Give Me Back My Spleen and Other Adventures from Surgery
I
know it sounds like an exaggeration, but I’ve had over 50 surgeries in my
life. By
“surgeries” I mean any procedure in which medical cutting was done on my body. Some of these were small (cataract
surgeries in both eyes) or lasik surgery, for example, but others were major
(most obviously the heart transplant in 2009). The first happened when I was in
second grade and had my tonsils removed, and the most recent was last week when
I had a cyst removed from my pancreas. I
ruptured my appendix in 1978 and this led to my belly being sliced open six
times in major surgeries; for the blog post on point see http://douglaswhaley.blogspot.com/2010/08/first-time-i-nearly-died.html. Then, before the heart transplant,
there occurred much slicing open of my upper chest to take in and pull out a
defibrillator (it kept malfunctioning). At
one point I had major problems with my nose which led to my turbinates being
cut away by lasers. And in
2013 I had a total knee replacement. A
blog clot in my leg required stents being inserted/removed in my body four
times, and there have been a number of surgeries related to problems with my
heart including one in which a dual electrical system had to be cut out of my
new heart!
Heart
biopsies have led to most of the surgeries of the 50+ count in the list. In
this interesting medical procedure (it checks for rejection of the heart and takes
about 45 minutes), the cardiologist inserts a tube into my neck, threads it
down into the heart (which, trust me, does not approve of this invasion) and
harvests four tiny snips for analysis, pulling the pieces back up the tube. Sounds like fun, right? A
couple of months before the transplant I had the first of these procedures. The
next one was the day of the transplant itself (Nov. 23, 2009), and
periodically thereafter. In recent years
they’ve tapered off and may be over. There have been, I believe, 26 of these biopsies.
Since
2011 I’ve been aware I had a cyst on my pancreas which, ominously “must be
watched,” and this year a doctor whose expertise is the pancreas explained that
pancreatic cancer is very fatal—even if only one cancerous cell gets in the
mix. That scared me so I agreed with the
doctors it was time to take it out.
My
husband David and I went on vacation to Oregon on August 17th, and the
very night we arrived home on Sunday, the 20th at midnight, we
immediately prepared for surgery at six a.m. that Monday at the Ohio State
University Hospitals here in Columbus.
The surgery went off smoothly and my surgeon told me that the cyst
contained no cancerous cells and my pancreas, now devoid of an atrophied
section, was doing fine.
Prior
to the operation (#53 as I calculate the number) my surgeon had casually
mentioned that he would also be removing my spleen. What! My SPLEEN!
I was surprised—shocked even. Frankly,
I’m not real sure what a spleen does, but the offhand comment that mine would
be a casualty in all this was somehow disconcerting. What had my poor little spleen done to
deserve such treatment? I did a mock
protest and learned a lot about the spleen.
 |
| The Spleen |
It
turns out it had a primary function, particularly early in life, of boosting
the immune system, and that function gets fainter as we age. In my case I take major medications to thwart
my immune system so that it won’t reject my heart, so removing my spleen from
the picture is a good idea.
The
portion of the OSU system I recuperated in is the lovely new James Cancer Hospital,
which just opened in late 2014, and it is spectacular. The design of the building, the rooms, the
very friendly staff, doctors, nurses, all of it is magnificent. I have spent a lot of time in hospital rooms
at Ohio State in the last forty years, and the James is the best of them all. I am thankful to everyone for the care I
received in so warm and friendly a fashion.
Having
said that, the hospital stay there is the same old torture for the patient that
it has always been at whatever hospital I’ve stayed in across the country. If you’re a former patient you doubtless know
what I mean: you get no rest. All day
long, all night long the patient is interrupted by person after person coming
into the room with his/her own agenda: time to take “vitals,” time to take
medicine, time to clean the room, what would you like for your meals today?,
here is the meal you ordered, time for your shots, the doctors are making rounds, time to clean the
wound, time to try walking, and the list goes on and on. The longest period of sleep I could maintain
without a visit at night was three hours, and this at a time when my aching
body begged me for sleep, needed sleep.
The
bed itself was like a joke. It certainly
was not designed for comfort for the patient. The controls are hard to reach and frequently
attached to a cord that slips all too easily to the floor. Whatever the patient does, he/she slides to
the bottom of the bed and is scrunched up there until rescued and temporarily
pulled back into a position where supine sleep is theoretically possible. Whoever designed this bed should be forced—by
law—to sleep in it for the rest of his/her life. On top of this, various items in the room
beep and buzz, and even ear plugs won’t keep out these irritants.
The
James has a new idea on how to prevent bed sores (which occur when the patient
fails to move around enough in bed). It
is now routine to attach large balloons around the ankle/thigh area, and these
inflate and deflate all during the night, moving the patient’s legs as pressure
is applied here and there. Want to try
and sleep through that?
Actually
I didn’t mind it at all, but I’m an unusual case. I sleep with cats, and during the night they
frequently cuddle up to my feet for warmth.
When the balloons started inflating, half drugged as I was, I thought it
was my cat Mama, who has spent almost every night for the last six years
snuggling against my legs, and her mysterious presence made me happy. How had Mama snuck into the hospital and
found my room? Great cat.
 |
| My Cats Mama and Abby on the Bottom of the Bed |
However,
as the drugs decreased I noticed that the balloon machine emitted an intermittent
buzz and some clicks, and those made sleeping difficult. I finally told the nurse to turn it all
off. She said that most patients really
dislike the whole balloon idea, which was no surprise to me.
And
in the bathroom the toilet had no solid surface to relax back upon when one was
sitting there. Instead there was an
upright fixture for washing the toilet that consisted of a nozzle at the end of
a pipe that swiveled down to clean the toilet when the patient was gone. Since I was wearing the ever-attractive and
functional hospital gown that was, of course, open in the back, it was a surprise
in the middle of the night to sit on the toilet, lean back into this icy cold
fixture, and yelp in protest. They heard
me two rooms away. Whoever dreamed up
this idea should come over to my house and we’ll have a good long talk. Whoever approved its use and decided to
install it in the James can come along too.
I
was very pleased when my splendid doctor announced I could go home on Friday,
and I am here to tell you now that one of the most sublime pleasures of my life
was climbing into my very own bed that Friday afternoon, surrounded by husband,
cats, love, and comfort. As I fell into
a long sleep, Mama Cat climbed onto my feet, purring, settling down to sleep
herself. She didn’t seem to care that I
was spleenless.
Related Posts:
A Guide to the Best of My Blog,” April 29, 2013;http://douglaswhaley.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-guide-to-best-of-my-blog.html
“The First Time I Nearly Died,” August 3, 2010; http://douglaswhaley.blogspot.com/2010/08/first-time-i-nearly-died.html
Comments
Post a Comment