So here it is. My first post-op check-up. After two and a half months, it’s a bit of a return to the scene…. Again, my boyfriend is driving me just like he did when we went to the hospital the day I was admitted for surgery. That day, September 6. Surgery was on Sept. 7. Just like then, we’re only going together. We park in the same place because, like then, all the parking spaces closer to the hospital are full. And we walk from the car to the hospital along the same route, and in the distance in front of us we can see the hospital building. The closer we get, the more I start to get nervous. I recall all my emotions that accompanied me at that time. The feelings of immense fear and helplessness. Feelings of resignation and resignation. The feelings of not knowing what was next and having absolutely no control over my health, of my body “going about” its own life. And I’m just a spectator.
I need to fuel up on anything fast, my body is literally crying out for food. We stop by the hospital cafeteria and order everything I don’t normally eat for breakfast. A brisket with horseradish and mustard, nicely overgrown, knocking around on the plate like an aspen, with celery salad, pickled drowning fish, crab stick salad with pineapple, Italian baked bread and a portion of kulajda. For breakfast, it’s a bear’s portion. In a normal situation, my breakfast is very ascetic, consisting of sliced fruit mixed with white yogurt, sugar-free and with fiber, of course. Well, there you go. Now here I am, pouring one over the other, calories cheerfully celebrating success and my skirt bursting at the seams. But maybe it will help with the current fear and stress. Because “what if they tell me that….” Anything can be filled in….you had another aneurysm during surgery…..mistress, we’re sorry, but we’ll schedule another appointment right away while we have it under control……or, you know, we tried, but it’s like a poppy seed and we’d have to shake our heads like a bucket….. The imagination is running wild and the belly is honestly wrapping his nerves as tight as he can.
It’s time for a CT scan. We sit down in the waiting room, and once again, “a movie for memoirs” runs through my head. I see nurses, doctors running around, I smell hospital disinfection, I observe various visibly ill people around me….. I shiver like an aspen. Or more like the pork belly on the plate. A mixture of fear, pity for the people around me and frankly a renewed sense of injustice, hell why me. I’m reminded of the classic joke where the man, tormented by fate, asks God, why me? And the answer is and why not you? Why someone else? That’s about right. So why me? Well, because and why not, right. Yeah, right. And I’ve got an explanation inside me.
I had my last CT scan after my “little stroke” in Motol hospital. It’s strange that I don’t remember a thing. I was out of my mind at the time. I don’t remember how the scan went or if I signed the consent form then like they want me to do now. But I doubt it, I wasn’t able to raise my hands then, let alone manage my signature. The way a CT scan works is that they put a contrast agent into your vein, start monitoring and within moments you’re done and waiting in the waiting room for half an hour before they pull the cannula out of your arm. Nothing hurts, just the contrast medium causes a momentary hot and burning sensation and also the feeling of wetting yourself. You don’t really know if it’s a feeling or a fact. I look below my waist for reassurance, the nurse notices and laughs. Don’t worry, everyone has it. Yes, I remember that too. The nurses here are really great.
And we’re moving to the neurosurgery waiting room. And again, a retrospective. Of the whole waiting room, there was an empty seat exactly where I sat in front of my “ortho” last time with my son. Surgical videos are still playing on the screen. And the waiting patients around me are terrified just as I remember. I see two women about the same age as me pacing nervously in the waiting room, and I can read great fear in their facial expressions. I want to go over and reassure them. But now I’m scared myself. There are two large directional signs on the wall above the entrance to the neurosurgery waiting room. One points to psychiatry and the other to psychology. I find it funny and tragic at the same time. They are hung directly over the door of the surgery and depending on what you read inside, you have a choice…. and continue on down the corridor to where you need to….
Here we go, Mrs. B…., come on. I see my operating doctor, he has reassuring eyes and a wide smile. Sitting next to him is a young neurology intern, to whom he explains everything. So, here we have a craniotomy patient, cerebral aneurysm in the middle cerebral artery, clipping treatment. I show the wound, talk about how I’m feeling and what’s bothering me, the doctor shows us both CT scans and where the treatment occurred. I’m fascinated by the image. Looking at it makes me even more aware of what a huge guardian angel I had over me all along…. I get the report, congratulations on a successful surgery, and I’m out. I burst into tears with happiness and relief.
I would like to tell everyone who has fears, anxieties and panic about such an intervention not to give up hope. Even the hardest moments in life have a duration. And it’s important to stay strong and not succumb to self-pity and skepticism. It’s hard, I know. But it’s possible.
No matter how many mistakes you make and how slowly you move forward. You’re still further ahead than someone who doesn’t even try.
