His ease with my hectic toing and froing and Celso’s rambunctious destruction of the medical room wasn’t so surprising in lieu of his parental knowledge.
Your last pap smear was a year and a half ago. We’ll need to have another check before surgery.
Okay. But my crotch is hairy like a bear fresh out of hibernation, I thought.
Its aesthetic lines weren’t on show under the fluorescent lights – it was just about whether there were any pre-malignant cells cooking there too and whether all my female organs could pass through my vagina.
Midway through the surgeon’s scraping the sides of my vaginal wall, Celso came in grinning with a What’s going on? look.
Oops, your son’s come in, said the nurse standing to my right. A nurse was always present when male doctors did gynaecological examinations.
It doesn’t matter, I replied. It’s my vagina. You didn’t come out of it but you grew up near it, I said to Celso.
The surgeon grinned. That’s right, he said, half turning to face Celso.
Celso took a cursory look over the surgeon’s shoulder. Not interested. Instead he spun the wheels on the examination table near the nurse’s faux-leather pumps.
I left after three-and-a-half hours of consultations and waiting, having had:
A blood test.
A consultation and pap smear with the gyn-oncology surgeon.
Discussions in detail with a nurse who had measured my depression/anxiety levels (okay).
Discussions with my anaesthetist about my aversion to general anaesthetic. She would get my records.
A chat with a case manager: You can have a light breakfast of toast and tea then no food after 7 a.m.
And lastly a conversation with a physiotherapist, who told me what to pull and what not to. However, her first words to me on walking into the room were, Is your child disabled?
No, he’s likely autistic. I smiled. Fuck you very much, I thought.
Afterwards in the harsh light of the room I softened my response to her, realising she’d come in armed with the information that Celso had a cold and was fed via a MIC-KEY button inserted into his stomach. His tube was stuck out of his feeding backpack. Autistics often have ‘funny’ guts and fussy food habits. It’s not unheard of for some to require nasogastric tubes to put weight on their bones if food refusal goes on for too long. However, Celso was different from this. His was apparently a mechanical or neurological fault in his body’s make-up, rather than simply a factor of autism.
I walked home wheeling Celso in the pram, well armed with what was about to happen. The public system was good. This was the first time I would have surgery for breast cancer treatment as a private patient in a public hospital.
Line up your probe at a 45-degree angle to the incision site. See? Your view is clearer.
Oh, yeah. I heard in reply through the swinging grey surgical doors, the vintage of M*A*S*H.
Of course this wasn’t what the gyn-oncology consulting surgeon said but this was what my mind translated from his discombobulating words. He was the senior surgeon; the German gyn-oncology fellow who’d conducted my pap smear worked with him.
Hi, I’ll be in in just a minute, my anaesthetist said from around the M*A*S*H doors. She had the sharp-eyed stare of a bird of prey. Tall and bone thin. Her intelligence radiated through her face. I liked her.
I found out later she was a mother of twins and an 18-month-old, with a nanny at home to assist.
So you’re pretty fit? asked the anaesthetist’s understudy. He went on, I’m studying so much I don’t want to think of how unfit I am.
Buddy, I don’t care if you’re just a Hawking brain wheeled in here to bark orders – you being smart is good. You’re brain fit then! I said.
Yes. There is that.
We started waxing lyrical about drugs. Zofran was amazing. It ceased my nausea straight away, I said.
I know, from just a wafer on the tongue. It’s an excellent anti-emetic. So, what we’re going to do is this … The young anaesthetist in training proceeded to explain all the drug combinations he was about to give me, which approximated five types, to stabilise me and hopefully let me wake up nausea free.
The gyn-oncology consultant bounced into the fishbowl-sized cubicle. I just want to read my notes first.
He’d accepted me on his public list after seeing me in his private suites. A kindness he could’ve rejected, considering I’d baulked at his surgical charges to go private.
Here he is! I said as his German colleague arrived through the swing doors. It was standing room only. From my lying-down position on the trolley his head seemed to scrape the grey ceiling.
Both men flicked pages back and forth until the consultant’s notes were found.
Ah yes, I remember you now. The writer! (If only.) I finished my novel. I’ve given it to some other doctors here to read. It’s 50,000 words and fairly fast paced.
Well, I handed in the first half of my MA manuscript yesterday, I said.
That must’ve been a good feeling.
It was! I said, thinking, Bastard. What I actually thought was: Bloody hell. You, doctor, have finished an adult thriller that’s on wads of paper being read by other high achievers in this hospital monolith, while – you know – consulting in public hospitals on how to save lives and running your own private surgical practice. Such a ‘let’s do lunch’ kind of guy. I mean really.
In truth it wasn’t until this final moment with my womb and ovaries intact inside me that I actually understood what I’d agreed to, with my heart and not my head. On the trolley so close to the scalpels and metal dishes I placed my hands over my lower abdomen by way of a silent goodbye.
She has tachycardia, said someone in white.
There’s a baby! My heartbeat was running too fast.
Wow! You really don’t know where you
