When I was 19 I underwent a total knee replacement, and was
one of the youngest patients to have ever done so. The events leading up to the
necessity for that surgery are a whole story unto themselves, and for another
day and time.
The operation was January 3rd, 1990, a Wednesday.
Quite the way to start a decade,
especially the last one of the century and the last of the millennium.
I had my hair cut pixie-short like Demi Moore in the movie
Ghost. Since Ghost didn’t come out until that summer, one could fairly argue
that Demi had her hair styled like mine. Yes, let’s say that, okay? I was
always ahead of my time (or so far behind as to never catch up).
Most of Thursday was spent sleeping and barfing, General
Anesthesia and I never having had an easy relationship.
By Friday morning I was able to eat a good breakfast, though
my nurse wisely warned me not to even attempt the hard-boiled egg. Coffee never
tasted so good or so warming, as I thanked the powers that be that my bed was
not near the drafty, frigid window. Sheets had been folded and jammed onto the
window ledge in an attempt to stop the sneaky cold from blowing in. My shivering
Italian hospital roommate was discharged by noon, so I had the whole fabulous
place to myself.
My urinary catheter was removed, which meant I was free to
begin physiotherapy. To be tethered by one’s bladder is a strange notion and
sensation. I performed a few simple exercises while still lying down, then the
PT got me up to sit in a chair while a
funny orderly from The Islands changed the sheets on my bed and tried to make
me laugh. It felt like an eternity, as the pain and strain covered me in a cold
sweat and nausea again was knocking on my door. I was returned to bed where the
pressure of swelling and the pounding of blood flow could be felt far beneath
the wrap of white gauze and plaster cast. An injection of sweet morphine
derivative and some lunch did the trick.
A nap soon beckoned as I stared at a crossword puzzle book, held upside-down.
I awoke around 2 p.m. to my day-nurse taking my vitals, as
they had been every 4 hours, even during the night. My pulse was a bit fast she
said, but since I had been startled awake, Mary* said she would
repeat it in a few minutes when I was calmer. I did feel rather agitated and
had trouble concentrating on my novel; I kept rereading the same sentence and
paragraph, over and over. The repeat pulse check was even higher that the
first. The reading was recorded on the clipboard at the end of my bed. I had no
fever, my white blood cell count from that morning was fine, so no signs of
infection. Mary came twice more to take my pulse before her shift change at 4
p.m.. Conferring with the evening nurse, Mary and Nicole* decided to
page the surgeon, Dr. Rivers* , who felt that it sounded like I was
having a transfusion reaction from the 2 units of blood I had received during
the surgery. They were to keep a close eye on me, continue taking my vitals
every hour, and keeping track of my fluids in and out.
By supper time the heart in my body was pounding and I was
hot from the internal workings, though still no signs of a temperature. My
mind, however, was floating off, out to the middle of the ocean, where I
hovered over refreshing aqua green swells
close enough to touch. The Sears
catalogue had a bedroom comforter set with the color they called (08)Sea Foam,
and that was the exact color of my cooling waves.
To put it mildly, I was stoned out of my gourd. When I, that
is Mind, would return to the Body, it was too restless and quickly needed out
again, out to sea. Lying completely still in bed, my pulse rate was racing, so
the orthopedic resident-on-call was paged around 9 p.m.
Young Dr. Morris*
appeared at my door with nurse Nicole, who was wondering aloud if
she needed to be there, since she was all alone on the ward for the moment as other
R.N.s were on their breaks . Dr. Morris waved her off, saying he could handle
it alone. He was cute, with massively curly auburn hair and light brown eyes.
As he pulled the privacy curtain and sat on the edge of my bed, I could
immediately detect that he was too heavy-handed with the cologne. He looked and
sounded tired, but was chipper as he chatted, telling me that he was actually in
the O.R. during my operation; how damaged my knee was; how the lead surgeon Dr.
Rivers was such a great physician,
etc. Dr. Morris said I should sit up because he had to listen to my lungs, and
huffed on the end of his stethoscope to warm it before slipping it through the
slit in the back of the blue hospital gown to check my breathing. I drifted back to my personal Bermuda
Triangle. Next I obeyed the command to lie back while he eaves-dropped on my
heart. I simply surfed.
At some point I came back to dry ground when I realized the
cardiac auscultation was taking much longer than usual. Though too zoned out in
the tactile sense to actually feel anything, I could see Dr. Morris’s hands
cupping and squeezing my breasts. My eyes flew up to meet his, which were now
about 6 inches from my face. He was breathing heavily and zooming in closer for
a kiss. My sudden awareness caused him to pause for a split second, which gave
me the chance to say “Please remove your hands”, because I was brought up to be
a polite girl. When he did, I said “Thank you”.
Dr. Morris turned bright red, quickly stood up, adjusted his
white lab coat and exited without a word. Lying there, I was left wondering if
what I thought had just happened had indeed happened. Soon Nicole reappeared
and said Dr. Morris wanted her to draw another blood sample STAT, to rule out
an infection. As she fluttered about, getting the equipment ready, I was about
to tell her what had just transpired, but stopped myself. For nothing really
did happen, right? Had I been a little more stoned, or a little less, who
knows, but nothing had happened.
