Feasting
by
Diane Hoover Bechtler
The anesthesiologist was long gone,
slipping others into dreamless night, which was a shame. I wanted to
thank her for the easy drift. Where others had knocked me out cold,
she made good on her promise to ease me under. The drugs had changed
and were much kinder now. I was soon awake and clear-headed. Or so I
thought.
Someone
said, “Is her mouth drooping?”
In
response, I tried to lift my left arm and couldn’t. “Oh,
God,
I’ve had a stroke,” I thought. I’d been warned of
such a
possibility.
“No,
her mouth is okay. She’s fine.” That was Jones’
voice. For the
first of a million times to come, someone asked me to wiggle my
fingers and toes. The left toes barely twitched. I fell back to sleep
in the ICU for 32 hours, my sister sat by my side.
I
awoke slowly drifting in and out. I thought about my lesions and
wondered what shapes would appear if I connected the dots. Would I
find the big dipper and Orion? The film already resembled the Big
Bang theory. I wondered what to do with my old MRI film. Perhaps make
some shower curtains. For sure, I wanted a few special shots cut for
my wallet and a few framed for my bookshelves. I might need all the
MRI film if I wove the shower curtains. How about some sun
catchers? Or baskets? Could I get other MRI film? Could I sell the
products on eBay, as there was no bottom to the bad taste reflected
by the items sold there daily? Bones of Saints, Elvis’s
toothbrush,
water from the Garden of Eden, dirt from Atlantis, planks from the
house of the Bind Torture Kill murderer, Lee Harvey Oswald’s book
depository window. Why not brain MRIs made into magazine racks?
Martha Stewart would be so proud.
Doctors’
rounds start early at Mayo. Every day young doctor Phillips, with his
creamy complexion, came to see me. He spent most of his five minutes
in my room looking at his shoes. That told me he was a Minnesota boy.
He would never proposition a woman in an elevator.
Dr.
Jones appeared with Dr. Phillips one morning. The senior doctor
stepped into the fog of my sleep and began talking.
“Ms.
Bechtler, the tissue we got is being analyzed. It’s
amyloid.”
I
found my voice. “What’s Amyloid?”
“Yurekli and Carini
will explain later.”
I
shook my head to try to clear it. Why couldn’t doctors,
especially
the most important ones, come at reasonable hours when I was coherent
enough to formulate intelligent questions? Amyloid must be like
sludge because my head felt stuffed with mud. I handed Dr. Jones a
piece of paper and a pen.
“Write it down please.”
I
looked at his typical doctor scribbling and wondered if doctors take
classes in illegible handwriting. “Neuro alpha amyloid.” I
reached for my computer so I could look up the meaning of this
phrase, which sounded like Greek roofing material. Then I
remembered, I had woken in the night and opened the computer. I
wanted to send an email telling people I had not died. The darn
machine lay on my knees as I typed. It began sliding to my left. I
clamped my knees but it continued its descent toward the floor. I
tried to catch it, but my hand hung useless at my side as the $2,000
machine inched away. The slow motion effect was due to being half
asleep or maybe the drugs, but I watched the pristine white I-Book
hang in space for a few moments, then hit the tile floor popping and
cracking. The screen shattered, then snapped at the hinge.
I
was too groggy to scream or be appropriately shocked. I had put the
pieces in the computer bag and fallen back asleep. Mary had handed me
a few alpha keys that popped right off. I stuffed them under my
pillow.
She
said, “I couldn’t catch it. It all happened so fast.”
As
if reading my mind, referring to my newly weaker left side, Dr. Jones
said, “If the surgery hurt you, it’s from your brain
swelling.
Two, three weeks, you should be as you were. If it lasts five weeks,
it could be permanent, but I wouldn’t worry yet. Swelling is
common
and goes down in time. We have you on steroids, which will help.”
I
forced a waning smile. Easy for him to say as he moved gracefully in
his fully functioning body. “Can’t think,” I muttered.
“Woman,
give yourself a break, you just woke from anesthesia and a four hour
brain surgery. You’ll feel better tomorrow. We’ll talk
then.”
