Are You Washing, Girl?

"Whoa, this heating system must be turned too low. It's making my coochie cold."

"Your COOCHIE? That's going on the blog."

"You can't put that on the blog. You can't talk about my coochie."

"Censorship doesn't work here, oppressor. Watch out for your IV, you're leaning on it."

This woman may or may not have had a "cold coochie" at the time of this picture. Pre-Op, yesterday morning.

When I was a child, one of my favorite books was "Bony Legs". Bony Legs was a "horrible, mean witch" with metal teeth, who lived in a house that stood on chicken feet. She liked to eat children, and was generally a mega-bitch.

Oh, the huge nose stereotype. Cute. Dig the curtains, though.

A little girl named Sasha wandered into Bony Legs' lair, and was locked in the bathroom and forced to bathe (in retrospect, that was a little creepy) before being cooked for dinner. Through the door, Bony Legs would croak, "Are you WASHING, girl?", and Sasha would meekly reply, "Yes..I am."

(There was a record that went with it, so my mother and I emulated the voices whenever we read it.)

So when I needed to time my mother's pre-op antimicrobial scrub on Monday night, I screeched, "Are you WASHING, girl?". Guess how she responded.

We got to the pre-op area around 10:30am, but they were running behind, and there were a lot of details to go over. Epidurals for her thorax. Blood samples for cross reference. The ringing of "Do you have any allergies?" over, and over, and over. And over. It seemed like the dress I wore absorbed every smell it encountered, from my brother's Axe bodywash early in the morning, to the CRNA's faint, flowery fragrance. It masked that iconic hospital smell.

She was eventually wheeled back around 1pm. I stood in the hallway, watching the nurses care for her in a way they have a hundred times before.

But it hasn't been a hundred times for me, I thought. That could have been my last kiss. The last time I hear "I love you."

I shook myself out of it, grabbed her travel bag, and slipped downstairs to text and call the millions of family members and friends.

Bye, Felicia!

They didn't get started with her surgery until 3pm. I was directed into a special intensive surgical waiting area, which, by the way, will always be nicer than the outpatient waiting area. There were anxious husbands of complicated pregnancy patients, a triple fracture of the tibia and fibula (damn, I hope they were doing something fun), a kidney resection..I wasn't trying to eavesdrop (OK, yes I was), but every time the door opened and a surgeon came out to discuss a case, all I could think was, "If I see her surgeon in the next hour, this will have been for nothing."

Then, of course, I had to compare MY tragedy to THEIR tragedy. I am a horrible person.

I mentally mocked this guy for hours. Come on with that outfit.

After about seven hours and a couple of chats with her OR nurse, her surgeon came in, and said those sweet, sweet nothings.

"We were able to remove her entire left lobe."
"There was no need to repair her inferior vena cava."
"She remained stable the entire time, and is being extubated now."

And, the phrase that made me tackle him with a hug:

"I didn't see any other signs of cancer."

She's currently in the ICU, with an epidural and a PCA pump and an NG tube and an A-Line and two chest tubes and a partridge in a pear..wait.

The important thing was: cholangiocarcinoma? You're fucking toast.

NOT TODAY, SATAN.