The Lens:
Timing is everything. The exact right time. The precise wrong time. This is a story about the precise wrong time.
We had a yearly “Grandparents’ Day” at the school where I worked. The event consisted of classroom visits, a reception, and a prayer service to take place in a short 2 hours’ time. The first event took place about 10 years before I began working for the school and hosted roughly 25 grandparents.
It had grown steadily over the years. In the five years’ I had been co-running the event, attendance had grown from 200 or so to more than 300. The format of the event could no longer handle the crowd. A change was clearly needed.
So, I came up with a reconfiguration of the event – basically a flip-flop of two components. Move the reception to before the classroom visits instead of after. This would help in numerous ways. The hall could more easily accommodate the “check-in” of Grandparents than the school lobby.
It would also solve the dilemma of what to do with early arrivals – and there were always a lot of early arrivals. The biggest problem with the reconfiguration was it meant the reception needed to be ready 1 ½ hour earlier than it had in the past.
Being this was all my idea, I was more than a bit nervous about its success. If it failed, it would all be on me. So, when I woke up the morning of the event with an incredible pain in my lower right abdomen, I was more worried about calling in sick than what was wrong with me.
I dragged myself out of bed, unable to stand up straight due to the pain. Bent over, I made my way to the bathroom and into the shower. Fortunately, we had a slightly oversized shower or I might not fit in it.
As I went about my morning routine, the activity seemed to ease the pain. Little by little, my posture became more erect. By the time I left for work, I was in a fully upright position.
I’ll admit I wasn’t feeling great. The pain was still there, but I powered through. I did my usual Grandparents’ Day setting up, running around, monitoring the event, cleaning up. I did have to hide every now and then, and take a 5 minute rest. I also spent a lot of time in the bathroom.
Fortunately, the hours passed quickly and, soon enough, it was 12:45pm. With the event over, and successfully at that, I drove myself home, threw on some sweats, and collapsed in my recliner.
Another little detail, we hold our Grandparents’ Day on the day before Thanksgiving. After a few hours of rest, I wasn’t feeling any better. About now, I was thinking it might be a good idea to see a professional. It was 4:30pm on the eve of Thanksgiving. If I wanted an appointment on Friday, I should call now.
The doctor had other ideas.
When I called, I was referred to an advice nurse. After hearing my symptoms, she thought it might be prudent to be seen that evening. There was an appointment at 7:30pm. I took the appointment.
When my husband, came home, he found a lump in sweats in the living room recliner. I proceeded to tell him about my day – both the event and this pesky pain in my side. I also told him he needed to take care of dinner that night. I wouldn’t be eating, but, even if he wasn’t hungry, we had two teenagers who were.
My reasons for not eating: first, I wasn’t all that hungry. Second, I had a very nagging feeling this might be something requiring surgery and eating would only postpone the inevitable. I wasn’t really alarmed by this thought – I had a strange calm. It was more of a pragmatic approach.
I went on to tell him he’d be taking me to the doctor at 7:30pm. I might not have been alarmed, but he was. He gets very nervous when I get sick. It’s like one time when my mom was sick and I asked my dad, “But who will take care of us?”
I’m not sure what my husband’s trepidation was – was I really ill or who would take care of him and our two sons? Either way, maybe someone should have been alarmed. Better him than me.
In another pragmatic move, before we left for my appointment, I packed a tiny bag with some essentials – toothbrush/paste, comb, underwear, etc. – just in case. This did not allay my husband’s fears. I was still calm.
What was more worrisome to him was my attire. I was going off to the doctor in sweats. I rarely wear sweats, even around the house. I all but never wear them outside. Since I was in too much pain to put on anything else, changing for the doctor visit wasn’t an option.
If you ever want to feel like a whiner, go to the doctor at 7:30pm the night before Thanksgiving. When I am called in by the nurse, I did my best to get up and walk into the office. My ability to stand up straight had waned.
I climbed up onto the table as best I could and waited for the doctor. One upshot to the sweats – there was no need to change into something, shall we say, more comfortable.
The doctor came in and asked what brought me there. “My husband,” didn’t seem like an appropriate answer, so I told of the agonizing pain I had had all day. He asked if I had had any nausea, vomiting, constipation, diarrhea, fever. No, no, no, no, no.
That brought us to the physical exam portion of the visit. “Can you lie down on the table?” Sure. It’ll hurt like hell, but sure I can. I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything. I just proceeded to gently lower myself onto the table. He began poking all over my abdomen – “Does this hurt?” “Here?” “Here?” “Here?” “Here?” “Here?” No, no, no, no, no, AAAAAAAH!
He graciously helped me up. “Well,” he said, “your symptoms (that is, the lack of thereof besides pain) are very atypical for appendicitis. And, you’re kind of old.” That seemed an unnecessary qualification/comment. “But, there is not much else that could cause that pain besides appendicitis.”
He went on to give me my options. Go home and see what happens, or (hang dog look) go to the emergency. I won’t say the doctor was unsympathetic, but I was getting that “I’m a whiner” feeling. His look said he really wasn’t buying appendicitis but had no other explanation. He added nonchalantly, the downside of going home was if it really was appendicitis and it burst, I could die.
