Tomorrow is a big day, my first visit with a doctor since my surgery June 21, four months ago.
About a month ago I phone the Cancer Agency in Vancouver, a huge facility that tracks and manages treatment of every cancer patient in British Columbia. I tell a secretary my oncologist, Dr. Ho, won't be back to work for about ten months, off on a year's maternity leave, and I'm wondering about a follow-up for my thoracic lobectomy.
The next day, I get a call back from Dr. Ho's replacement, who came out of retirement to help with the abandoned caseload. He tells me he will send a letter to my doctor here in Pender Harbour. My doctor, unfortunately for me, buggered off on a year's sabbatical a couple of months ago, but his replacement will get the letter recommending an x-ray and blood tests.
I will meet him tomorrow, his first shift at the Pender Harbour Clinic. I have some anxiety about this meeting. I don't seem to have good luck with doctors, and the ones who work out well for me soon abandon their practice for long periods of time. For some unknown reason, most doctors are unable to properly diagnose whatever health problem I happen to have. I've had a few serious health incidents in my life, and every one of them was screwed up. For example, nearly 20 years ago...
After a lovely moonlight swim in Garden Bay Lake, I'm climbing back up the bank to the road where my truck is parked. I'm holding my jeans and shirt above my head, to keep them from dragging in the dirt. It's dark. I'm wearing "stupid shoes," those useless thong things that are really just a slab of flat rubber held on to your foot with a thin strap across your toes.
I lose my footing in the loose gravel, and you know how these things happen so quickly but seem to go in slow motion. I know I'm falling, but I'm determined to keep my clothes off the ground, so I keep my arm held high over my head. CRACK! That was my arm and, damn it, my clothes are sitting on the ground.
So is my arm, and it won't move. I can pick it up with my other hand, but it won't move on its own, no matter how much I concentrate. I admire the large rock that my arm, with the weight of most of my body behind it, landed on rather abruptly. It occurs to me that this might be a reason why people are warned not to go swimming alone. A servant to carry my clothing and this might not have happened.
So, the arm is broken. No big deal, it doesn't hurt and my truck is right here. I fashion a makeshift sling from my jeans, and off I go to St. Mary's Hospital in Sechelt, about a half-hour drive. Dr. Estey is on duty in the Emergency Room.
"What happened?" he asks.
"I fell, and I think I broke my arm," I reply.
He lifts my arm off the counter, pushes into the flesh here and there, then announces, "Yes, it's broken, but it's a nice, clean break so we'll put it in a cast and you can come back in the morning for an x-ray."
So, before long, I'm sent on my way with a cast, a proper sling and four Tylenol-with-codeine for the pain I'm not yet experiencing. Just as well, it's not a drive I want to make while high on painkillers.
It's been a long night, so I'm asleep soon after my head hits the pillow. But not for long. About 4 a.m. I wake up with excruiating pain in my arm. I gobble two of the T3s but it's even worse an hour later. Down go the other two.
Now, between the pain and the drugs, there's no way I can drive back to the hospital, so I call Jane. She's one of those really good friends who always is available when I really need help, even though she would much rather be sleeping at this ungodly early hour of the morning.
Anyway, back to St. Mary's and into the x-ray room where I'm told to lift my arm up, vertically, against a metal plate. Problem is, it's really painful to move the damned thing, and lifting it in that position is not going well at all. I'm not happy because I don't like whining in public, and the x-ray technician is frustrated because she can't take her x-ray.
"Just grit your teeth and do it!" she orders. So, I grit my teeth and...
... wake up in the back of an ambulance, on my way to Lion's Gate Hospital in North Vancouver, high as a kite on morphine (apparently I passed out in the x-ray room when I tried to lift up my arm).
I ask the ambulance attendant if I can sit up front. I ask the driver to turn up the radio, and turn it up some more. I happily wave at people in their cars behind the ambulance. I generally make a complete idiot of myself, but decide that I like morphine.
I'm wheeled into Lion's Gate, into the operating room and, next thing I know, I'm waking up after surgery. Dr. Estey's diagnosis of a nice clean break was a little off. Turns out the arm was dislocated at the elbow and the bone was shattered. I now have a stainless steel shaft running from my elbow to my wrist, and the surgeon quips that I will never break that arm again. "You might bend it," he says, "but you will never break it."
So far, he's been right.
