Surgery Day 2016 (Part 1)

On the morning of Kim’s surgery, we were taken downstairs at around 11am for her prep.  Her anesthetist was a Dutch guy, whom Kim right away connected with, poking fun and pleading with him not to go “cheap” with the drugs he would give her. They got an IV line started. We waited for another 30 minutes for everything to be finalized and prepped. When it was time to go, I left the pre-op room for the long wait ahead.
 
In looking back, I shake my head of how optimistic, or better put, how naïve we were at the time. I was the only person at the hospital with Kim, and waited alone (although family members offered to wait with me). We acted like this was just some simple day surgery. But maybe it was that we were just being protected from the anxiety, protected for a last couple of hours of innocence before our lives changed forever.
 
As Kim went in for surgery, I settled into some chair just outside the surgical waiting room, in the main cafeteria. The surgery would take three hours. I read a book for the first hour.  After that I went for a walk around the hospital block, stopping in at Bean Around the World for another coffee and baked treat, once again picking up my book to kill the time. With an hour to go in Kim’s surgery, I went back to the hospital and settled back down in the cafeteria with a clear line of sight to the waiting room, which is where Kim’s surgeon said she would meet me once surgery was complete.
 
I was surprised that as I waited that last hour my emotions began to percolate.  I began to imagine what the possibility of cancer would mean for Kim, or about what no cancer would mean, and what that would mean we were dealing with. I realized I was also feeling, already, before surgery was even over, a further loss of innocence in our marriage, that here we were again in a hospital, Vancouver General, the same place I had my transplant surgery, but now it was Kim under the knife. Not only did questions swirl about my future, but now also about hers. As Kim had been struggling with her health now the past many months, I was feeling that we were already losing something.
 
I checked my watch and noticed that three hours had now passed since Kim was taken in for surgery. I got up from my spot and sat at a four-chaired table a little closer to the waiting room, so I would be able to cross the floor and hallways by the time the surgeon reached the waiting room door.  When I checked my watch again, another 10 minutes had passed and there was still no one in surgical scrubs around. I got up, walked over to the waiting room to make sure I could see where I was sitting from there. I ducked my head inside the packed room, seeing if by some improbable chance someone would ask, “Are you George? A surgeon had just been in asking for you.”  But with no one raising a head, I loitered outside the door for a few moments, and paced the hallway between the waiting room and the locked operating ward’s doors. I looked at my watch. Another 15 minutes had passed. Kim was over thirty minutes overdue.
 
I moon-walked my way back to my four-chaired table, not taking my eyes off the waiting room doors.  There I sat, now counting how many times the big hand on my watch would go around, counting up three, four, five minutes. Now seven more minutes. 
 
Kim was now 45 minutes overdue and the tension was really starting to build inside of me. Now I knew enough about healthcare and surgery to know that things could have been delayed.  Maybe Kim was not taken in right away when they said she would be; maybe Kim was prepped for surgery but the surgeon was late; maybe there was a slight complication beforehand, pushing things back; maybe, and very likely I tried to convince myself, they had complications with her IV, Kim’s veins were notorious for collapsing and rolling. I tried thinking of any excuse possible to account for the delay. 
 
By now my phone had gone off a couple times with Kim’s parents concerned about an update, asking if I knew anything or if Kim was out of surgery.  I answered one of the calls and said in as optimistic a voice possible that Kim was not yet out of surgery, but I would call then as soon as I heard anything. But as the minutes ticked by my spirit began to fade.  Had I heard code blue called?  Had I missed the surgeon coming out, could she not find me?  Did something catastrophic happened?  Was Kim still alive? Did they find cancer in her ovaries, is that why it was taking so long?  There had been no contingent for waiting what was now over an hour past the time she should have been out.  As the hour turned into seventy, then seventy-five minutes, my anxiety only grew. 
 
Then I looked up and there she was.  The surgeon, looking into the waiting room door with a questioning look on her face.  I was up and striding across the room willing her to look up at me as she closed the door and looked around. We made eye contact and I was standing as a needy child in front of an authoritarian parent within two seconds, pleading for a smile and look of affirmation from her. 
 
The surge and utter drop of emotions I was about to feel over the next ten seconds was like nothing I had ever felt before, nor since that moment.
“The surgery went well and Kim is fine,” the surgeon began, “however, what we found is that Kim has colon cancer.”  It was in that moment that I felt as if I was standing at the gallows with the noose around my neck. The judge had come out and in some miraculous way pardoned me, “The surgery went well and Kim is doing fine…” A surge of relief, of thanksgiving. A surge of life shot through me as in the millisecond of a brainwave I thought all that stress I had felt over the last couple hours was for nothing. But then, there was no period at the end of “doing fine.” Instead there was only a comma, and before I could comprehend the “however,” the words “colon cancer” filled my ears and struck my heart. Colon Cancer.  It was as if the judge who had just pardoned me now in the same breath pulled the lever opening the trap door. The noose tightening, my breath taken.
The surgeon kept going with words and phrases I only just comprehend: “Pathology done during surgery showed primary colon cancer.”  All of a sudden, I realized she was still talking to me.  I quickly snapped back to present reality, but all I could think about was how surreal this moment was. Here I was standing ten feet away from a cash register that I has used many times to buy food, with people passing by as if nothing of significance was happening, and here this surgeon was telling me Kim had serious stage four cancer.
“It spread to both ovaries so we had to take them both, we also took a number of lymph nodes for testing.”  It was at this point that I finally got a hold of myself. I was being given life changing news and that I needed to hear and remember. “Listen up! Make sure you listen! This is not the time for emotions, take in what she is saying, ask questions. Listen!” From then on I was zeroed in. 
“It was a good thing the surgery was being done here as I was able to call for a gastro-oncologist surgeon in the OR to come and help with the surgery” she continued.
Now I snapped to and finally responded, “So there were two of you working on her? I just want to confirm you said colon cancer? How much of the colon did you need to take, does she have a bag? So, it was colon cancer in the ovaries too? When can I see her? So, to confirm, it is colon cancer? “Will she need chemo? Would you say you got all the cancer you could see? And just to confirm one last time, colon cancer?” 
 
One thing to know about me is I can be quite insecure, and it all of a sudden hit me that I was going to have to make some phone calls and in about 10 seconds this surgeon will be gone. I realized I would have to tell our family about this news, and I was the only person hearing it.  And so, I thought to myself, I had to be 100% sure that I got this news right: colon cancer. As I confirmed for the last time that it was colon cancer that Kim had and that it had spread to her ovaries.
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The surgeon asked if I had any more questions.  I felt I had done a pretty good job thinking and listening; she had done a great job standing with me, sharing the news and taking the time to answer all my questions, but I also didn’t want her to go. I wanted to ask more, but the questions weren’t coming. For some reason, I wanted to have her presence, her expertise and its comfort linger, but I knew she had to get back to work. I thanked her for her time and for the information. I got final confirmation on when and how I could see Kim. The surgeon then turned to walked back towards the OR. And there I stood, feeling more alone then I had ever felt in my whole life. What do you do after receiving this kind of news?