Lynne Saner

I pulled into the lower level of the garage. An attendant, seated in a metal fold out chair, rose to greet me and pointed to where I should park. “Come back down and find me and I’ll bring you to the Emergency Room desk.” I did. And so did he. Before returning to his underground post, he touched my shoulder and said, “I hope you feel better soon.”

A young man took me into his office and asked for my insurance and identification cards. He registered me, quietly acknowledging my pain. In the waiting room, eyes closed, hands on my belly, I breathed through the pain like a sixty-year-old in labor. “I’ve been here before,” I thought.

Finally, the nurse came. She led me to my gurney. “Out of your clothes, into this gown, open in the back,” she instructed. EKG. Pulse. Blood Pressure. IV inserted, blood drawn. Very bright lights.

At her prompting, I told her that the pain started around 2pm in the car on the way to Boston, a slight but gritty stab in the middle of my stomach, under my belly button. Within a couple of hours, it became clear this was a something-is-wrong kind of pain.

“May I have water?” “No,” she said, anticipating surgery, “but I will sneak you a couple of ice chips”.

A young ED doctor came within the hour. I retold my story and said, “I think it’s my appendix.” He ordered an ultrasound and said his guess was that it was my gallbladder. A few hours later, he peeked around my curtain and said, “Well, you were right, it is your appendix.” The attending surgeon would come see me soon to discuss next steps.

Within the hour, a  young woman, who looked like a college student you might hire to tend to your cats while on vacation, but who turns out to be the attending surgeon, reviewed my options with me. She recommended surgery, which I thought was the only option I had. She said some take antibiotics and try to bring the infection down, but sooner or later the appendix usually needs to come out. “Surgery for me please.” I thanked her and she snuck away.

That was around midnight. By 1pm, pain, lack of sleep, and stress all caught up with me. I asked for something to sleep, something for the pain. The night nurse put in a request for me to receive Dilaudid. My eyes were closed when she pushed the needle into my IV, but there was no doubt it had been delivered. In a ten-second rush, warm golden honey ran through my veins, through my bones, but most especially through the cracks and tears of my mind, filling it with itself. There was talking and banging and IV alarms perpetually screeching throughout the night, but I floated peacefully.

By 5am, a headache had entered the picture. At first it was a dull ache before changing to a sharp stab behind my eyes, which somehow made my whole body hurt. The young night nurse unceremoniously slipped me another dose of Dilaudid at 6am, just before the end of her shift. I felt tears fall from both corners of my eyes, one for the pain and the other for its relief.

Shortly after this second dose, the surgical team gathered around my bed. I said, “My god, there are so many of you.” And the head surgeon said, “Yes, it takes quite a team.” They were all young and beautiful, in their mid-thirties at the most, some perhaps younger. The lead doctor smiled sweetly, saying they’d get to me at some point today, but I was so freshly dipped in that second batch of honey that I didn’t think to request that it be sooner rather than later.

My next memory was of the day nurse, standing at my side, admonishing me to breathe more often, and more deeply. “Your oxygen levels are too low.” I wanted to tell her that opiates can’t be bothered to breathe, but nothing came out.

I drifted in and out until about 9am when the pain crept back and worsened. I badly wanted more medicine but kept myself from pressing the buzzer until I could bear it no more. The day nurse, terse with me now, went to see if Tylenol was prescribed on my chart. It wasn’t. She yelled across the room that she would put in an order for it.

I heard myself moan and groan and, admonishing myself, rang the buzzer again at 10am. She came to my side and scolded me. The order hadn’t come in yet and she couldn’t give me more Dilaudid until 10:09, when it will be exactly four hours since my last dose. 

I am a baby in her crib, hungry with pain, powerless to feed myself, waiting for the timetable to allow it. She snapped, “I’m doing what I can,” and I felt her exasperation as my own. I thanked her through my whimpers. “I know, I know you are doing everything you can,” and I kept it to myself that it wasn’t enough.

Finally, she injected the Dilaudid into my IV and handed me the Tylenol with one sip of water to wash it down, though I wanted to drink a river. Thinking she was done with me for a while, she walked away. But within seconds I felt the retching coming on. “I’m going to vomit.” I yelled out. “I’m going to throw up.” Already attending to her next patient, she screamed from down the hallway, “Then sit up!”

I did and, fortunately, the first few gags produced nothing. She slipped a bucket under me just as the bile came. I heaved and retched, watching it happen from someplace way back behind it all. I thought, half giggling to myself, “Look at where you are and what you are up to, Lynne! Half naked, vomiting in a room full of strangers in some basement ED in Cambridge!”

When it was done, I fell back onto the bed. Hot, I threw off the covers and pulled the gown from my shoulders. I drifted off for an hour or so and woke to the sounds of doctors attending to the man to my left. They were changing the bandage on his open ulcer, clearing away necrotic flesh as he cried out with pain.

At about 1 in the afternoon, the day nurse came to report that she’d received a call from the surgical team. “It is time for you to go up!” she rejoiced, shoving my things in a plastic bag, no doubt glad to be rid of me.

As I rolled past her desk on my way to surgery, I blew her a kiss. I hope she caught it. I hope she knows – please let her know – that I am grateful for her care. Please let her know that I know how hard it is for her to love, and that her scolding and terseness is the very thing that made her my favorite nurse. I know how hard it was for her to give, and yet she gave it anyway. And that made her giving perfect.

