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Published: March 29th 2011
Monday, March 14
Hats off to our nurses! Operating room nurses, sterilizing nurses, recovery room nurses, ward nurses - they are, to a person, compassionate and skilled. Since one of my assignments is to assist them in small ways, I have learned the proper method of lifting patients from stretcher to bed, of removing an IV, and of emptying the contents of a catheter bag.
"You're not a nurse until you've been peed on," says Irene, as she shows me the way to collect the urine and record the amount on a chart. Keeping this in mind, I work cautiously, and dutifully empty and measure and describe.
"Straw-coloured, almost translucent," I write.
"Pale golden, with subtle amber highlights."
"Malty, mysterious, brown as a nut."
Irene's eyebrows lift, as she reviews my notes. Probably, she thinks I'd do better tending bar. But that's what you get when you ask a writer to describe pee.
Tuesday, March 15
Jesus is all eyes. He also is all ears, the kind that stick out like sails, and all knobby elbows and knees. A typical, skinny 17-year-old kid. The important bit (and the bit that will soon be
of no importance at all) is that Jesus has one womanly breast.
His younger brother has accompanied him to the clinic and is staring him down from across the outdoor corridor. Jesus is trying to be cool, which is practically impossible in a hospital gown and a hat that looks like a shower cap. Every so often, the boys wave shyly to each other.
In the operating room, though, Jesus is clearly terrified. His dark eyes dart back and forth as the anesthesiologist readies him for surgery. When the surgeon arrives, scrubbed, gowned and gloved, Jesus looks ready to hop off the table. Whatever humiliation he has had to put up with since puberty (and there must have been lots of it) nothing could have prepared him for this. But after some deep breaths of anesthetic, Jesus' body relaxes. He starts to hiccup gently, a normal side effect of the drug, and the sound is at once reassuring and endearing.
The surgeon makes an incision, just below the nipple, then deepens it carefully. With movements that are economical and precise, he excises the useless breast tissue and drops it onto the instrument tray. It looks like a sack of tapioca pearls encased in a thin membrane. If it was up to me, I would toss it in the trash and be done with this errant piece of flesh that has caused so much shame.
Fortunately, my emotions are of no particular interest to anyone. Jesus is stitched up neatly, the left side of his chest assuming a washboard flatness that matches the right. Later, in the recovery room, I am told that he lifted the sheet a number of times, peeking at the place where a left breast had been. All he will be left with is a tiny scar just above his heart.
Thanks to the vision of Barbara and George Maryniak who started Project HANDS five years ago, Jesus has been given back his dignity. In a couple of days he will be recovered enough to walk the two hours to school and the two hours home again. In addition to this, he'll be free to hang out with friends without being teased, strip off his shirt for a rough game of football, court a girlfriend, eventually marry.
Jesus is all eyes, a lovely flat chest and a smile that soars from ear to ear. But, better than that, he's just one of the guys.
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carolyn
non-member comment
Although I normally recoil in horror at the very thought of an operating room, I enjoyed reading this happy story of that poor young man who had been given reason to smile. I like the pee descriptions too! Carolyn