I spoke to my zoo keeper son on Friday morning, really early for me, really late for him. He was in hospital after an emergency appendectomy. This is not the kind of news one relishes hearing from a child 4,000 miles away.
Hubs thoughtfully asked if I wanted to fly home? In the time it will take me to get my trip together and be by his side he’ll be up and driving to meet me at the airport! Modern medicine…and young bodies…are amazing!
The last time my son was hospitalised was when he was about three, he was being prepped for a hernia operation and was bouncing around on the hospital bed showing off for his siblings and the video camera. I was thinking,
“Make the most of the happy pills young man, in just an hour you’ll wonder what hit you!”
He waved from his Radio Flyer as he was wheeled off into the sunset by his nurses and we were waiting for him when he was wheeled into recovery on his gurney, wondering what hit him!
Twenty years later he is on the other end of Skype showing off his war wounds to me as I am treated to a virtual tour of his stomach. Solid muscle but now the abandoned work site of the surgeon and his henchmen who had gone in to retrieve this redundant piece of anatomy with the help of a microscope, a cutting instrument of sorts and gas,
“Gas?” I asked.
“They basically inflated me,” he said, “to separate the other organs so the surgeon could get to the offending appendage.”
“What sort of gas? Helium?” I joked.
“It hurts to laugh Mum!” He was complaining of pain in his chest and shoulders.
I am wondering if that is a result of the anaesthesia? Apparently not. The gas causes pressure on the diaphragm which presses on a nerve running up into the chest area a domino effect that results in pain when breathing and a general ache in his neck and shoulders.
“Ouch!” I agreed..
When the nurse suggested he get up and walk around, which she did as soon as she detected a fluttering of the eyes, he felt dizzy and light headed so she left him to sleep with these parting words,
“We’ll come in and catheterise you later …” He got straight up and made for the bathroom in a nano second all dizziness and lightheadedness forgotten.
He had been in pain for eighteen hours! Now he had blessed morphine which, he said,
“wasn’t doing much…” but it was I could tell!
I told him I knew the feeling of abdominal surgery, I’d had four such incisions, decidedly more intrusive, while giving birth,
“I’d have learnt my lesson after the first one,” he said weakly. Laughing still hurt even when it was your own joke!
He told me he had felt fine the previous day, just another work day mucking out the barns at the zoo. Then the next morning when he woke up he was crippled over in agony. No warning.
I was reminded of the Willow tree that fell a few weeks ago. Standing so strong one moment and the next sprawled across the lawn, defeated.
We never know what the next day will bring.
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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