As I emerged from the blackness of anesthesia, I slowly became aware of my senses. First, a soft voice whispering “Good morning, Daniel. Can you hear me?” Then my sense of touch and feeling, somebody holding my hand. And my back and belly hurt. Then, finally and slowly, my vision came back and I started to see lights around me. “Daniel, are you awake?”
This voice, this touch. This person greeting me back from 3 hours of surgery and anesthesia. It was a man holding my hand, gently squeezing. As I began to focus on his voice I realized his face was just inches from mine. “I saw in your chart that you wear glasses and a hearing aid so I wanted you to be able to see and hear me” he whispered (my wife had both down in the waiting area). My name is _______”, - I truly regret not remembering it -, “and I’m your post-op nurse. Welcome back. You made it. Can you squeeze my hand?” He had ice chips to soothe my throat from being intubated. It chokes me up even now to remember how important it was to me to have human contact in that moment.
On April 2nd I sat in Riverside hospital emergency room with a dull but strong ache radiating from my right lower back. Having complained a bit to my wife the day before, she said my symptoms sounded suspiciously like the kidney stone pain she’d experienced more than once before. When it intensified by the next day, my doctor said it was time to go see “the plumber”. That was the beginning of ten weeks of kidney events that tested my innate, and I’m sure not unique, fear of entering the US health care industry.
I’m being encouraged to write to you, my friends and clients, because I know that you reflect those sentiments in our financial partnership. But I’ve hesitated to describe the urine bottles, kidney-to-bladder stents, drug-induced constipation, and mind-numbing pain while peeing. If those gory details were necessary for me to get repaired and heal, then battling them was worth it. But, as I recall the series of events since April, there’s one more fact that now gives me confidence should I ever have to face such circumstances again: the corporate system of healthcare in America may be worthy of fear and disdain, but the people of healthcare are its lifeblood. That personal contact between patient and care-giver, in the moment, is what eases the former through difficult health journeys and, I’m all but certain, what keeps the latter coming back day after difficult day. Upon reflection I’m simply stunned at the number of people who addressed me (over 80 by my count) and, to a person, their utter empathy and care of me. And, of course, the remarkable talent they exhibited from inserting IVs, to finding in my belly a fleshy tube the size of a piece of thin spaghetti, to breathing for me while they kept me asleep.
I bring you this short description of events so you, too, may come to understand the people that kept me alive and going since April. First, of course, my wife and family. They were stalwarts of encouragement and optimism even through their own fears.
I had a kidney stone but, turns out, I had a much bigger problem. Surgery #1 was to get the stone the traditional way up through the bladder. It didn’t work; the surgeon couldn’t get past a kink in the tube from bladder to kidney. That blockage had cut off my right kidney which was now full of urine made toxic with E-Coli. That afternoon’s surgery #2 installed a tube from the kidney out my back to a bag I carried around like a puppy for two weeks while on antibiotics to kill the infection. (My daughter suggested we put “googly eyes” on it – she has her dad’s dry sense of humor). Surgery #3 removed the drainage bag but, just before doing so, the surgeon used the access to punch through the “meat” of my kidney and install a stent, down this time, from my kidney to my bladder to keep the urine flowing. He also grabbed the small stone while he was in there. While I celebrated losing the bag, the pain that night was almost unbearable and I took heavy doses of Oxycodone just to manage through to morning. To his credit, the surgeon told us beforehand that I wasn’t going to like him after this one because of that “punching through the meaty part”. He was darn right.
Then came three weeks of waiting for the final repair. Kristen and I had bought vacation tickets to the Caribbean last December and it fell exactly during these weeks. We struggled mightily with making the decision to go or not but, in the end and with pain meds, Depends, and a urine bottle in hand, we were cleared to travel to a new island. It was enjoyable, certainly, even burdened by bathroom planning and travelling with Class-1 pain killers in my carry-on.
The repair surgery was straight forward: cut out the kinked ureter tube, stitch the ends back together, and insert another stent to assure proper healing, laparoscopically. To the uninitiated, that means remotely using five tools they punched into my stomach. One blew me up with CO2 so they could move my innards out of the way to find this spaghetti-sized ureter, cut it, repair it, and insert a stent. That thought should just amaze your sense of reality not only because of the wiz-bangery of “they can do that?” but also in thinking about the surgeon, his hands, his tools, and his amazing expertise.
While I’m agog at the technology, to me it is the people who are amazing. Each time they wheeled me into surgery, sans glasses and hearing aids, the head nurse introduced me to the surgical team and every, single one of them walked up to me so I could see and hear them and said “You’re in good hands, Dan, we’re going to take care of you”.
The pre-op nurse who was about to stick an IV in my already sore arm; she made me laugh while I was being a smart aleck: “Does this mean I can yell at you now?”, I quipped. “Dan,” she said, “I have a needle in my hand. Do you really want to yell at me?” The red-suited “Hemo” team member who came into my room at 2am to draw blood. She whispered me awake, and she didn’t turn on the blinding lights – she brought her own flashlight! I almost slept through it. The poor orderly who had to clean up my liquid mess on the floor. I was so embarrassed but he said “This is the urology floor. We see this all the time.” His clean up may have been routine, but so was his empathy for me.
I saw it over and again during my quick trip through a major healthcare event. From check-in to follow up, every single person who shepherded me through has proven to me that American healthcare is not really about corporate management, pharmacy benefits managers, insurance companies, or government agencies. It’s about the people who work in it. The ones who touch patients, make them feel OK, and give them a steady hand and heart on which to be optimistic about the road they’re on.
“Welcome back. You made it.”
Management, agencies, and technology aside no sweeter words are spoken or actions taken in that moment of reawakening than between two human beings. One person chooses to work for patients in healthcare and the other rarely chooses to become wholly dependent on them but is none-the-less. The human connections made by the caregivers’ kindness, empathetic words of support, and squeeze of the hand make the trauma bearable.
I have nothing but kudos, admiration, and thanks for Riverside Hospital and their amazing people. I was born there almost 66 years ago and, hopefully long in the future, I’ll likely die there. And to the extent that they continue to nourish patient care like they showed me, I’ll not consider getting better anywhere else.