Eating the Underworld (9 page)

With the decision-making over, I have something to ask of him. It's becoming increasingly well-documented that patients, even under deep anaesthesia, can hear what is said in the operating theatre. They can't usually remember it consciously, but under hypnosis can often repeat word for word what was said. I know it is likely that my cancer will be advanced; not the kind of situation that prompts the surgeon to say, ‘Oh good. This looks excellent.' I don't want anyone saying negative things or making gloomy prognoses while I am unconscious and possibly soaking it up. I explain this to him and ask that whatever he sees, he will not say anything negative out loud. He readily agrees and I think to myself that this is the benefit of young minds—they're more open to new ideas. Of course, as I am to find out, there's a difference between what people say they will do and
what they actually do.

Another highlight of the day is the shave. All my pubic area has to be shaved. For someone initially concerned about sponge baths with the male nurse, I've really been given the grand tour with enemas at the top of the list.

There's now nothing much to do but wait for the nurse's arrival with the pre-op injection. Martin arrives an hour before I'm due in the operating theatre. He'll wait in my room while I'm in surgery, so that he's there for the surgeon's report afterwards. I don't envy him the wait. I'll be asleep through all the suspense.

Surgery

On the Way to the Operating Theatre

Operating Theatre

S
OON I'M ROLLING DOWN THE
corridor with that crazy, bat's eye view of the ceiling that's part of the trip. The orderlies wheeling the trolley are cheerful, cracking jokes as we lumber along. We pause, momentarily, outside the operating theatre and then we are in. The first impression is of light and cold. Then a sense of conviviality. People in masks and gowns are chatting genially, music is playing. The walls are white and everyone is dressed head to toe in the pale colours of scrub suits. It's like a party in Antarctica.

Greg greets me and I make my request about not saying anything negative aloud. He looks surprised, but agrees. The anaesthetist taps my hand, looking for veins. I feel the prick of the needle. Then I'm asleep.

The next thing I know is that someone is speaking to me. It's Greg. I'm still in the operating theatre and Greg has just finished sewing me up. He's bending over me saying, ‘I am very pleasantly surprised.'

I am sure that I am looking at him, staring straight at him in fact. But then I notice that my eyes are closed. And that I can't open them. Can't move a muscle—of them or any other part of my body. I am puzzled by this. I try again, but am completely and utterly paralysed. I'm not in pain and am not frightened, just frustrated. I have to let Greg know that I can hear him. It feels urgent, imperative even. Just then, there's another voice. It's the anaesthetist.

‘She can't hear you,' he says, and I can hear the dismissiveness in his voice.

I redouble my efforts to open my eyes, to make a sound, to show even the slightest sign of my conscious
presence. I have to let Greg know that I
am
here, that I
can
hear him. I struggle intensely, but remain silent and utterly immobilised. Then Greg responds to the anaesthetist's words.

‘Yes she can,' he says, firmly and clearly. I feel a sudden, extraordinary relief, almost elation—he has heard me, he knows I am here—and I sink straight back into sleep.

When I wake next, I am in my hospital room, with Martin sitting beside me. I've woken before after general anaesthetics. It's a strange process, with the mind convinced it hasn't been asleep, that time hasn't passed and that the surgery is yet to begin. This time it's different from anything I've experienced. I wake clear-headed. I know exactly where I am, what has happened and how much time has elapsed. But over-riding all this is something which has an intense and moving life of its own: I wake with the words ‘I am very pleasantly surprised' burned into my consciousness. I can remember every detail of that conversation above my anaesthetised body in the operating theatre. It feels strange and wonderful.

It is evening already, the surgery took several hours, and Martin relays what Greg has told him about the operation. It is ovarian cancer, but I'm in luck—it looks as if it's early stage, with an excellent chance for cure. We are both weak with relief.

When Martin leaves, I drift back into sleep, the hospital sounds receding further and further beyond my doorway. Hours later I wake again into the middle of the night. I discover I am wearing an oxygen mask.
It is not uncomfortable, merely unusual. It rests lightly on my face and I am reminded of the elaborate feathered masks I have seen worn at fancy dress and masquerade parties. I think of the Everest explorers, their oxygen strapped to their backs as they labour towards the sky and I know I am in rarified weather. In the mountain tops where strangeness is ordinary and even ordinary air is strange.

I lie quietly in the unfamiliar darkness. A nurse enters like a night animal with one glowing eye. She adjusts the drip and pads off quietly. I slip back into sleep.

The next morning, Greg comes for his first post-operative visit. After telling me what he found and did during surgery, he asks me if I remember anything of it. I repeat the conversation to him and his jaw nearly hits the floor. It is clear that he didn't really think I could hear. I am touched again by the way he stood up for me in the operating theatre, stating his belief in me, even against doubts and the risk of looking foolish before colleagues.

