The Least I Could Do

Some swift years ago, I had to take a sobering walk to the veterinarian with my kitty, Mr. Dusty Bones, Esq. He'd lost his baby fangs and the time had come to have him surgically optimized for his life in our small trailer. He weighed eight pounds and although he was hungry, he was in good spirits. Dr. Atkinson kindly agreed to put Dusty’s mojo in a little jar of alcohol so I could bury it in our garden at home. I reckoned that was the very least I could do.

I heard a last, long meow before I striding home and it put me in mind of another day, many years before. A fateful day, when it had been my turn to face the knife, albeit for a slightly less invasive procedure.

I have two sons born of two different mothers. The first boy was overdue and his Mom and I eventually found ourselves in a hospital room, not unlike a hotel room with a bed and a shower. That was after having watched videos of childbirth to prepare us. Molly was having trouble getting settled in for the birth, so we were told to just hang out and relax. Following the nurse’s instructions, had several long hot showers and discussed baby names.

After one of those showers, Molly was told to recline with lots of sensors and electronics attached to her belly. They were plugged into a large monitor which chirped, beeped and flashed green squiggles on a black screen covered with several different metrics. It was anything other than relaxing, but the noises coming from the machine were all quite benign.

Presently, like an unexpected fire-alarm, triggered when you are standing by the water cooler in your office, the Mommy monitor went wild. The benign green graphics turned red and the pitch of the beeps took on a shrill, menacing tone. The room doors flew open and three people burst into the room. One ran to the monitor while another began pulling the wires off of Molly. I soon lost all track of time.

A third nurse told me that the baby was in distress and would have to be delivered immediately via C-section. She asked if I was squeamish and told me I had but one second to answer her. If not, I could observe the birth. We started to scrub up a few seconds later.

I was shown how to properly clean up and helped to put on little paper overshoes and a face mask. Within moments, we were joined in the operating room by the family doctor, a young Chinese woman. There was another monitor now busily beeping and all hands able to interpret its language wore concerned looks.

As Molly was anaesthetized, I was told that she was fine and healthy, but that her labour had lasted too long and as a result, the little fellow inside of her was endangered. I nodded my understanding and watched as the attending physicians kindly adjusted the pale green cloths in such a way that I could not see their surgical handiwork.

In rather short order, they had extracted Daniel and I heard him cry when a nurse squirted a load of silver nitrate into his brand new eyes. After weighing him and administering the Apgar Test, she handed the bleary-eyed child to his mother and I hoped that his sense of smell hadn't been affected so that he could properly bond with her.

Daniel was swaddled, Molly was stitched up and soon I got to hold the little one. Everyone came out of the experience OK and before long we were all home and living our lives. Things went from rough to ragged in the marriage and after only a few years, Molly and I were getting divorced. After lengthy legal proceedings, I remarried. Within a year, I was awaiting the birth of my second son.

During her pregnancy, my new wife was tested for gestational diabetes. The testing procedure was curious to say the least. She was made to choke down a huge beaker of orange coloured sugar syrup that would have staggered a hummingbird and then her blood was tested for sugar metabolites. Not being a doctor, I figured that if she didn't have diabetes before that test, she certainly would have it afterwards.

That test seemed to have the effect of sending everything down the wrong side of the road. Nisa was a very healthy, strong woman and the more medical care she received, the more problems seemed to arise. One day we were at her regular check-up and her doctor phoned a taxi and said that my wife would be going straight to the hospital.

It was an alarming and unexpected turn of events. We rode over to the hospital and Nisa was admitted as if she were in a critical state. I was told not to worry and to carry on. We were told that she must stay under observation until the birth which was expected in approximately six weeks. There was nothing else to be done.

Some few days later, I was met out on my postal route by another mailman colleague who informed me that the hospital had phoned my boss. The decision had been made to deliver our baby by emergency C-section, later that day. I went to a pay phone and spoke to Nisa, who was in shock and tears. I told her to hold on and I'd be there soon.

I literally, ran through my route, jumping hedges, kicking dogs out of the way and tossing bundles of mail like newspapers up onto porches. When I finished my work, I bused over to the hospital in a soaking lather of sweat, still wearing my two mail satchels. Before long, I was reunited with Nisa and briefed on her situation by the hospital staff.

