Our first shared medical experience
I hate hospitals. I know what you’re thinking: “Ooooh, big shocker. Everybody hates hospitals.”
But I really hate them. Just looking at them fills my head with panicked babble, calling up every bad memory associated with them and awakening my dormant hypochondria. It’s fair to say I’m phobic when it comes to hospitals and doctors and sickness of any kind. I can’t watch “E.R.” or any other medical show, not even “Scrubs.” I turn green when my mother-in-law describes medical procedures, and even a whiff of hospital chemicals makes me queasy. All bets are off if I see a scalpel or syringe. I.V.s are scary enough.
So I was a bit apprehensive the first time I went to a medical appointment with Jim. I didn’t say anything about it, of course. I just marched in there with the focused face of a man determined not to wet himself in front of his executioner.
It was Thursday, Nov. 20. We met on the 5th floor of the OU Physicians Building and followed a hallway from the elevators to the cancer center. An open waiting room, maybe 100 feet long, stretched out in front of us — patients to the right, support staff to the left. Pretty women smiled at us from behind high wooden counters.
Jim was there to get the titanium pump in his abdomen drained and refilled with water and a blood thinner. I was there to try to understand this part of his life a little better. With us was photojournalist John Clanton.
We hadn’t been there long before a woman popped out of a door and called Jim’s name. Off we went into a maze of long, narrow corridors that led us to a room packed with medical equipment and a series of leather reclining chairs with matching ottomans. Chemo patients sat in those chairs, some offering furtive smiles, others lying motionless as I.V. arrays dripped toxic chemicals into their veins.
We passed through and entered a tiny, L-shaped private room, dominated by a hospital bed. Jim plopped down on it without hesitation, something I could have never done. To me, it seemed — like all hospital beds — vaguely sinister, an instrument of rest perverted and possessed by a darker spirit. The ghosts of past occupants seemed to linger despite the fresh linens, leaving a residue of fear-sweat and desperate hope.
(Told you I’m phobic about hospitals.)
Diane Boyd and Vickie O’Brien entered the room in a flurry of activity and good cheer. It was Diane’s last work day before Thanksgiving, and she was wearing turkey-printed autumn scrubs. Vickie, wearing a hot pink top over blue scrubs, instantly became the brightest object in the room.
Diane and Vickie have been taking care of Jim for about 14 months. The past four months, that has included tending to his abdominal pump, which was installed to direct the chemo to specific spots on Jim’s liver. The chemo failed to shrink the tumors, and doctors stopped using the pump, but it still needs to be emptied and refilled from time to time.
Jim lay back on the bed, and the nurses pulled up his sweater, exposing his stomach. Vickie tucked an absorbent cloth into the waistband of his chinos. The pump creates a bulge in Jim’s flesh that is noticeable even when he is clothed; with his stomach exposed, the lump seemed more unnatural.
Diane swabbed his stomach with Betadine and alcohol. The Betadine alone was reddish-brown. The alcohol turned it a shade of yellow.
Somewhere beneath Jim’s skin is a port, a hole in the pump that must be punctured with a long needle so the fluid can be removed. The needle is about as long as one used to inflate a basketball, and it was connected to a length of tubing that led back to a pair of syringes. Diane missed the port with her first couple stabs into Jim’s abdomen, and Jim’s face was tense, drawn into a tight frown. On the third or fourth try, the needle slipped into the port, and Jim relaxed. Instantly, the syringes began to fill with clear fluid.
“See, it’s under pressure,” Jim said. “There was chemo in it, but now it’s just water and Heparin.”
Diane handled the delicate part of the process: inserting the needle, operating the clamp. Vickie provided the brute strength needed to force fluid back into the pump, a process that has apparently grown more difficult with time.
“Leverage!” Vickie complained, her hand straining. “There’s nothing there to hold onto. Here, lay it down a bit. Maybe that’ll be easier than holding it straight up.”
“There’s a guy at M.D. Anderson named James who takes care of it,” Jim said.
“Gosh,” Diane said to Vickie. “I think you’re stronger than me.”
“He’s a big old boy,” Jim said.
“Does he have as much trouble as us?” Diane asked. “I don’t remember it ever being this hard.”
“It was hard, but not this hard,” Vickie said. “Let’s rest. One minute.”
“That should be it,” Jim said. His voice was mild.
“We’ve got to get all of that out,” Diane said.
Jim looked at me. “This is somewhat stressful,” he said. “For all of us, I think.”
No kidding. My stomach was in a condition that could best be described as a rolling boil. I couldn’t see myself, but I’m sure I was vampire pale. I was concentrating on two things: not puking and staying conscious. I didn’t say anything. I was afraid what might come out.
