Twisted
One of the so-called professionals, who helped measure Son for this spinal jacket today (it’s like a brace/splint thing that he has to wear for three months), also told him the following:
- that the muscles around his spinal fusion would stop working;
- that he wouldn’t be able to go to the concert he has been hanging out for;
- that he should stop riding his motorbike permanently;
- that his spine was still twisted;
- that we would have an appointment with the surgeon in a month’s time;
- that he should stop doing anything strenuous;
- that he should never play any contact sport, even for fun;
- that his spine was still twisted;
- that he would have trouble with his back as he got older;
- that he would need physiotherapy forever;
- that he should ask the surgeon any further questions at the appointment;
- that his spine was still twisted
I arrived at the hospital just after this incident and, as soon as Son saw me, he began to cry. “I’m a freak,” he said and, lying on his back, the tears dripped into his pillow until I found a tissue, after which the pillow got soaked.
So, holding his hand, I decided to contradict every single thing that so-called professional said, and I told Son this:
- that the muscles around his spinal fusion would keep working;
- that he would be able to go to the concert he has been hanging out for;
- that he should keep riding his motorbike permanently;
- that his spine was untwisted;
- that we would ring the surgeon before a month’s time;
- that he should lift weights;
- that he should have fun;
- that his spine was untwisted;
- that he would never have trouble with his back as he got older;
- that he would need physiotherapy for a short time only;
- that he should ask the surgeon all of his questions at the appointment;
- that his spine was untwisted
When I find out who that twisted, so-called professional was (not easy in the whirlwind world of a hospital), I will politely ask her to shut up before she wreaks havoc on any other kids’ dreams.
Surreal
I’m back in Perth and Son has now been transferred to the hospital’s rehabilitation campus and today, for the first time, I saw him walk. Yes, indeed, we had an exhilarating stroll down to the toilets and back after which he was absolutely exhausted and had to lie down again. He had a craving for gravy and chips (yuck!) so I went and got him some from the cafeteria.
The grimace on his face is partly pain but mostly irritation at having his photo taken. This irritation with me is very encouraging as it means he is getting back to normal! On the phone the other day, he said, “Mum, do have to ring me all the time? You are really hard work. I just want to have a little nap.” Brat!
The surreal thing is this: walking down the corridor with him, I was disconcerted by his height-gain. He was already taller, but now he towers over me – really, really weird!
Tragi-comic
When something is funny but not funny, I think it falls into the category of slapstick, or black, comedy. Like this poor little pigeon outside the hospital, in amongst all the rubbish of urban, but having a ball!
Yesterday, when I left the hospital to come home to the farm, Son was still pretty ‘out of it’ and unable to move or eat. My mother took over staying with him and rang me later to say that he was like Lazarus in the afternoon and the physiotherapists and pain team were able to wind the bed up so he was nearly sitting up. He gobbled his lunch and didn’t vomit so all was going very well.
Late this morning, however, I found out that in the middle of the night he’d hallucinated. Here is a paraphrase of what Son told me on the phone:
“Oh Mum, I thought I was in a disco, so I got up and pulled all of my tubes out and went to the toilet, then I was doing this shaking dance move, then they rescued me but I didn’t get the pain button back for three hours so I wanted to die and what if I’ve ruined the operation?”
According to the nurses, all is well despite the incident but hell! I am now WAITING for the doctor who was called in to ring me – argh.
A friend rang yesterday afternoon, before Son’s midnight adventure, and I said, “I can’t believe I have a husband in a nursing home on my left and a son in hospital on my right, and they are both neurologically challenged and 200 kilometres apart!”
She said, “Are you okay?” and I said, “Yeah, I feel like I’m in one of those weird comedies!” and she said, “That’s a good way of looking at it.”
I mean crying gets really boring after awhile, so I’ve discovered bellylaughing; it’s much better for the soul – hehe!
Recovery
This is Son in ICU (Intensive Care Unit). Since then he has been moved to a ward but is in a single room where he will stay for three days due to some infection risk or something. He is starving, having eaten nothing for over 48 hours but he can’t eat yet because he keeps vomiting from the morphine. I stayed for a few hours and he had a couple of visitors but after they left he started to cry and my maternal presence just made it worse so he asked me to go, so here I am back at the hotel hoping he has gone to sleep for the night, hoping that the nurses will adore him, hoping that we have done the right thing, hoping that tomorrow will come quickly and I can see him again.
I subscribe to a blog by a beautiful woman who had the same operation and her description below says it all:
http://thecurvyspine.wordpress.com/
I don’t think Son and I were quite prepared for this! So far, I have restrained myself from crying but I have made an appointment with my tears for exactly 8.15pm with a 15-minute limit, then I’ll watch another hotel movie….