This time around, Mommy was in danger but her premature baby was fine and dandy. There was no time to ponder the potent irony of this obverse emergency birth and after a nurse showed me where to clean myself up, I was given a small stretcher next to Nisa’s. We were told that an attempt would be made to induce the birth via prostaglandin injections but that the C-section would proceed, if that strategy failed.

I lay on the gurney holding Nisa’s hand, reeking of anxiety and listening to my stomach howl for food. After again losing all track of time, I was woken by a nurse. She kindly told me that I smelled of sweat and ordered me to go home, take a shower, change clothes, eat and then return. She promised that she would not let the baby be born before I returned. Then she scanned Nisa's chart and suggested that I hurry.

Outside, on Oak Street, it was below zero and I almost tripped over a very large, freshly frozen raccoon lying directly in front of the walkway from the hospital. It had no visible wounds and a beautiful luxurious coat. I wasn't sure how to interpret the omen and rushed across town to our New Westminster apartment.

On my return by bus, a half dozen Australian rugby players clapped me on the back and entertained me with rugby songs. Injected with the strength, happiness and congratulations of perfect strangers, I forgot all our previous days on that same crowded bus, riding home with my pregnant wife and having to ask people to give her a seat. Strangers are friends you haven’t met before and sometimes friends are stranger than you were ever allowed to see.

Having forgotten to eat, I walked past the hospital upon arrival and entered the first establishment that I encountered. It was a Greek place and only the proprietor was present. He was a good man and a father. He fed me well and gave me a free shot of ouzo to steady my nerves. I thanked him and with a belly full of avgolemono, I strode past the frozen raccoon and into the hospital.

Sooner than was comfortable, we were all assembled in the operating room. I was allowed in because of not having fainted during my first C-section experience. I was asked if I minded having a student doctor do the sewing-up and some of the surgical work. I did mind, so an experienced doctor was provided. That man was so nonchalant that he discussed his golf game of the previous day while he casually sutured Nisa like a man in a deli trussing up a roast with string.

Our premature baby was tiny. He appeared to be the same shirt size as a pound of butter but in reality he weighed in at about four pounds. After the usual procedures and some additional things which are routinely done for premature infants, Miguelito was swaddled and in our arms. I was given a shopping list of special tiny bottles, miniature wee diapers and other preemie items to purchase. The boy was placed in a special room with the other early arrivals.

After only three days, Miggy was discharged and we were told that although he was tiny, he was strong as a bull and guilty of causing a revolution of yowling in the preemie room. We were allowed to take him home and we did so with more joy than trepidation. I was met in the hallway by our family doctor before leaving the hospital. She stood alongside two male doctors and in the most serious of tones, told me that if I ever got Nisa pregnant again, it would likely kill her.

That news hit me like crowbar. I told her that none of the currently available methods of birth control that we endorsed could absolutely prevent pregnancy. She smiled, told me not to worry and said that as soon as my Nisa’s stitches were healed, I could bring her back to the hospital for another surgery to tie her tubes.

Not willing to subject Nisa to that additional procedure after what she'd already been through, I said so. A male doctor standing by, piped in that I could have a vasectomy instead. After asking him a few questions, I decided to submit to that procedure. I was convinced that I couldn't afford to father any more children in Vancouver anyhow.

My family doctor exclaimed in a Valley Girl voice, “I'm not touching that!” and walked away briskly.

I asked the male doctor how to sign up. He gave me a phone number to call and we shook on it. The thought of losing Nisa was beyond contemplation. I was positively on-side to have myself altered, although, if a person would have asked me ten minutes prior, where I stood on the subject, I would have quickly and adamantly told them that it was an unnatural, abomination and against nature.

At home, we discovered that a mother raccoon and her two kits were residing just outside the ground floor window of the baby's bedroom. We gave them some Stoned Wheat Thins crackers each night and they cooed Miguelito to sleep. We could see the mother breast-feeding her youngsters underneath some low-hanging cedar boughs while we fed our own kit with a tiny bottle like the ones zoos use to feed baby animals.

The boy grew fat and sassy on his Mama's milk and the coons did likewise. The critters toddled off when they were fit to travel. By Spring, I had a date marked on the calendar for my appointment with destiny. As things turned out, my vasectomy was scheduled for April Fools Day. Again, the irony of life wasn't lost on me and I began to prepare myself mentally, physically and spiritually for the ordeal.

