Scrubs

Having major surgery done at a teaching hospital is a little unnerving. I was 26 but the interns that surrounded me and stared at me like the contents of a Petri dish were even younger. It was like bring your daughter to work day every day there. My surgery was scheduled for the day after Valentine's Day. My surgeon told my husband and I to get a hotel room and go out on the town the night before. Before that happened though, I had to drop my now 10 month old son off at daycare so that his grandma could later pick him up and care for him during my stay in the hospital. Saying goodbye to him and wondering if perhaps we'd never see each other again still makes my eyes well up with tears. I knew that everything would be fine, but kissing his chubby cheeks and walking away was heart-wrenching. What if I was wrong? What if something went wrong in surgery or what if the anesthesia killed me? That happens sometimes.

I tried to be strong. My husband got us a fancy hotel room, we went out to a nice dinner and walked around the city enjoying our last moments together outside of a hospital. We had to be at the hospital the next morning at 6:00 am. Not knowing our way around the city, we got lost. It was a tense and terrible way to start the morning. We were late to the hospital, but it didn't seem to matter. The nurse checked me in and asked me to remove my jewelry. As I slipped off my wedding ring and gave it to her, my breath caught in my throat. What if this was it for me? I remember when my mom died all my dad got back at the hospital were her clothes and her wedding ring. What if my husband had to go through that too? The nurse handed my husband my ring and he kissed it as he put it in his pocket.

It only got worse from there. I was bombarded with forms to sign with ominous headings such as Durable Power of Attorney, Advanced Healthcare Directives, etc. Did I want to sign a Do Not Resuscitate order? Did I want to donate my organs upon my demise? How long would I like to be kept on a respirator if I was brain dead? I wanted to scream at these people and make them shut up. Couldn't they see I was only 26? These things don't apply to me. I signed all the papers and named beneficiaries and decision makers. I felt like I needed more time, more time to tell my husband exactly how to raise our son: make sure the seams on the socks are right, he hates it if they're not, don't give him popcorn, keep a baby gate by the stairs, raise him to be a man who will never forget how much his mother loved him. I needed more time to tell my tell my husband how much I appreciated him and how he saved me from myself at a time when I needed it most. More time to tell my family thank you, to tell my co-workers how to do my job. I didn't get more time. No one does. I was whisked away by the children in doctor's costumes to prep for my surgery. After breathing into the oxygen mask and counting back from 10 (I got to 8) my mind drifted away and my body was ready for the dissection.