Out of Touch

Micah and I have been at my mother's in Maryland since Sunday.  My mother had surgery on Monday so we were on hand to be of whatever use, and Mom's home only has a dial-up modem since she is only about three notches above Amish, and I have little patience with dial-up at this point in my technology-spoiled little life.

Monday we had a early wake-up call so we could be on the road to Southern Maryland Hospital by 6:30 am.  Mom was supposed to be there by 7:30, three hours prior to her 10:30 surgery so that she could have some sort of tracer put in that would help the surgeon define if there was any lymph node involvement.

We showed up promptly, got her registered and sat down to wait.  Micah was along for the ride, so we were stuck in the solarium.  Times have changed, thanks to H1N1.  Three years ago Thea was with me for Mom's knee replacement and we were everywhere: the surgical holding area (because Mom's surgery was delayed for hours and hours), the recovery room, and her hospital room.  Now visiting hours are strict and no one under age 18 is allowed beyond the lobby and solarium.  People were wearing masks, but I couldn't tell if they were people who were fearing acquiring the virus or those who had some sort of symptoms.  Either way, the masks did not inspire much in the way of confidence.

We met Mom's surgeon when he came out to a) chastise yet another person (having already told Mom) that she was to have been at the hospital at 7:00 am, no 7:30 am, and to b) to let me know Mom would be sitting in a cubicle by herself because I could not go back there "because of the child" - which he said in a tone of voice one would use to say "blistering case of herpes."  He was not campaigning for the Miss Congeniality award, and I was left with the hope that he had phenomenal surgical skills to make up for his utterly lacking charm or people skills.

And in my mother's defense, NO WHERE on any of the the papers that she was given by either the surgeon's office or the hospital was the time written down.  So fault lies with the surgeon's office.  Period.

Meanwhile back in the solarium, after exhausting the markers and paper, the wooden trains and whatever else he could get into, Micah started working the crowd, making all sorts of new friends.  At one point he was on the loose, circulating throw the room giving everyone high-fives - which most people seemed to find amusing or at least a diversion while waiting to hear from their patients' surgeons.  A lady who sat at our table asked if Micah had microtia, and she had a niece who has unilateral microtia, so it was interesting to hear about her experience (the niece is now 19 years old or so, I think - my brain was only half-engaged in the conversation, the remaining bits were focused on keeping an eye on Micah and how long until we heard something on Mom), but she digressed into nursing, the National Archives, multicultural families and a myriad of other topics that my un-caffeinated brain failed to absorb.

On our way to Maryland we stopped at the AT&;T store because my wall-charger for my cell phone went missing - and my car charger ($4.99 on eBay) died months ago, and my cell phone's battery was near-depleted.  As we were leaving the store, the sales clerk offered Micah an old non-working cell phone, which for about the span of 72 hours was his prize possession.  We took a break from the solarium to go out to the car to find it and got to watch a LifeFlight helicopter take off from the landing pad near the ER entrance.  Micah was fascinated, and waved at the pilots until I thought his arm would fall off.  After it took off, we were back in the waiting area, ready again to torture the assembled masses.

After the surgeon came out around 1 p.m.  to say all had went well with my mother, Micah and I took off to get gasoline for the car and to head over to National Harbor.  We were going to hook up with my cousin who would take Micah for a few hours so I could go back to the hospital and see my mother.  He fell asleep in the car, but after he woke up we parked the car and went down to "The Awakening" sculpture and Micah occupied himself with that traditional little boy pastime of throwing pebbles into the Potomac.

Micah got handed off in the Fleet Garage at National Harbor, getting to ride in Thea's booster seat (exigent circumstances, I know how to get her seat in and out, his requires a degree in engineering which I do not possess) and I headed back to the hospital, arriving there with 40 minutes to kill. Visiting hours for the evening are 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm, and from the number of people hanging out in the lobby, exceptions to the rule were not being made.  So I twiddled my thumbs, figured out how to check my email via my cell phone (who knows what that will cost on next month's bill), changed my ring tone and cleaned out my purse.  And I still had 30 minutes to fritter away after all that.

When I finally got signed in and my visitor's badge clipped on, it was 5:05 pm.  I headed up to my mother's room, almost dreading what I would find - in 2006, after her knee replacement, she looked like death, was out of it from the medication/anesthesia, it was not pretty.

But when I got to her room, there she was sitting up, watching TV, looking pretty much how she did when I last had seen her that morning.  Minus the real estate removed by the surgeon, which wasn't really noticeable given the surgical drains in place.  It was a shock, a very pleasant shock.  So we hung out, she got to eat her technicolor liquid dinner (yellow chicken broth, green gelatin, red cranberry juice, brown tea) while we compared notes on the surgeon, etc.  Her nurse (Liz) was very nice, and while I was there the cardiologist came in to see her (when the surgeon mentioned that he would request that the hospitalist see her since Mom's physician doesn't come to SMH, I said to him I hoped it was someone with better people skills than the last hospitalist from her knee replacement, so the surgeon opted for cardiology to round on her instead.   Cardiology dude was very nice, was thorough and had some humor and personality under his white coated exterior.

I reclaimed Micah from my cousin's, he'd gotten a chance to play with Elise and Henry, and all the bopping around had taken its toll because he was asleep before I was over the Wilson Bridge.

Both the cardiologist and the surgeon said Mom could go home Tuesday or Wednesday, the surgeon thought she'd want to stay until Wednesday, but Mom got discharged on Tuesday, walked off the floor and down to the lobby to wait for me to pull the car up, and then when she saw the car, she came strolling out on her own, just about 24 hours after getting out of surgery.  Mom's neighbor was recruited to stay with Micah in the car, so we all had lunch together at Mom's.

She took it easy for the rest of the day, but the only pain medication she took was for her knee.

The next day, 48 hours after surgery, Mom wanted to go to the bank and check out the farmers' market at the St. Mary's County Library.  She was on the hunt for green beans.  Then we went down to another farm where we'd been a few months earlier to let Micah play on the wooden train.

While Mom was checking out the apples and pumpkins, we checked out the train and the goat pen and goat barn (or Goatel, as the farm calls it.)  Micah was trying to bond with the baby goats, but the baby goats were more focused on their meal plan, the udder.  And Micah sees a large pink, finger-like protuberance near the hindquarters and declares "IT'S A PE-E-E-NIS."  Which, of course, in his mind, it is.  Any dangling, wobbly bits between the rear legs MUST be one. 

So after trying to explain my mother's surgery to Micah - a necessity since he was right there while I emptied the drains and changed the dressings - and failing miserably to distill cancer and mastectomy into something manageable for the three-year old brain, I was now having to figure out how to explain that teats and udders are not penises and testicles.  Again, without benefit of caffeine for my aching synapses.

Anyway, I think he got the message because after the farm, we went to Applebee's for dinner and we were talking about what we saw on the farm and Micah looks at my mother quite earnestly and says in his loudest Micah voice, "And that NOT a PENIS, that where the MILK comes from."  Nice.

Meanwhile and far away, I spent the first three days off the electronic map before getting a little bit of time at Borders.  Free Wi-Fi, a beautiful thing,  free Wi-Fi and access to an electrical outlet, even more beautiful thing.