From the day I was told I would have this surgery, I told Dr. S, I started knitting.
But the first thing yesterday was a young nurse who came in and asked me a set number of questions. One was standard for patients who’ve had a resection, but there was no resection done here–I laughed, answering, “Don’t have the body parts for that anymore!”
She clearly felt put on the spot. I remember being young and intimidated by older people (wait–older? Hey!…) My heart went out to her–it’s okay! Certainly not something to worry over.
The surgeon was running late and I made him much later. I didn’t want to miss anybody. The more he saw what I’d done as I pulled things out of my bag, the happier he got about the whole thing too. I couldn’t remember everybody’s names; I’m not great at learning new information when I’m drugged out in the hospital. I had individual projects in ziploc bags, a card to each, but in some, they were still waiting for the names to be added. Dear (blank).
He helped by looking up my records and scanning down the screen for me, trying not to miss anybody either. I explained I was on my way to E ward after that to go see the nurses.
You know, he could have thought of his schedule and gotten annoyed at my hijacking his time. Instead, the grin on his face just kept getting bigger and bigger as I pulled out one after another–let’s see, got Dr. X, Y, and Z here, what was the name of? And…? Anyone else?
I looked at him, cracking up: “I can NOT call him Lionel. What was his *name*?”
Oh. Right. Dr…
And another–he spelled it out but I just wasn’t getting it. With a high-frequency loss, V, C, T, G and the like all sound like the vowel E: no consonant sounds need apply when there is no context to guess by. So he tore off a small piece of the paper covering the exam table and wrote it out for me. Okay, got it! (Resourceful on the spot–I like it!)
He held up the pink shawl for his wife and he and the young nurse admired it while I explained the tradition of lace wedding ring shawls. He took his wedding band off and pictured it against the stitches and asked, and I grinned, “Probably better yours than your wife’s size!” while saying that the reinforced neck edge would be the only reason it wouldn’t go through. He loved it.
He had done micro-sized stitches that had healed up unbelievably fast, with so much less pain than I’d expected–I mean, I knew it was a bigger surgery in January, but–and so I was giving tiny stitches in baby alpaca back in thanks. He was deeply gratified. And to my surprise, a little abashed (but very pleased) at my complimenting his work.
At the end, I pulled a Purlescence bag out of my bag so he would have a Santa Claus pack to haul the loot around in.
And then one more thing: the young nurse, having watched all this going on, was suddenly stunned when I reached back into the main bag, pulled out a scarf that would go well with her coloring, and tossed it (I still had that silly gown on, there are limits to one’s dignity in such circumstances) across to her.
And at last I got to see her really happy too.
Afterwards, I walked over to the main hospital to give out nine more scarves. Lace flowers to match Stanford’s gardens, lace leaves for the plants, etc. I went hither and yarn… I finally got one to one of the nurses I’d had while in the oncology unit back when that had been the only available bed in the hospital last time. She was a good one. She needed to know she was remembered.
Wait, what floor had I been on again this time? Okay, that’s the bone marrow unit, that’s the post-surgery ICU, been there (says Stanford Accounting, don’t remember it) but not that… They’d closed off an inner corridor and my visual memory, always shaky since early in my lupus, was just lost. I got a whole lot of walking done.
I didn’t get to see everybody I wanted to, but when I finally went, oh, duh. Right. THAT floor!, the nurse at the desk got to anticipate playing Santa too, with a big grin on her face. This time, I left the stack of scarves in a sweater-sized ziploc with a list of names. People could pick what they liked. The one person who had a specific one coming her way, in pink to match her scrubs three weeks ago, I did get to see and hug in thanks for her caring. Very cool.
It was her project I had had in my hands when Dr. S had come into my hospital room and, in answer to my query, had said his wife liked that color. It was her scarf I took to the shelves at Purlescence, looking for a match. And they do.
It wasn’t till I was almost asleep last night that I realized that that blue Half Moon Bay pattern hadn’t come home with me–I’m pretty sure there was one more scarf in that bag than there were names I’d remembered. Cool. Maybe that first-night’s nurse whose name and face were lost to my post-anesthesia haze got one after all.