The Hand Holders

Another day, another trip to Duarte, Ca. and City of Hope. Starting to learn the route there, how to get through the hospital, all that. Information you don't really want to have. We're supposed to get to CoH by 6:15am so it's an early pick up at C's place downtown. The sun just coming up, a wide open 10 freeway, people on their way to work.



We checked in, headed up to the surgical wing. A fair number of people there at that early hour. Seemed like they'd been there a while. You get thrown into this world and one thing you learn is how to kill time. The iPhone is my friend. Email, crossword puzzles, Facebook, etc. Everybody has their way. This woman had her Kindle, the guy in the back just catching a few Z's.



We're the significant others. The post-op designated drivers. The hand holders. The lady on the other side of me paints. Not sure what she was working on, but she had her supplies and just quietly worked on her masterpiece.



Today we're here to get C's reality checked - installing the port (actually a "portacatheter") that chemo will be administered through (whenever the hell that will happen...). The port avoids the hassle and complications of endless normal injections. But the effect it has today is to make this all real, the skin up by his shoulder opened and a quarter-sized device implanted to remind him that this is actually happening. How the hell did this happen? There's no good answer, but the question just keeps coming back, and back, and back.



We get brought into the pre-op area and they set up C's IV. The anesthesiologist stops by, asks C his birthdate (again). This is how they make sure they are doing the right thing to the right guy. It's a good system. A nurse comes by and hooks up a drip of antibiotics on the IV, it has C's name and birthdate on it. She asks, "What's your birthdate?" She gets the right answer and turns it on. It's reassuring.



Then we wait. C nods off. He didn't sleep well last night. I sit, listening to the people behind the curtain in the next stall. A husband and wife. She took aspirin yesterday so she may get her surgery scratched. No blood thinners before surgery. They're pissed. I hear a nurse walking around nearby singing quietly, "Don't worry... be happy..."



I walk over to the table at the foot of the bed with binders of O.R. documents and such. I flip through them, all the weirdly organized specifics of a world you don't want to be in. "Flowsheets" - there's a new term for my oncological glossary. The surgeon stops by to say hello. The blue scrubs, the wispy booties, the hairnet that would make even George Clooney look like a dork. The surgeon is very professional, comforting. I look down and see that he's missing the three middle fingers of his left hand. Not much to say to that. You just say to yourself, "Oh, I'm sure it's fine..."



They wheel C off. As they roll him out I say, "See you in one minute," since I know for him it will be an instant. I head out and walk the halls. Filled with the hardware of the medical industry. Such an odd place to kill time. Surrounded by technological wizardry and tragedy, triumphs and anonymous heroism.



I wander outside. Get a call from C's oncologist, bits of data, a quick download. It's never enough. It's too much. It all ends up just coming down to this - does this call make me feel better or worse? This one kind of sucks. It'll ruin C's weekend. I go back inside. There are a lot of kid's drawings hanging on the walls. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like there are a lot of drawings of the Titanic.



After about an hour they call me back in. This goes just like the last time we did this - C is out, but stirring. I sit down, his eyes crack the tiniest bit, he sees it's me. He slips his hand out from under the white O.R. blanket and he takes my hand in his.