It was windy, rainy and cold on the appointed day, as if the sky hadn't decided what to do. There were patches of cobalt blue and great swathes of gun metal grey. Against that backdrop, puffy white clouds were shredded by the winds aloft and strewn across the troubled ceiling. This visual ceiling fit my mood perfectly. That morning, I reviewed the little instruction sheet I had been given.

Prior to coming in, I was supposed to remove the hair from the area to be worked on. I was the type of guy who brushed his teeth like a deck-hand chipping rust on an old ship’s hull. I exercised no more finesse on my face when shaving and many were the mornings that a Post Office friend would have to remind me to pull off all the bloody toilet paper bits that decorated my visage.

I was planning to deliver my postal route and then walk over to the day surgery as soon as my last letter had been dropped. I was running late to catch my Skytrain and decided at the last minute that the medical professionals should easily be able to accomplish the necessary depilatory preparations. After all, I reasoned, they were bound by the Hippocratic Oath to “Do no harm.”

Upon finishing my route, I strode over to the hospital grounds as planned and paused for a thoughtful smoke under some old oaks and then made my way in. I went to the reception counter and was directed to another location where I was told to wait. After some time spent reading about remodelling bathrooms and yoga classes for dogs, I was summoned over a loud speaker to come to another room.

Again instructed to wait, I sat on the little fake leather exam table until a man with a powder blue paper hat came in and we chatted for a bit. He asked a few questions to make sure that I had followed the preparatory instructions. I assured him I’d accomplished the check-list and was ready except for one thing, which the instructions had listed as being optional.

He asked me with some inflection in his voice, what that one thing was. I told him that I had been running late that morning and so had pragmatically decided to let professionals “cut the grass.” I added that I wasn't exactly sure which precise area had to be cleared, due to the poorly mimeographed instruction sheet that read like an IKEA assembly chart.

His countenance lost its humanity and his tone became sepulchral, “So, you haven't shaved?”

“No, Sir.”

“I see. Michael, I am going to have to ask you to go to another room. This is very, very unusual.”

I followed the blue hat to another, smaller room. It had a chair, a messy sink and a chart on the wall of the male and female reproductive organs, as Leonardo da Vinci would have drawn them had he worked in water colours. Presently, another person came in. She was a middle-aged woman and she wore a pastel pink paper hat.

She asked me a few more questions and frowned owlishly at her clip-board.

“It says here that you haven't prepped yourself?”

“No, Ma'am,” I replied.

“Were you given the instruction sheet?”

“Yes, Ma'am, I was. It didn't say that the shaving was mandatory, so I figured you people could do a better job than me. Honestly, I accidentally cut myself shaving my face almost every morning. I am heavy handed.”

“This is very, very unusual. Everyone, always preps themselves. I've never come across a single case of a patient who didn't, Mr. Hawes. Would you follow me please?”

I was led to another area that resembled a waiter's station in a restaurant. A curtain had been rigged around a counter which had a sink, a coffee pot and cupboards full of snacks. Obviously an area more domestic than medical. An orderly brought a squeaky old gurney. I was told to climb aboard and then the curtain was drawn across. From my location, I could hear all the bustle and chatter of the busy hospital floor. From time to time, staff in hospital gowns popped in and out to fill their coffee mugs. Some of them looked at my little chart out of curiosity.

“You didn't prep, eh Dude?” said one young male doctor with a big grin.

“Nope. I didn’t.”

That young doctor called a few of his colleagues over and shared the stunning news with them. Everyone crowded into the coffee closet, giggled and told me that I’d done well to stick to my guns, no matter what. I took that as being a good sign. I was asked by a different medical passer by, just before I drifted off to sleep from waiting, if I was the guy who had not shaved. I assured him that I was indeed, that very person. My latest inquisitor was in his mid-sixties and had the tired, frozen pot pie look of a high school janitor only days away from his retirement.