When I'm well, I tend towards rather roseate visions of hospital. It takes on the shape of an expensive spa: meals in bed, being tended to hand and foot, oodles of time for reading, relaxing and napping. The shock I get each time I encounter the reality ought to be enough to permanently shake a few neurons out of day-dreaming on the job.

The first thing I notice when I awake on the morning after surgery is that the pillows I was so taken with yesterday have migrated downwards during the
night and I am stuck in a neck-stretching, reverse-guillotine position. I try to shift either them or myself, but even the slightest wriggle brings a sensation like red-hot knives to my abdomen. The muscles in my neck and shoulders are also shrieking pathetically, but I am a beetle, stuck on my back.

I ring the nurse's bell for assistance. I imagine the women in white rushing to my side with soothing noises and capable hands. Five hours later, a surly nurse appears. She is clearly irritated by this intrusion on her day. She fixes the pillows and addresses me with a few terse words. At first I think she has taken a dislike to me. But as I overhear her conversational gambits with the occupants of neighbouring rooms, I realise that it's not me. She is just one of those people with a natural talent for making enemies.

The migrating pillows and beetle-on-back experience will be repeated tomorrow. As will the five-hour wait for assistance. By the third day, I can move enough to adjust the pillows by myself. The relief of this independence is marvellous. It gives me a sobering, and thankfully brief, insight into just a little of what ‘disabled and at the mercy of others' feels like.

That first day, as I wait hopefully for the nurse to come, I have plenty of time to complete a ‘before and after' inventory.

Before surgery, I hadn't noticed that the bed was lined with a rubber under-sheet. Now, with the clarity given by a sweaty night, I am all too aware that I am sleeping on rubber.

Before surgery, my abdomen was inflated, but
otherwise unencumbered. Now my midriff is firmly girdled in tight, white bandages. I look like half a mummy.

Before, as I filled in the lengthy hospital admissions form, I was asked whether I was allergic to adhesives. No, I blithely replied. After all, how much chance had I had to find out? It's not every day you decide it would be fun to experiment by wrapping yourself in large expanses of white, plastic-backed adhesive. Soon I will discover that under that dazzling, waterproof exterior, my body has decided that no, it
doesn't
like adhesives, and is bubbling and blistering away.

Before, I was pain-free and had total ease of movement. Now, any movement involves instant, intense pain. Even though the operating site is in my abdomen, theoretically leaving my arms, legs and head free, I am discovering that, in the spirit of true friendship, anything they do, they want the abdomen to do with them. I can't move up, I can't move down, I can't move sideways, I can't roll over. If I lie still the pain is fairly bearable, like an unpleasant background buzz. If I attempt to shift myself, in any direction, it roars up to 707-accelerating-for-take-off levels.

I also have a couple of tubes leading out of me. One is the catheter to collect urine. The other is an intravenous line attached to a drip. It belongs to the new-fangled patient-operated pain-control apparatus. It's a terrific idea in principle. In practice, it turns out that the nurses haven't yet mastered its principles. When the drip needs refilling, it lets out a piercing scream. Not just a short, sharp piercing scream, but
one that, like the average baby's, goes on and on until you feed it. As the nurses haven't quite worked out how to do that, the kind of chaos that leads to thoughts of infanticide ensues. The machine is having a panic attack. The nurses are having multiple panic attacks. I am taking slow breaths, vainly trying to recapture wisps of my hospital fantasy; the one that runs along the lines of quiet peaceful rooms, tender nurses, leisurely hours to read and recuperate …

At this point in my re-introduction to reality, the dietician arrives. Here, the peel-me-a-grape part of the fantasy dissolves. The menu she is offering looks quite respectable, but I discover I am not at all hungry. All I feel like having is vegemite on toast. And that is all I will feel like having for my entire hospital stay. Not having thought about vegemite for twenty years, I am startled by this new love affair. But, like all the best love affairs, it is irresistible and over the next few weeks, I work my way steadily through numerous jars of the stuff.

All this, however—the pain, the discomforts, the nurses—are nothing, because what I am feeling above all else is happy. Incredibly, marvellously, ecstatically happy. I have won the lottery, I am going to live! I feel luckier than I've ever felt in my life.

I've never thought of luck as playing a particularly auspicious role in my life. This last decade particularly has been dogged by bad luck. I'm used to getting my head down and working to undo it. It feels almost overwhelming to be handed this, the biggest piece of luck in my life, on a plate. Although I am not
particularly religious, the word that keeps coming to mind is
blessed
. I feel blessed. By who or by what, I don't know, but the feeling pervades me.

Waking Up