering nearby no longer appeared in terms of what they were but in terms of what they were not. It became increasingly difficult to speak. After listing the names of two cats, I was reduced to producing only a syllable at a time with each breath, and even that seemed like a great effort.

"Close your eyes."

This was unthinkable. First, I didn't want to miss a thing, and second, what if they thought I was asleep and began cutting me open when I was merely resting my eyes? This last fear was to haunt me through subsequent operations. Even after I admitted my fear a couple of years later and had the whole process patiently explained, I remained wary.

I felt nauseated. The gas was overpowering, the buzz now drowning everything else out, and finally I couldn't take it any longer and rolled over to vomit. A viscous magenta liquid with swirls of green poured out and created an interesting stain on the white sheet. I must have groaned, because someone put a metal basin near me, into which I vainly tried to deposit more of the smelly but curiously pleasant concoction. I still felt nauseous but could bring nothing else up. I lay back and closed my eyes, exhausted from the effort. A strange nurse was standing beside my bed insisting I acknowledge her visually and then, to my great annoyance, verbally. The very last thing I wanted to do just then was open my eyes, let alone speak to this woman, who was now asking the most ridiculous question I'd ever heard: Lucinda, what time is it? I wasn't used to people calling me by my full given name. With an outstretched arm she directed my gaze to a clock on the wall. This is nonsense I thought. Couldn't she understand that sleeping was the single most desirable act in the world, the only thing I could ever want to do with the rest of my life? She asked me a third time, and only to rid myself of her I gathered my wits and focusing powers and told her. was eleven-ten. My first operation was over.

 

Six months later, sometime near Easter, I came home from school with the right side of my face swollen and hot. I'd been going in to the hospital sporadically to have x-rays taken of my jaw ever since the first surgery. A bony knob had appeared on the very tip of my jaw just under my ear shortly after the initial surgery, and my mother had asked the doctor about it repeatedly.

"It's just a bony growth; it's nothing to worry about, Mrs. Grealy."

"But surely it's not normal, a young girl to have a lump like that on her face?"

"It's just a bony growth, Mrs. Grealy, nothing unusual after such surgery."

The doctor, who wasn't a doctor but a specialized dentist, smiled condescendingly after each inquiry. Nothing infuriated my mother more than this condescension, which even I recognized as endemic in the medical profession. Unfortunately for my mother, I was still a typical nine-year-old, and I seized upon every opportunity to be embarrassed by her. Why did she have to make such a fuss? Couldn't she just accept what they said? Not brave enough to actually speak up, I mentally rolled my eyes at each encounter between my mother and the doctor.

If I had suspected how classic and common my tendency toward parental shame was I'd surely have abandoned it and sided with my mother. I was vain and proud when it came to wanting to be different from everyone else. I wanted nothing more than to be special, and so far the role of patient had delivered. My teachers had given me a noticeable amount of special treatment, and I'd gained a new level of respect from my friends since going under the knife.

When my mother marched me back to Dr. Cantor's office, it was with a sense almost of righteousness. It was obvious I had a bad infection that they could no longer ignore, and my heart thrilled when I heard the words "emergency surgery" used in conjunction with my name. They had to drain and clean out the lump, which was growing almost visibly and looking angrier by the minute. I asked if I'd get to go to the hospital in an ambulance and was abjectly disappointed when told no.

As far as I was concerned, I was still on a great adventure, the star of my own television special. Up until that point my great trials in life had been the emotional upheavals of our painful family situation. This physical drama seemed a bit of light relief to me. Besides, there was yet another unfinished book report looming. Just when I thought it was hopeless, I'd again been handed this brilliant stroke of luck. Something as impressive-sounding as Emergency Surgery had to be worth as long an extension as I could ask for, as well as another round of presents. It seems odd to me now that a deed as relatively easy as not crying over a needle was rewarded so lavishly, while my Herculean efforts to simply not fall apart during one of the many family crises went completely unnoticed.

After the surgery my parents were instructed to take me to the Strang Clinic, which translated to me as a trip to the City. I was thrilled: I loved any chance to drive through the filthy, bewildering streets of New York, see so many different types of people, marvel that so many noises could exist all at once—horns, sirens, human yells. At the Strang we met the eccentric Dr. John Conley, a leader in the field of head and neck surgery. After a thorough examination, he arranged to have me admitted to the children's wing of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, known as Babies Hospital.

 

When a film's heroine innocently coughs, you know that two scenes later, at most, she'll be in an oxygen tent; when a man bumps into a woman at the train station, you know that man will become the woman's lover and/or murderer. In everyday life, where we cough often and are always bumping into people, our daily actions rarely reverberate so lucidly. Once we love or hate someone, we can think back and remember that first casual encounter. But what of all the chance meetings that nothing ever comes of? While our bodies move ever forward on the time line, our minds continuously trace backward, seeking shape and meaning as deftly as any arrow seeking its mark.

As I sat there on the playground's sticky asphalt I experienced time in a new way, but perhaps that memory has significance because of the way my life has unfolded. It seems almost uncanny to me that I didn't know; how could I not have? A year before, my class had gone on a field trip to a museum where I became fascinated with a medieval chart showing how women contained minute individuals, all perfectly formed and lined up like so many sardines in a can, just below their navels. What's more, these individuals contained more minute versions of themselves, who in turn held even more. Our fates were already perfectly mapped out within us, just as we once waited perfectly inside of our mothers, who themselves were held within the depths of their mothers, our great-grandmothers.

It's impossible for me not to revisit this twenty-year-old playground scene and wonder why I didn't go right when I should have gone left, or, alternatively, see my movements as inexorable. If the cancer was already there, it would have been discovered eventually, though probably too late. Or perhaps that knock set in motion a chain of physical events that created an opportunity for the cancer to grow which it might not otherwise have found. Sometimes it is as difficult to know what the past holds as it is to know the future, and just as an answer to a riddle seems so obvious once it is revealed, it seems curious to me now that I passed through all those early moments with no idea of their weight.