He sported a pale yellow paper hat and with a grunt he undid the brakes on the gurney and pushed me into yet another even tinier room. He went to work quickly and professionally. The last time I had been shaved was by a whistling Mexican barber in Monterrey, many years prior. During this procedure the barber bitched, kvetched, cursed, complained, whined and growled like an ill-treated slave whose Master was away for the day. He specifically cursed his own luck, the hospital system in general and all people like myself. Because he held the blade, I wisely kept my peace. Eventually, he finished his chore.

I was now prepped and after the angry barbers footfalls had disappeared, I was wheeled briskly into a clean, well-lit room by another attendant. It was a small office and the first thing I noticed were three very pretty, young Chinese nurses. The young ladies were arranged in a semi-circle behind a young Chinese male doctor, who appeared to be too young to shave. There was a chair for me and the doctor sat on a stool just in front of it. All four in this team were at least ten years my juniors. The girls all wore white hats and the doctor had a flash-light rigged to his head like a coal-miner.

I was given a local anaesthetic. I couldn't directly see what they were up to, but by watching the eyebrows of the three masked ladies, I could infer how things were proceeding. I relaxed as best I could until the doctor told one of the women to stand by with a little soldering iron in case he “hit a bleeder.” The experience was very much like watching three girls watching their brother compete in a World of Warcraft, on-line marathon. I half expected one of them to dash out to get some snacks.

I heard several rubbery, audible snicks as he worked and I felt the tugs of his sutures. Soon, the ordeal was over and I was wheeled into a recovery room. I had been under the impression that I would walk out immediately and was accordingly dismayed by this delay. The recovery room was large and dim in spite of the mud-streaked windows all along its West wall. One could hear the rain beating against the old panes.

My attendant wheeled me into a numbered slot appropriately marked “thirteen”. It was then, as the rain turned to hail and wet snow accompanied by thunder and lightening, that I realized I was the only male in that entire room. I was to remain for an hour or two before being allowed to go home. A very bad energy in the room betrayed that most of the women had just had abortions, hysterectomies or tubal ligation. None were in good spirits and all seemed particularly unhappy to see a man among them.

I had a moment of doubt about what I'd just done and reminded myself that it was for the sake of my beloved wife. In the middle of my musings, a nurse came, checked my blood pressure and told me that I could go. I strode slowly like John Wayne heading down a dusty street at high noon to face off with a suicidal young gunslinger and collected my personal effects at the desk. I continued with an exaggerated, bow-legged gait out toward the bus stop. It was as if any sudden movement might cause my spurs to come unhitched.

Halfway to the bus bench, I realized that I felt no pain whatsoever and that I needn't walk funny. I tried walking normally while waiting for the bus and it worked just fine. That leavened my mood and I decided to visit a video store on my way home. Armed with a stack of movies, I bought a box of Raspberry Wagon Wheels at a convenience store and strode over to a gas station for a big bag of ice.

In no time, I was ensconced on my sofa, watching At Play In The Fields Of The Lord and learning the real meaning of the phrase, “Chill out.” My pain came with the morning, as I had been forewarned. I had already decided to go to work, after asking the doctor if that was possible. They told me that some men swelled up horribly and that others did not. It was to be my call to make.

I commuted into Vancouver to tell my Postal Superintendent that I intended to sort and deliver my postal route, but also to warn him that if I started to bleed, I’d need back up for the delivery portion of my duties over next few days. I went into his office with some trepidation because we had tangled previously over issues that neither of us would compromise on. That had evolved into a truce of sorts, whereupon we both tried to avoid any future collisions.

He was a young man, not yet forty and I was in that same age demographic. He was sitting behind his big oak desk, obviously preoccupied, apparently in a strange, disjointed mood and sat about four inches taller in his chair than I remembered. I told him about my previous day's medical procedure and my own action plan for a “working recovery.”

He unlaced his tightly clenched fingers and splayed his two hands on the desk top. Rising slowly from his chair, he shook my hand like a man newly liberated from a prisoner of war camp by an unanticipated saviour.

Encompassing me with eyes as wide as a plaster Saint’s, he spoke, “Mike, do whatever you want. Take any time off that you want and for as long as you need. It's all up to you and I will personally back you up with any paper work that becomes necessary. I just had a vasectomy yesterday. My balls are purple and the size of grapefruits! I'm sitting on a wicked ice bag right now. After our sixth child was born recently, my wife gave me the ultimatum. Shit! I can't believe that you're already up and walking around.”

fin