I
came out of the surgery with a much-diminished left side. I dragged
my left foot, I couldn’t grip with my left hand or it
spasmodically
gripped on its own and wouldn’t let go. I was in a low level of
constant pain and I couldn’t raise my left arm higher than my
shoulder. Mary was very concerned. I was very concerned.
“And,”
Jones used a fatherly tone, “Diane, do not get on the computer
looking up things that will only scare you. Wait for Carini or
Yurekli to explain. You’ll confuse yourself. The Internet
is
filled with misinformation.” With that, he left, Dr. Phillips
trailing behind him.
I
met the parasite woman after I was transferred from Intensive Care to
Acute Care. We shared a room. My sister and a nurse helped me limp to
the bed. Beside me, the woman threw up violently in a pail. The nurse
went to help her while Mary settled me in.
Within
a few days, Maxine and I were breaking unspoken Mayo code and talking
about our illnesses. Barfing, crapping, and showering in close
quarters will create quick bonds. Jigsaw cut pieces of conversation
had drifted over the curtains to my sister and me, and we tried to
figure out Maxine ’s problem. She had a lawn-mowered swath of
visible skull up the back of her head. Her fresh red incision was
about six inches long. The skin was held together with a row of shiny
new staples. I wanted to grab a staple remover and go to work. Mary
was not in the room, when Maxine told me her story.
“I
have parasites in my brain.” She said it as though she were
speaking of bad weather. “They lay eggs, which hatch and cause
cysts that block the blood flow in my brain. Lesions form and become
infected. The doctors had to drain the abscesses for the second time
this year. May have to do it again. May have to put in a shunt. They
can’t remove the parasites. They can’t be killed with
medication
and they can’t be dug out. They told me the name of the
condition,
but I can’t pronounce it.”
I
had a “Twilight Zone” moment not believing what I heard.
Was I in
America or had I been teleported to an undeveloped part of remote
India? God almighty, there were problems as bad as mine, right here
beside me.
She
went on, “This was my third operation and I don’t know if I
can
stand another one. The nausea and head pain from surgery is terrible,
almost as bad as the headaches from the burrowing.”
Bugs.
God almighty! The woman six feet from me had creatures feasting on
her brain.
She
continued, “I collapsed at work with pain the first time. They
did
an MRI at my hometown hospital in Akron. Said they’d never seen
anything like it. Sent me here. Lots of strangely shaped lesions.
Docs think I got infected traveling. I’ve only been to Canada,
but
I petted moose and deer and drank water from streams. It was a
wilderness adventure.”
I
told her, “My doctors asked me about travel also. The
Caribbean, Mexico, and Turkey were my exotic ports.”
Gerhardt
and I went on cruises. No medical problems were due to any of my
travel. What it wasn’t: Parasites or an IUD migrated to my head
or
objects being placed in my brain.
Rumors
started in Winston-Salem, where my family members were getting spotty
information and embellishing. My sister-in-law’s mother told
people
I was having a metal plate put in my head. Other people remarked to
my mom how kind it was that her minister went all the way to
Minnesota to see me. I’ve never met my mother’s minister.
He went
to Mayo for treatment for a stomach growth. My sister-in-law’s
mother watched too much TV.
Mary
was back. When I woke again, dinner arrived. I had beef stew. Yea.
The
food at Mayo was tasty. I was hungry and making up for the lost
meals. I was quite thankful my roommate was no longer vomiting. A
full can of cold Sierra Mist fizzed on my tray. I loved the citrus
flavor of this newly discovered soft drink. I ate my crunchy salad
then gobbled the steaming stew. I continued membership in the Mayo
clean plate club.
“Did
Kevin call while I slept?” My sister shook her head. I turned to
the side and squeezed my eyes. I’d had brain surgery and my
son had not even called to check on me.
Mary
was quick. “Mama called. Daddy, Lucas, and Gerhardt called.
Lawrence called, too. I told them you were fine and you’d get
back
to them eventually. Now lift that left arm.”
I
obliged.
“My
goodness, that is not good. You seem much worse with walking and with
your arm use than before the surgery.”
“If
I am, then that’s how it is. I signed so many releases for this
surgery that if I had died on the table with a scalpel in my heart,
Mayo could have claimed I committed suicide while under
anesthesia.”
