Before I went to New York City my niece asked if, since I hated new York already, if I underwent the operation there that saved my life wouldn’t I come home and feel better about the city then? I didn’t know the answer then so I told her I would probably not like the city afterwards. I know the truth now.
The truth is that New York stands now a a scene of the hardest battle of my life. It is a place of nightmares, of suffering and pain, and fear in the deepest darkest night while I suffered in pain and terror. I remember one fevered night when I sat with my feet on the cold window to cool me off while I sweated out all the water I had managed to drink that day. It was 2 am and I was hot with fever and tired and in extreme pain and the only thing I could do for relief was to sit with my feet flat against the window hoping that somehow I could dispel the fever and pain enough that way to get back to sleep. The days in New York alternated between hoping to just eventually get out of the hospital and not knowing if I would ever live long enough to get out.
After the second operation for the post operative infection I felt like I was spiraling into the ground and I likely would not live long enough to ever see Texas again. After I was released to Hope Lodge I felt better but still so weak I couldn’t leave to go out for dinner or anywhere else. I had appointments at the hospital but I was so weak that the subway ride to my check up was a tortuous ride. All I could do was sit there and let the seat beat my back and butt mercilessly. All around me people were moving effortlessly, going on their way here and there. Me, I had to summon every bit of energy I had to walk the scant two blocks from the subway station to the hospital. Once there, it began to be a slow procession of getting from one place to another praying I had the energy left to keep going. I kept my eyes to the ground so to speak, never looking up or thinking further ahead than the next step I had to take. And then the long march back to the subway to get beat up by the seats and jostled by the crowd, and the long way up the stairs at the end of the ride, the walk back to Hope Lodge and finally bed.
Even when I flew home I was so weak that once I got to my seat on the aircraft all I wanted was a blanket and to be left alone. My wife had booked us first class, I sort of slept, but the seat was just uncomfortable and I found sleep elusive. I had to have a wheelchair to get off the plane. A month earlier I had easily walked on board the aircraft to New York, even at 50 pounds off my ‘normal’ weight I felt like a strapping football player compared to that frail man who was wheeled off the flight from New York with his head nodding at every bump in the jet way and across the terminal floor. When I returned home from New York I was close to one hundred pounds off what I had once weighed. At baggage claim I felt helpless as my wife wrestled with the luggage and I couldn’t do a thing. She had shipped most of our luggage home so there just the bags we had to travel with and have when we got home. Even those were a serious burden getting to the car and finally they were in the car and she was driving us home. Once home I collapsed in bed slept for 17 hours straight. Four days later I was back in the local hospital when the post op infection turned ugly. I spent four more days under care while that was cleaned up. I walked out of that hospital but was driven home as I was still too weak to drive. That was about March 24, a month after the original operation.
The day I checked into the New York hospital and the day I checked out of the local hospital are as far away as days can be and still in the same lifetime. Today is over a month later from my last hospital checkout. I still hurt. My stomach is a constant source of grumbling and pain. It is getting so much better. Once this pain would double me over, even after pain killers I had downed like popcorn. Today I am cutting back as much as I can on the pain killers as I know well I am addicted to them and they are but a secondary threat to my health. But I remember my days in New York. I remember the pain and the fear, the not wanting to think past the next minute, the comfort that the doctor brought when he came on rounds. I was in a battle a couple of months ago, in a very safe place, where I almost died about once a day it seemed. I was quietly terrified so many times, I was happy and proud a few times, and most of the time I was just a little boy in a hospital gown hoping I could live long enough to get out and breathe fresh air again.
Yesterday I mowed and trimmed the lawn, fertilized it and did a dozen other things. Today I am too tired to do much. I know what it is to be old and weak. I am struggling to come back, it is a hard road. But I will. I will come back. Every day is a little better, sometimes I recognize the improvement, sometimes I just take them for granted. It is just human nature to do so. You get tired of marking all the little triumphs. You begin to look forward to the day they stop being triumphs and become commonplace.