Not wanting to take the chance on dying, I chose the emergency. If being in a waiting room at 7:30pm on the eve of Thanksgiving made me feel like a whiner, being in the emergency room at around 8:30pm on the eve of Thanksgiving, especially after the doctor I just saw made me feel like I should not be in his exam room, made me feel like a hypochondriac.
I crawled onto one of a ward beds in the emergency separated from the other beds by a “privacy” curtain. I never saw the guy in the bed next to me, but he sounded old – at the very least, older than me. The good news – he never saw me.
That’s not to say we couldn’t hear everything that was going in our beds 3 feet apart. So, I am sure he heard my exam. I could copy and paste what went on from my first exam and be almost 100% on the money of what happened this time around, from my describing the symptoms, to his asking of any other symptoms, to poking around on my abdomen (no, no, no, AAAAAAH), to telling me my symptoms were atypical. He too added, “And you’re kind of old.”
He was a little more chipper (and straightforward) than the previous doctor. He expressed his skepticism at my lack of symptoms and advanced age, then added, “Still, you tell a good story.” He did not suggest sending me home. Rather he referred me to the surgeon.
I was moved into a private room. It was darker and quieter. I thought things might get a little better. Instead, I was sent off for a scan that involved drinking some awful stuff, followed by being injected (I HATE needles) with iodine which had a most unpleasant warming feeling.
Back in my room, I was now completely exhausted. The surgeon finally came to see me sometime after midnight. If you want to know what happened next, see the visits with the previous two doctors – including her doubt of my having appendicitis culminating with, “You’re kind of old.”
All exams and tests were inconclusive. The best option was to go in and take a look-see. She laid out all of the possible scenarios: 1) they go in, take a look, find nothing, sew me back up, 2) they go in, take out my appendix, either by laparoscopy (preferred) or incision (not preferred), sew me up, 3) they go in, find something else, do whatever the situation is called for, sew me up.
At this point, I don’t give a crap. Whatever. So, I signed my life away. I would be wheeled into surgery as soon as it could be set up.
That time came at 2:30am. You would know that when I was lying on the gurney just outside the operating room is the time I would need to go to the bathroom. There is no such thing as modesty in a hospital so there was where I had the privilege of using a bed pan. I don’t really remember anything after that . . .
until I woke up in a bed in a hospital room. I did know I was at the hospital, just where in the hospital I did not know. I also had no idea what came pass. Did I still have an appendix? Was I missing some other body part? I did not care. I just wanted to go back to sleep.
It was when the surgeon came to see me that I found out, yes indeed, old and all, it was my appendix. It had been removed by laparoscopy (preferred). I would be in the hospital overnight. So, I spent my Thanksgiving in the hospital in and out of a fog – I don’t do well with anesthesia . . . and I hadn’t had a meal in forever.
Come Saturday morning, it is finally time for discharge. This came both the worst and best part of the ordeal. The staff closed the door to my room overnight. I thought I had asked for the door to be left ajar. Maybe I didn’t. In the end, it was irrelevant.
I ended up with a monster migraine – the kind of migraine that makes me want to take a gun to my head. I was all ready for discharge – except for the migraine. They were not going to let me go until it was gone. I was given my usual medication but it was not working. To expedite the process, they gave me morphine.
If you have ever had morphine, you understand why it is so highly addictive. In a matter of minutes, the excruciating pain in my head (as well as the pain in my abdomen) was gone. I have to think someone on morphine came up with the phrase “feeling no pain.” I was feeling no pain whatsoever. More accurate is to say I felt fabulous. Better than I had ever felt in my life. I wasn’t simply pain free. I was happy, serene, euphoric. They sent me home . . .
and then the morphine wore off.
The Refraction:
While some of the details of this event have faded a bit, one remains clear as day . . . Being told by three doctors I was old. Here’s the thing, I wasn’t old. Really. I was not old.
After my surgery and talking with many friends, I realized the reason for the rather insulting comment. Appendicitis usually afflicts teenagers. I wasn’t old. I was just old to have appendicitis.
This reminds me of another story. My grandmother was living in Fresno where her daughter (my aunt) also lived. My grandmother was in her 80’s at the time.
She regularly attended church and would tell my aunt about this nice young man who helped her out at church. One Sunday, my aunt accompanied my grandmother to church and met this “young” man.
My aunt’s son was about 16 at the time. She had always envisioned this young man as a teenager, like her son. Instead, she met a man roughly her own age.
She laughed when she told us the story. She said, to my grandmother, this was a young man. Indeed, our children, no matter how old they are, will always seem young to us.
When this occurred, my aunt was the roughly the same age I was when I had my surgery.
So, I was old to the doctors, but at least I would have been young to my grandmother.
Age seems so concrete. It is a number that cannot be disputed. Still, it is relative, a matter of perspective.
So much of what we think is relative, a matter of perspective. We see everything through our own lens and forget others might see things differently.
Who was right in these cases? Was I old when I had my surgery? In a way, yes, but in a way, no. Was the young man at my grandmother’s church young? In a way, yes, and, in a way, no. It all depends on how you look at the situation.
Here is the really funny thing. I had my surgery more than 12 years ago, I have to ask myself, if the doctors considered me old then, what would I be now?