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 4th, 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!
