You’re going to like this part.
His kidney stone moved to where it somehow doesn’t hurt, and the clinic’s urologist saw him and is keeping tabs on him. Cardiology set him up on a heart monitor for two weeks to get a more complete diagnosis.
And while that was getting started, I was in the next town over seeing my surgeon #2.
Who told me that surgeon #1 had called him and warned him she was sending a doozy of a case over. I got a bit of, Oh, *you’re* the one!
She had told me of potential nerve damage.
He told me it was way more than that. With no colon nor rectum in there holding things in place, things just slosh around, and–he was pleased that I knew what adhesions were–that ovary they couldn’t find on the ultrasound: it could be fused with my tailbone. Anything could be anywhere.
Finding it all and fishing it out and freeing it amongst all the adhesions risked my small intestine.
I was stunned. I’d had no idea.
I asked him how many hysterectomies he’d done on patients with colorectomies.
It was rare. He’s been practicing a long time. He held up five fingers and said–But they all had cancer. There’s a risk/life balance decision that has to be made. He went through all the testing I’d been through, and he too had tested, giving me a pap smear just to make sure and do due diligence.
And my reaction to that smear was to start bleeding on the spot, and it’s still noticeably going. But that’s not necessarily cancer.
A side note here: his nurse had come in first and while she asked questions, I said that the bleeding had started small and gradually crescendoed over the two years till it was (this much). I wrote about it while waiting for this appointment, I told her, and was quite surprised that the next day it was far less.
And then friends told me they’d put me on their prayer lists. I didn’t know–and it changed, and make of that what you will, I told her. (A thank you to all you who prayed or Thought Good Thoughts my way, which to the loving G_d I believe in fully counts. Love, as they say, is love.)
Come back in three weeks, the surgeon said, and we’ll have the results of that pap smear.
But as he said it, we both were sure we knew what it would say and what we would say and that it would wrap it all up nicely. He didn’t quite say, And tell your friends to pray again, y’know, just to make it a little easier on you.
Having told him about my husband’s hospitalization, I told him of the ones who had asked what they could do to help. And then they’d joyfully made a day trip out of it with their teenagers to make sure I didn’t miss out on my favorite peaches.
And with that I left him with the most perfect single Kit Donnell ever, with the divine scent of tree-ripened perfection. He was blown away by just the smell and sight of it and the kindness of people he didn’t even know and he wanted to know where this had come from so he could find more for his own family.
Such a good man. His patients are lucky to have him. And lucky, in my case, soon not to have to!