cue the anesthesia, part II

some things happen as they're meant to / why I'm thankful my appendix ruptured

A few days after my surgery, I toss and turn through a series of dreams. I am at competition practice, and I’ve missed the last six weeks and don’t know the last full minute of choreography— one week before we take the stage. Then I’m running through my high school hallway, which opens up to a hilled field, where classmates are scattered about running and playing field games. A friend’s face who I haven’t seen or thought about in a decade comes into clear view, and we embrace. ‘I’m so glad you made it!’ He says to me.

Finally, exhausted from the lives I’ve lived— I ring the doorbell of my grandparents home, the one that is now owned by a stranger, and stand patiently for my grandmother to answer the door. She passed when I was 12, but I’m certain she will be the one to answer it, and she does. They both step out onto the porch with me, rather than invite me inside.

My gramps hugs me and jokingly tells me I’m alright, with a deep belly-laugh that is familiar and feels as if I had heard yesterday. You’ve got to stop coming here, you know? Everything is okay now! I feel a lump in my throat, as if I’m aware this is a dream, as if I’m aware he’s telling me I can’t rely on the memories as a safe space, the reason they did not open the door and allow me to walk inside.

My grandma reaches and grabs me, embracing me in a big hug, one i’ve never experienced as a grown adult from her… my body oddly towering over hers. “Oh Sammy”, she says, the only person, besides my sister, to ever do so— “I’ll find you in every life.”

and then I woke up.

Days before this dream, I am laying in the hospital bed, trying to fight the sleepiness from the drugs to hear any updates on the timing of surgery. I am to wait four hours to be transferred by ambulance, away from the tiny mountain hospital to have my appendectomy. The doctors tell us this is surprisingly a quick turn around, given the lack of staff. My parents are not allowed to ride with me, so I plan to sleep the entire 40 minute drive.

When the EMT’s roll me into the back, they tell me they’ll take my blood pressure and vitals before we leave, but cannot find a pressure tool small enough to fit my arm, so they give up and turn the key to roar the engine. My plan to sleep is ruined and cursed by the potholes of upstate New York, bracing and wincing with each bump we hit.

I am waiting in the hallway of the hospital, laying in a bed. The rooms are too full, and I have to wait until something opens up. It is a sea of energy, a rush of conversation and patient case deliberation; carts being quickly wheeled with nurses carrying bags of IV medication.

I scan the doctors and nurses rushing by, and those seated and typing, hoping for a familiar face, someone to recognize me, humanize me, advocate for me— because I am just a girl on a bed in the corner, lost in the chaos. But it is a sea of strangers and there are much worse things happening than me, and I look desperately at the empty hep-lock in my arm, silently begging for more pain medication.

When I was in the children’s hospital ICU in 2011 for my abdominal tumor, there were two newborn babies on the unit who were orphans. I would watch the nurses take turns, day in and day out, rocking, holding and singing to these babies at the nurse’s station. They had no family to hold their fingers, no stuffed animals on their bedside table, no one to sing to them as they held them to their chest. The nurses were their only skin to skin. I think about those babies, and if they ever went home, or were ever given one— as I lay on my hallway bed now. I think of my grandma, who always made me feel like home was anywhere she was.

I think about the woman who came into the ER just after me, alone, barely able to hold her head up from the pain and tears. About my grandfather, unable to leave his bed in the assisted living facility that he eventually passed in.

My body is riddled with pain, but I see my Mom step into the space, and I know I am suddenly accounted for. I think about those babies and that woman and my grandfather and every other person who has been alone, without an advocate, without a beacon of light to look out for them. Do they get swept away in the rushing sea of doctors, of emergencies, of side conversations?

who stops to hold their hand?

On the last day of our women’s retreat, five days before this moment, I vomited in the grass. I have to lay down and take a nap in our van, excusing myself from the last two hours of activities before dropping everyone off at the airport. I stop at a Starbucks and buy a large coffee for the drive home, and power through the exhaustion. After all, so many doctors have told me it is normal to feel like this.

The day before the surgery, I hiked to Mohonk tower with my family and Luke in the rain, pushing my body to feel at its peak, even though I feel drained and exhausted and uncomfortable. There is no amount of fresh air or caffeine that can save me. But I smile, pushing on, because it is very hard to love someone who is always not feeling well.

Our bodies will do the pause for us, if we aren’t ready to listen to it’s warning signs. My body’s alarm system has been going off for sometime now, but everyone had told me to stop listening.

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