Waiting
Son, Husband and I have spent a lot of time in various doctors’ waiting rooms over the last year or so, waiting and waiting and WAITING.
I can’t stand waiting. If I am meeting someone for lunch or something and they are late, I get cross; if I am heading for traffic lights and they turn from green to orange, I race ahead because red lights make me see red, especially when the red takes a century to turn green; if I ask Son to do a chore and he says, “just give me a minute”, I want to strangle him; if I am on the freeway and I get stuck behind one of those morons drivers who is in the passing lane but doesn’t pass the the driver in the slow lane, grrrrr … well, you get the picture.
So yesterday, while I waited for Son’s operation to be over with and for the hospital to ring me, the waiting nearly killed me. All of the seconds became minutes and all of the minutes became hours and all of the hours became days. I watched two videos in my hotel room (but I can’t remember what they were about); I went for walks around the city with my mobile phone clutched in my shirt pocket against my heart; I came back to the hotel and ate and drank everything from the minibar; I made a million phonecalls to tell people I was still waiting; I had three showers and two naps; I blogged; I read all of the magazines in the hotel room, so now I am an expert in Perth fashion; I rang the hospital five times; I rang Husband five times … well, you get the picture.
Since Son is still in ICU, I am staying in Perth for one more night and good friends are checking on animals for me. I’m sure Godfrey will be waiting too, with great anticipation, for my return. After all, it’s been nearly three days since he’s been able to do his favourite thing which is to bite me. Wait away, Godfrey!
And now I’m off to the hospital again (hotel is only two blocks away) to see Son and wait for his transfer from ICU to a ward. I have been told that this will happen some time after 4pm so I anticipate some more waiting – mmmmmmm!
The long and short of it
I am well aware that my posts have become rather sloppily sentimental and even solipistic lately (and I hate solipsism!) I’m also very, very aware that Husband, Son and I are extremely fortunate in so many ways and that our recent troubles are nothing compared to many other people’s situations. I have wanted to say that for some time.
Son’s scoliosis surgery took over seven hours today and tonight he is the intensive care unit attached to a multitude of tubes. As soon as I was allowed to, I went to see him, but he was too groggy to really know I was there, although when I touched one of his hands, he grabbed it and, with his eyes still closed, and with great difficulty (as if my hand were a boulder), raised it to his lips and kissed it.
One of the things the nurses were doing was measuring his height and joking about how tall he would be now. This was a pre-operative joke too which didn’t really resonate with me until today when I remembered how extremely tall Son used to be. He was over 6 feet when the scoliosis went mad and shrunk him; previous to this he had always been ‘the tall kid’. Here he is pictured with two of his cousins who are both four years older than him. Son is on the left.
Okay, moving on now … tomorrow I will see Son, then go home to the birds. One of the funniest phonecalls I made from this hotel room was to my beautiful mother last night.
Me: I’m really worried.
Mother: Of course you are – this is huge surgery.
Me: No, I’m worried about the birds while I’m away. I left heaps of food and water but….
There was a bit of a pause!
Applause please….
It’s difficult not to draw comparisons between some of our birds and Son, when it comes to performance and ‘look at me’ behaviour. And yet, paradoxically, this behaviour is both selfconscious and utterly unselfconscious at the same time.
Yesterday afternoon, I left Son in what the hospital calls ‘the transit lounge’ (where you wait until your bed is ready) and drove to my hotel to check in. A bit later I walked back to the hospital and, on impulse, bought Son a huge teddy bear and three chocolate hearts at the hospital’s gift shop. When I finally found his room, the teddy bear elicited gales of laughter from the other three guys in his room, one of whom said, “And we thought he was a macho machine!” A nurse came in and asked what teddy’s name was and I said, “Mummy”, so she then labelled him with a sticker. More hilarity.
I was then allowed to take Son out for dinner which surprised me as his head was adorned with electrodes in readiness for today’s surgery. I know I already posted this photo last night but it’s worth another look:
So we took a taxi from the hospital to Leederville where we were meeting friends. In his usual, gregarious way (just like Husband!), Son struck up a conversation with the taxi driver who told us he wasn’t allowed to go home until much later or his wife (“the captain”) would send him right back out there. Son then told him why he had electrodes glued to his head and the taxi driver grinned and said, “That’s good, I thought you were one of those hooligan types.”
Once out of the taxi, Son and I found the burger joint where we were meeting our friends but, since we were early, we went across the road to a pub where we shared a pint of lager. Son’s head elicited a few startled glances but, as there was some sort of street performance thing happening, he didn’t get as much attention as expected. “Don’t worry about these, mate,” Son said to the bartender, pointing to his head, “I’m having an operation tomorrow.” The bartender just smiled as if to say, ‘Yeah, ‘right’.
Wake up soon, my little peacock! I applaud you….
jmgoyder 