A Strong Coward

It was a day when I was considering, intermittently, Brené Brown, a social worker and researcher in the topics of vulnerability and shame. She went viral a year or two ago when she did a TED talk, during which she mentioned that she had had  breakdown, at one point on her in her life. She even had a slide—with the very word BREAKDOWN in 52-point font. She then stayed home, mortified that she had outed herself in front of 500 people! 500 people—complete strangers—all walking around with the news: Brené had cracked up.

What saved her? It might well be her humor, but perhaps it was something greater—if possible. Because she’s not afraid to use her insight, even when it is not entirely blowing in her favor. There was the time, for example, when a man brought three of her books at a book signing, and provided the names of his wife and two daughters. The man then expressed interest that Brown, in her work on invulnerability, didn’t discuss men.

“I don’t work with men,” said Brown.

“How convenient,“ said the man, “because my wife and two children would rather see me die on top of my white horse than see me fall.” He went on to say: it’s not other guys, not the coaches, not the dads who tell us to suck it up, go on with our lives. It’s the women.

Not that men don’t have their problems, too. What women grapple with—their own Mt. Everest—is to be the perfect woman: nice, sweet, athletic, head of a major corporation, still finding time to take the children to school and the zoo and attend EVERY school performance, and ohh…a sexual tiger in bed for her husband. When, completely inexplicably, the woman stumbles under all of this weight, what do guys tend to say? “Don’t look at me! I emptied the dishwasher last week!” (Note to guys: the right answer is, “I know honey, I know. You’re doing an awful lot. No wonder you’re tired…”)

Well, did I get that message? Was I willing to put my vulnerability out there? Because I had to have a cataract surgery, yesterday, and they had told me: call your doctor to find out what time you’re supposed to be there, Did I call on Friday, the day I had done the preadmission? Nah, I waited for Monday, the day before the surgery. Surely, the office would be open, someone would answer the phone and have the answer.

Were they at the beach? Paying dominoes and drinking beer? So was I on for surgery or was I not? And what was going to happen if I dragged an adult with me, and then the whole thing was off?

And the adult thing pissed me off, because I had been the adult in the very same place when Raf had his knee done. And there are only two things you need to know: the clinic has found a way of funneling arctic jet streams directly into their waiting room, and they have extensively worked and succeeded at proving the relativity of time, if not space. This they do, by seating the “adults” in an uncomfortable room and providing them with a blaring television, which is showing variants of murder or violence.

“November 4^th, that’s a bad day for me,” said Mr. Fernández, who has a dislike of hospitals. So then the question became: tell him, hey, it’s not gonna be so great a day for me, too, and I did it for you, you’ll do it for me! Alternative: find someone else, and give Raf a break.

Guys discount their feelings: it’s part of what we learned growing up. So given that the surgery obviously wasn’t going to start until at least 10—in fact, it started at about 11:30—why was I going to ask Lady from the coffee shop to be with me at 8:30, which I had finally learned from the papers I had signed was the time I was to arrive? I knew—from peering at the schedule sheet at the doctor’s  office that I was number three—and I knew from speaking to the doctor that the operation took 30 minutes. So I told Lady to come in at 10—she’d still have to wait too long, but at least not as long.

This was a problem from the moment I walked in the door—how had I gotten there? Well, I had taken then bus. And if my friend didn’t come? Well, they couldn’t operate without my friend being there.

“Yes, you can,” I said. “there are things called cabs, and anyway, you’re giving me instructions, which I can read, and there’s also that fact that I’m a nurse, and quite capable of assuming my own care once I get home. And if you’d like, I’ll speak to the legal division of the hospital and sign a waiver absolving you corporately and professionally and personally from any damage resulting from not having any of my friends waiting for hours in the waiting room.”

They dug their heels in, I dug my heels in. And I had learned—again—the real power of hospitals. This was an eye surgery, but I still had to put on that blue gown, that ties in the back but not low enough so that everyone can see your butt as you go to the bathroom. So we had a little fight about that—during which I pointed out that if they needed to do CPR—they could grab hold of the front of my shirt, and pop all the buttons open faster than they could untie the strings behind my back.

I also learned, of course, after the first stranger passed and put drops in my eyes, that it was time to do some patient activism. So the second time around? I reached out my hand, stated my name, and said I was glad to meet him.

This worked—since it’s how the world outside works. I then asked what drops he proposed to put in my eye were, inquired what their purpose was, and mentioned that another gentleman had already done so. Right—so everyone got the hint.

I was, in short, assuming charge of my health care, but was I assuming charge of myself? Because I was now in the third stretcher from the door, and it was clear—first it would be the stretcher closest to the door, then number two, then number three.

Which is what I was, and which was a good thing and a bad thing. Because this was a normal day for everybody—I remembered the banter among the nurses quite well, as well as the habitual actions that were almost bored. The nurse taking my blood pressure? It wasn’t her first time….

And so I relived the whole thing from the other side, being the horizontal one, the one with too much time, instead of being the vertical one, rushing to get everything done.

I was wheeled out of the recovery room to the operating room but not into the operating room, since the surgeon and anesthesiologist were discussing: what to have for lunch. It was after eleven, at that point, and I was still without my breakfast. So I protested that, and they had to agree: it was a bit unfair.

“You remember what you said, just before surgery,” said my ophthalmologist, when I saw him today. Well, I took a chance and told him what I had been planning to say:

You have done this surgery before, haven’t you doctor?

Right—gotta keep the troops entertained….

Did I pass, or did I fail? All of the personnel found it astounding that I was willing to be picked up by a friend, but not willing to put her through five hours of pointless waiting. For Lady, when she came, spent fifteen minutes reading and signing a form saying that I should rest, not pick up heavy objects, put medicines in my eyes every four hours, and not rub my eye vigorously. All the stuff, in fact, that I had agreed to do—and signed off on—the week before the surgery.

I had decided to be strong, to ride that white horse, not to show my feelings, not to demand that Raf come, or that Lady pick me, my blanket in my hands to fend off the cold. She and I could have chatted and laughed in the waiting room, but not in the recovering room, where I spent a good hour and a half before and after surgery. And that is where the demons occur. Yes, you know that every consent form ends in “possible complications may include mild irritation…. anaphylaxis and death.” And yes, you know that the mild irritation is 80% of patients and the anaphylaxis is about 0.008%. But these numbers are for the nurses whizzing past you.

So I did it, mostly, alone. Also true, everyone does it mostly alone. At least us guys, who were sitting with their wives in the waiting room. And yes, Brené, they were not expressing their fear, worrying about death, telling their wives—just in case the worst happened—that she had been the light of his light, he had never stopped loving her.

The conclusion is obvious: I could face down a surgery without family and friends. But tell people I was scared and needed someone there?

Didn’t have the balls!