Out of Focus

Post OP

"Oh, wow!" the nurse exclaimed as I managed the slightest movement of a toe shortly after she and the other nurse had wriggled me into the full-length compression stockings and the noisy machine that they had just hooked up to squeeze my legs.

I was under some blankets and thankful that one of them had been warmed before they'd placed it over me. The room was freezing. I supposed that was typical of most O.R. wings. My legs were being systematically squeezed to keep them from swelling post-surgery, in part because it was standard procedure and in part because the surgery was to keep me alive. My blood pressure had been climbing dangerously high, and although my hubby had been blaming me and making me feel more than slightly crazy for my recent hallucinations of floating dark spots and bright starbursts flashing in my vision, it was all symptomatic of a pregnancy that was essentially poisonous.

"It's never a good thing to let people know you're hallucinating," he had said. And when I'd said that I thought I should take off the next semester, that something just didn't feel right, he'd looked betrayed and horrified. "You can't do that! We need the money and there's no way I can afford to pay for everything -- not with your student loan payments as much as they are!"

Ouch. His words still echoed in my ears as I laid there on the gurney. He was grinning now, doing his best to look like the perfect hubby  for the nurses. Maybe if he'd tried a little harder when I was his only audience?

I still didn't know how bad it was. I'd asked my brother what he could tell us, just like I'd called him terrified for my baby girl years earlier when doctors were shoving consent for surgery forms in front of me for her. She had had intussusception, and the doctors hadn't been explaining it well. They were too used to thinking their patients were stupid, and it showed on their faces. But I'd declined to go pre-med not for lack of the brains for it, but because I couldn't stomach losing touch with the humanity of those I helped. My brother had no such worries, and he knew what I could handle. So, when the doctors couldn't answer me when I asked more about what was causing my toxemia, he told it to me straight.

"Could it have anything to do with our blood types? I mean, it's too much blood pressure, ours are A+ and O-, and I didn't have this problem with my daughter," I'd asked. My daughter's father and I both have O-, I'd already explained. I wanted to know if that was going to be a double-whammy.

"We really don't know," I recalled the male voice of my brother, one of the few medical doctors' voices I trusted not to intentionally lie to me. I'd always doubted people who would avoid telling people the truth to make themselves look better.

I still found myself back in the bed where the nurses had pulled long compression stockings on me and put on the squeezing machine that I could barely hear the conversation over. He was still trying to impress everyone but me.