Finished
with dinner, I fiddled with the broken laptop pieces. I didn’t
have
tape or tools, but I had determination. I stabilized the keyboard on
the mattress. I propped the shattered screen on a pillow. After
attaching the plug to both the outlet and the machine, I pressed the
“on” button. The familiar Apple ding
rang out. I clicked my browser icon and logged in to the Clinic
wireless network. By shifting the pillow, I had enough clear screen
to read. I could write. I could pick up and send email. I could shop
on the Internet. And that’s exactly what I did. I shopped for a
new
laptop. I sent an email to Scott asking him to watch for the arrival
of the new computer and to take it inside the condo. I didn’t
want
it sitting by my door inviting thieves. I also asked him to overnight
my older laptop to me.
Before
I put the computer pieces back in its bag, I worked on my graduate
school writing submission.
Mary
and I played a game while I was in recovery. We called it “Name
that Scar.” It began with the parasite woman. We were always very
quiet when we played.
While
waiting with Mary for her bus, back to the Kahler, a woman rolled by
in her wheelchair. She had about a quarter of an inch of hair. Her
fresh incision began at the base of her skull in the back of her head
and slithered its way over her head to her forehead. She still had
stitches. “Amazon River,” my sister said.
“Flight
of the Bumblebee,” I returned.
Mary
could stay only a few days. It was becoming clear to me that I’d
never get my things and myself home without help. Scott not only
agreed to rescue me, he said he’d gladly pay for his own ticket,
a
thing Lawrence would never have done. Scott wanted to know as far
ahead as possible in order to book the flight at the best rate. I
told him I’d let him know the minute I knew. In the beginning,
Yurekli had said I’d be at Mayo about a week after surgery.
The
whoosh whoosh
of compression stockings blowing up air then releasing it lulled me
to sleep. The stockings were to prevent blood clots from forming in
the legs. Brain surgery patients had to wear them at least 10 days. I
wore them, as did Maxine. The synchronized pulsing soothed me.
The
next day, I made my final submission for the third semester of my MFA
program. I handwrote part of it, transcribed it on a keyboard that
jammed and had missing keys, read the piece for errors on the
shattered screen, and sent the work from a the broken computer while
it was propped on a hospital bed in the Mayo Clinic recovery wing
less than one week after I’d had brain surgery. God help a future
grad student who pleads for a deadline extension based on a dog
eating homework.
I
downloaded others’ submissions to my flash drive and had them
printed at the Kahler Grand Business Center. Mary brought printed
copies to me as well as copies downloaded onto the flash drive. I
copied everything to more than one place for fear that the broken
computer might stop transmitting at any moment. I preferred people
receive two copies rather than none.
The
head of studies always told us to write what we feel passionate
about. My ordeal was the most important thing in my life. So, even
though I was a fiction major, I wrote my truthful
“stranger-than-fiction” story as a personal essay and
submitted
it. I received favorable comments on my piece.
A
nurse wheeled me to and from the Mayo media center’s reliable
computers, where I picked up and sent email. I sent a specific email
to my MFA group asking them to confirm receiving my information. I
copied the head of the program on my work as well. I wanted him to
know I was still in school, that I had not yet started my leave of
absence. I copied myself to make sure everything transmitted. It did.
Later, I picked up confirmations from the Mayo computers lab then
deleted it all before I logged out. Unlike Lawrence, I’m
computer smart. I knew to clean my material off computers before I
shut them down.
I
reread comments about my writing. They were healing words for me. To
read and to write. I was encouraged to write more about Mayo. But I
resisted extending my Mayo stay. I wanted to go home. The doctors
sent a social worker to assess and reason with me.
Diane
Hoover Bechtler lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband,
Michael Gross who is a poet with a day job and with their cat, Call
Me IshMeow. As well as writing short work, she is looking for an
agent for her memoir, which is about learning to live with brain
disease. She has an undergraduate degree in English from Queens
University where she graduated summa cum laude and subsequently
earned her MFA. She has had short works published in journals such
as The Gettysburg Review,
Thema
Literary Journal,
and The Dead Mule
School of Southern Literature.
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