Next, I was swept up by a tiny Polynesian woman who was my pre-op nurse, along with her assistant. They joked about the state of my ED bed, sheets akimbo, and me, lying skin on plastic. She asked me to change my gown, take off my jewelry and get into this “better bed.” I did, and it was. She gently asked me all the questions that it was in her charge to ask. It was clear that she took so much pride in her work that I felt compelled to match her pride with the clarity of my answers. I hope I succeeded. 

She left me in the quiet, diffusely-lit room, where I drifted in and out for about an hour. Then the first anesthesiologist arrived. A beautiful young man with a five o’clock shadow asked me questions and then let me know that the head anesthesiologist would come soon. He remarked about how peaceful the room was, and I agreed.

A few minutes later he returned with a stunning young Asian woman. She asked me more questions and in the middle of our exchange, the young lead surgeon came in, blonde hair turned up in a knot on her head. She talked to me about what would happen. She wrote down Stephen’s name and number and tucked it in her white coat pocket. “I will call him as soon as you are in recovery,” she smiled.

The two anesthesiologists swept back in, ready to do their thing. The young woman said, “You are right” looking at the young man, “this is a very relaxed room.” She turned to me and said, “You are so Zen.” I answered, “Well, this experience has been one long meditation session.” I felt a rush of pride, like they were my children. I told them they were doing such good work and that I was proud of them. They smiled, looking pleased.

I was now rolling down the hallway into a very white, very bright room. I started to say, “It’s like a cathedral…”

And then, I was on my left side, curled into a fetal position. A woman with dark hair sat next to me, encouraging me to breathe more often, and more deeply. I floated in and out for a while, trying hard to piece myself together. This was being born. I was, and I knew that I was, but I did not yet know what or who I was.

I was the emptiness at the center of a paper mache ball that had yet to be made. Slowly, thin strips of paper and glue, one on top of the other, lay themselves down around the emptiness of me. “I am Lynne. I am the daughter of Bob and Julie. I am the wife of Stephen and the mother of Amelia and Aidan.”

Another reminder to breathe, from this woman with dark hair who sat by my side, taking notes as she kept watch. She was my spotter as I hurtled from one side to the other, from somewhere in the underworld, or someplace at its cusp, into the upperworld of the living.

And when, at last, my attempts to cross over brought me through, I thought, “My god, we choose this. We really choose to be in a body and to build our lives out of stories. And get lost in them.”

Slowly, I emerged from my swaddling. First an arm pulled out from under the covers. Then a roll from my side to my back. Then words came up, and I asked if Stephen had been contacted, about how the operation went. With a bladder now full of IV liquid, I asked to go to the bathroom, and my spotter was pleased. “Great sign!” She got a wheelchair and rolled me to the door. I tinkled and changed into my clothes. She reviewed my instructions with me, and when the front desk called to say that Stephen had arrived, my spotter sent me on my way.

One more gorgeous young person rolled me down in the chair, and there was Aidan in the entryway, a baseball cap atop an impossibly long body that I had once held in the crook of one arm, his sister in the other. And opening the car door, Stephen smiled.

Aidan drove me to Ellen’s house, while Stephen went to get the car I had parked in the garage the day before, soon to come behind us. They fetched the things I’d left behind. I bid Aidan farewell as he went off to see his love. And Stephen –  my love, the one who has always been there to drive me home – drove me home once again.

I told him bits and pieces of what I had experienced, of what I had seen and heard and felt, much like I have tried to here, but it’s not the things that happen, not the moments of pain or relief, not the waiting and the action, not the things that can be articulated, broken into seconds, minutes, hours, and events, that I wish so badly to share. It’s not that at all.

What I want to say is what words can’t describe. I want to hand you the whole thing, all at once. Not its parts in a row. And yet here, in this land of fractals, that is all we have – bits of the whole, stories made of words.

So I’ll try.

About a week ago, I dreamt that I had something like a large knitting needle stuck in my right side. I awoke, knowing that I had to take it out, but I couldn’t figure out how. Then a few nights later, I dreamt that I was offered medicine, which I poured from something like a vase or a jug into a cup. I took it into my hands and drank it down – smooth, thick, soothing – knowing, somehow, that this medicine was Jesus.

Now here I was, in the waking dream, with something in my right side that badly needed to come out. I knew it had to be done, but it wasn’t for me to do – me, Lynne, this fractal of God, that likes so very much to think that she is an island, that she’s got this all herself.

But this job wasn’t for me to do. It was for those other crystals of God – those comings and goings of beautiful, imperfect people. And it was my job to allow it.

And Goddammit! The medicine they administered was Jesus. It was love, compassion, and care that was poured all through me and those around me.

We are one. Ugh, it is so cliche, but how else can I say it?

How about…we are God administering to God.  

Yes, on the face of it, there was me with my little pain and my big relief.

And there was the woman to my right, who may have had a heart attack, but who definitely had diabetes. Quiet as a mouse, waiting for someone to tend to her heart.

And there was the older woman who was given a sponge bath because she had soiled herself. She had a man who lived upstairs, she said, who sometimes tended to her, but she was here alone now.

And there was the man with the hole in his back.

And there were the nurses, the doctors, the technicians. There were the janitors, the parking attendant, the ambulance drivers, staring at their phones in the hallway as they waited for the next call.

There was the movement of pain and the meeting of pain. There was the movement of suffering and the meeting of suffering. We met these things within the seaming of ourselves, and we met them in each other, across the seeming borders of our skin and flesh.

There was patience and scolding. There was fear and listening. There was giving and receiving. And all of it was beautiful. Every single moment. Every single movement. Because all of it was God.

Scream it! We are God incarnate!