Surgery No. 7

“Do you need to empty your bladder?”

 

No, but thanks. This is the seventh time I’m having surgery for a particularly resistant form of bladder cancer and I know the drill. Nothing to drink after midnight, which was nine hours ago.

 

“Do you need to empty your bladder?” This is another nurse, 15 minutes later. She is cute, Asian, smiling, and what she actually says is pladdah, as in do I need to empty my pladdah.

 

No, really. I don’t.

 

“Batroom ovah da,” she points down the hallway.

 

I am waiting for the surgeon to appear. We are friends by now, sort of. He knows my pladdah intimately well.

 

Surgery was supposed to be on Valentine’s Day but it snowed and the world shut down, which was too bad because I had written a little Valentine poem for him, which I was going to recite before the surgery.

 

I’m glad that I know you

I surely feel better

Secure in the thought

That you care for my bladder

 

The surgery was performed about five hours ago; it went well and the latest tumor was excised successfully. It was, I believe, non-cancerous, but I’ll find out for sure next week.  All told, good news.

 

My friend P drove me to the clinic, then back after the procedure, and he too knows the drill.

 

I’m home now, feeling woozy. The anesthetic cocktail that knocked me out so the doctor could do his work contains opiates and Xanax, a frightful combination for someone who once used those drugs far too often. Now I am drinking quarts of liquid trying to flush them out of my system. It’s weird. I have taken neither opiates nor benzodiazepines in almost a quarter of a century, but my body fully remembers their effects and is telling me, “Yowzah! Party time! This is good!!!” But it’s not. The quicker these addictive substances are out of my system, the better, so I am ruthlessly chugging bottled water, espresso and fruit juice.

 

It’s gonna be OK.

 

I’ll get checked out again in a few months and who knows, maybe there won’t be a recurrence!

 

That would be neat.