Is that the right leg?

If you're like me, you may have wondered how it's possible that someone could lose a liver who was in the hospital for influenza, or how if their left leg was gangrenous, then somehow their right leg was excised. If so, then like me, we've been wondering the wrong thing--the real question is how do they ever get it right?

Witness: Today at 6:15am, foodless, waterless, coffeeless, I left the apartment to go the California Pacific University's Hospital for a 7am patient call. This because yesterday I mentioned to Dr. Kramer that my feeding tube was driving me nuts-=-that it was too small for anything but liquids, that I couldn't blend food and eat it, and that there was no way I could gain any weight just gravity feeding six vanilla Nutrens a day...he got that. Thus he said, "we'll send you over to Interventiional Radiology to have them check this tube out" and his staff scheduled me in.

I got to the hospital at 6:50am and proceeded up to the 6th floor rendezvous where I was directed to ambulatory patient intake--and here was my first indication that something was wrong. They said--who is here with you to take you home? I said, I'm taking the bus home, no one is here. They looked at me as if I were speaking jive to Barbara Billingsley but let it go at that.

They put me in a small holding room and told gave me a gown and footies and told me to strip to my skivvies. I thought this is curious--just to check a tube? But I played along. Some people like me naked. I can't imagine it, as I certainly don't enjoy it right now, but hey--if you need a crotch shot to check out my feeding tube, be my guest. It's not like I'm hiding anything down there.

When the nurse came in to start an IV and take my history, a nice young lady named Ann, I said (as best I can say anything)--"Ann, what the hell do you think is happening today? I think I'm getting my tube checked." I think she got 20% of that, but the 20% that indicated that what was happening was unintelligible to me, and went and checked with the charge nurse. She came back a few minutes later, relieved, and said, "They want you to have an IV just in case..." In case of what I wondered? The heebs? the willies? fear of new tubing? But again, I thought I'd wait and see. Hospitals are weird about how they do things. Virtually everything that seems as if it should happen in an instant, happens over an hour, takes costume changes and orderlies, requires blood pressure taken and heart rate monitors, oxygen saturation measured. Then Ann began to take an exhaustive history of the wonders of my medical care.

Most charming about her: she could not get over that my right leg provided the bone for my new jaw. Although it is not charming to me, it was a exclamatory event to her, so I got excited too. Yes, my jaw is a leg bone! I have hinges! It took 18 hours! It was supercool!

Finally, they placed me in warmer blankets and swaddled me on a gurney and took me away. I ended up in a surgical suite, and Aneal introduced himself as one of the nurses on my team. What team, I asked? Seriously, what team could possibly need to look at this tube of mine and evaluate it for improvement? He said: "I understand you don't want to be sedated but there are standards that we must follow for surgery..." and I sat up straighter and said--as best I can--SURGERY? NO ONE SAID ANYTHING TO ME ABOUT SURGERY. He got about 5% of that because by this point, my mouth is far wetter (it's hard to process spit and the like), and I am starting to stress out, and things get mushy when that happens.

He came back with a pen, clipboard and paper--I wrote to him: Dr. Kramer simply wanted the tube I have evaluated for efficacy--there's no plan I'm aware of to perform surgery on me! He said, "Oh, perhaps I should have you speak to the doctor" and he went to page Dr. Reed.

A nice man, Dr. Reed was just back from NYC, and I heard, before I saw him "great time" and "Radio City Music Hall", which made me like him more. As he introduced himself he said--what seems to be the trouble? I said, again, why am I in surgery? I just need to have this tube evaluated for possible improvement, and he said--let's look at this tube you have.

He saw it, furrowed his brow, and pointed to ther skinniest part, the top part, the part I most hate and that prevents me from eating anything that isn't utterly lump free, said: "Why do you have this?' I said: "I have no idea, they gave it to me at the hospital and told me to keep it."

One of the nurses with Dr. Reed then pointed to the wider, lower tube, and said--"Do you like this part of the tube?" I said absolutely, I have no problems with this part--I might even be able to eat some thin mashed potatoes with this part--and with the permission of the doctor, she wanked off the top part of the tube, and, brandishing scissors that looked like kindergarten and paste scissors, cut about half the length of the lower tube away.

Then, she planted a new feeder unit on top, showed me how to detach it if I wanted or need a wider feed area and said--that's all we need to do.

I was in a room with a space age patient platform. Behind a window, there was a control room with 5 people looking at me, a huge flat screen monitor flashed numbers and calculations behind the patient platform. Everything was clean, superclean, and modern; the people were friendly and accomodating, but damned if they didn't--right up to the last minute--think they were going to drill a new tube into me, put me under, and call Scott to come pick me up.

This was, scissor wise, perhaps the lowest tech and fastest surgery done at Cal Pacific this week.

When they wheeled me back to recovery, Ann said--you're done! I said, girl, we never got started. As she took my IV starter out she said--where did you have your surgery done? and when I told her Indianapolis, she said: "Oh, I came here from South Bend."

I walked to the bus, laughing most of the way, trying to figure out on text message how to tell Scott that I may have been inches from open heart surgery and had I not insisted, may have been already in sweet nothing land, being semi-poked open and new, unnecessary tubing inserted. At this point, all I wanted was coffee, anyway, and all I ever want in a hospital these days is to leave it.

No one and nothing is perfect--communication is rife with error, and perception is a vulgarity to reality--whatever reality turns out to be. The fact that I left with the two legs I entered with, and half the tube I used to have was, to me, victory.And should I fail to mention the moral of the story let me just say--ask, and ask again, what they are doing to you, and just what they plan to do.