By the next morning, Saturday, my heart rate was normal, as
were the CBC results. Weekend physio consisted of a tiny Asian PT named Cindy*,
whom I out-weighed by about 50lbs and whose head barely went to the level of my
shoulder, helping me to “walk” with a
walker festooned with green tennis balls on its feet. The effort was worthy of
a Wimbledon match. My parents and my brother with his soon-to-be ex-wife
visited. I talked on the phone with 2 friends and one of my CEGEP teachers. I
read and did crossword puzzles, watched TV. I ate bran cereal and prunes,
cardboard hamburger steak smothered in dark gravy, and little packages of
Social Tea cookies. I listened to my Walkman.
Before the sun was even up, Monday morning rounds began. Dr.
Morris was sheepishly grinning at me from the back of the medical mob standing around
my bed. I was now finding him to be more handsome than I had on Friday night. To
my disgust, I was surprised to hear myself flirting with these young doctors-in-training.
The herd left, but Dr. Morris popped
back in, patted me on the hip and said he’d be back to the check on his “favorite
patient” later. I was thrilled, and could feel myself blushing. I wanted to
kick myself for having rejected his Friday night advances.
When the sun did come up that morning it was bright, and the
PT I had been assigned for the rest of my two week hospital stay arrived, ready
to whip me into shape. Lindsay* was about 25 and also had her dark hair
cut like me (and Demi Moore). While we did some stretching and strength exercises,
Lindsay never stopped talking to me and my
new elderly, though spunky, Maritimer roommate with the broken hip and possible
blood clot. Ruth* and I were literally her captive audience as
Lindsay regaled us with the tale of her weekend, spent at her brother’s
wedding. She had invited the new guy in her life, Beryl*, to
accompany her and meet her parents. Though they had only gone out a few times
and had not slept together yet, Lindsay felt that Beryl was “the one”. He had been a true gentleman at the ceremony
and later at the reception too. Ruth, a consummate old-maid, snuck me a wink
when she heard that part, and I had to laugh through my pain.
Out in the corridor for the walker portion of my stamina
training, several people remarked that Lindsay and I resembled each other quite
a bit, though she had dark eyes and mine are light. I was flattered because I
thought she was pretty, but certainly didn’t feel so about myself.
With the effort of
trying to stay balanced, my eyes were focused on feet meeting floor. I was
determined to heal quickly and recover exceptionally so that I could get on
with the rest of my life. I wanted to be an A+ patient. As we passed the nurse’s station, Lindsay
called out in a sickeningly saccharin voice, “Dr. Morris, look how well your
patient Andrea is walking!”
Fighting the vertigo, I quickly chanced a glance up, only to
catch sight of my preferred orthopedic-resident choke on the mouthful of coffee
he had just brought to his lips as he sat half-assed on a counter. He spluttered out some coffee onto the chart
he had been writing on, which he began to blot with his tie, even before he had
stopped choking and had gotten a good breath of air. All the staff around tried
to stifle giggles. Dr. Morris mumbled something like ,”Wow. Yeah, that’s great”,
as he buried his head back in his work. On our return trip back past the
nurse’s station, I could not bring myself to look up.
Lindsay told me that I was doing so well that the next day
my physio would be downstairs on the second floor in the actual physical
therapy gym where we could begin my rehabilitation in earnest, using pulleys
and weights.
True to her word, Tuesday morning a husky looking Russian
porter arrived before my breakfast tray had even been taken away, and whisked
me off in a wheelchair to meet Lindsay and do my exercises. The paraphernalia seemed
a lot like torture devices, and I soon became reacquainted with my penchant for
laughing loudly in a demented tone rather than crying in agony.
After about an hour of intense “therapy”, Lindsay said I
deserved a 15 minute break and set me free in the hallway to find the water
fountain. I dutifully found it and drank deeply. My thirst quenched for the
moment, I searched for a place to perch. I spied some vinyl upholstered benches
at the end of the corridor near the elevators, back past the entire length of
the physio department. Beginning to feel weak and nauseated, I really needed to
sit down, so I began my steady trudge, aluminum walker clanking with each
ginger step.
As I passed through the arch way that held the doors which,
when closed, could block off the elevator bay, a movement back over my right
shoulder caught my attention. There in the shadows the couple who had been
necking parted. The man had his back to me, but I could clearly see that the
female of the pair was a wide-eyed Lindsay. Then he turned to look at me too.
Our eyes met and the clarity hit us both like an arc of
lightning. It was Dr. Beryl Morris who stood in front of me and wiped his mouth
on his sleeve. All I could manage was a feeble, “Sorry”, as he took off on a
light jog down the hall.
Clueless, Lindsay called out, “Beryl, wait! She won’t tell
anyone, she’s cool with it”. Then she turned to me and said, ”Oh look at him, isn’t
he the cutest? He’s embarrassed!”
I never did tell anyone because nothing really happened,
though that nothing still bugs me 23 years later. Sorry Lindsay, we all make mistakes.
*Names have been changed
