Meditation and Pre-Op

Last Monday my dear friend and former client, Jocelyne, took Kadriye and I to a meditation session.  It was truly blissful.  To learn to just sit in stillness and allow energy to flow through one is a challenge for me, but quite powerful at the same time.  The meditation leader, Lynne Cardinal, was very helpful.  One of the key things she said was that we can all take the energy we receive, both good and bad, chaotic and peaceful, and turn it into positive energy.  As Kadriye said after the session, we have the choice to allow all energy to "burst into light" or to take it out in alternative ways.  This may be a bigger challenge for me than kicking the bejeezus out of the cancer:)  Jocelyne, thanks so much for taking us here and you look like a million bucks btw.

Thursday was my pre-op session at the Queensway Carleton Hospital (QCH).  I highly recomend that this facility be avoided at all costs whenever possible.  It was horrid and has totally sucked all of the fun out of operation day.  First, the place is cold.  I am not referring to the attitude of the hospital staff - but I could be.  I mean it's physically freezing throughout the hospital.  I wore a long sleeve t-shirt, a zip up jacket (that I would wear outside for walking this time of year) and then a short trench coat over that because it was raining.  I never took off even the trenchcoat unless I had to for tests and then I put it back on asap!  It wasn't above 15 degrees in that place, I swear. 

I got to the hospital right on time (parking cost me $14 by the end) and went to the right window, where they took my card and told me to take a seat.  I sat for twenty minutes in a packed waiting room while a few of the staff argued back and forth about who was logged in where and who shouldn't be and the trouble it was causing.  Yay me.  Finally I was called to the desk and asked mundane questions that I had already been asked over the phone and was given a sheet and told to head down the hallway to the pre-op desk.

I meandered down the hallway following paper signs and found pre-op without adventure.  Two women were sitting behind the desk - doing absolutely nothing.  Seriously, they were sitting there gossiping about whatever.  They weren't even pretending to work.  One of them wasn't even sitting behind a desk.  They were just lounging around yakking.  I handed in my sheet.  Cut-backs my ass.

I sat in another freezing waiting room for another twenty minutes.  At one point a nurse or tech went behind my chair to do something.  She bumped me a number of times but I just sat reading my book.  It seems to me that the human race has totally forgotten the phrase "excuse me please".  Because the place was so crowded, they had put a chair directly in front of a station that the staff needed to use - literally with no room between the chair and the station for the staff to use it.  I sat and read and got bumped until the nurse/tech actually acknowledged my existence and turned around and asked me if I could move my chair forward.  Of course, I was happy to oblige - but not sure why the chair was there in the first place!

Finally a nurse came out and called my name.  No introductions, no "good morning", just "follow me".  Fine.  We measured my weight and height and then she took me into a little office to measure blood pressure - and then the jackets went right back on!  By this time my nose was frozen.  She didn't smile.  She finally did tell me that she was a nurse and what her name was - but only after I told her how to pronounce my name and that it was of Scottish descent and not French.  Yay me.

She went through a little booklet with me explaining what would happen on the day of surgery.  She answered my questions but clearly didn't give a flying.....anything....regarding the concerns I stated.  Imagine hearing, "That's just the way we do it.  It's the doctors.  There is nothing I can tell you." in response to my plea for freezing on finding out from her that the docs were going to insert a wire through my breast and into the tumour so the surgeon could find the damn thing  - WITHOUT FREEZING.  Since the experience WAS NOT AWESOME when they failed to freeze me for the biopsy, you can imagine my panic.  Apparently the needle they use to insert the wire is about the same size as the needle they use to freeze - so someone (male, I presume) decided it wasn't worth bothering.  Well, as the individual who is going to have some doctor (probably another resident with my luck) poking around inside my boob with a wire I say, "FREEZE THE DAMN THING".  There are nerves inside my boob too that the freezing needle doesn't directly touch but that would like to be frozen before the fucking wire does!  "That's just the way we do it..."  Seriously?  There may be a bout of fisticuffs before I ever see the operating room on the tenth.

After finishing with Nurse Warm and Fuzzy, I had the pleasure of returning to the waiting room so they could suck more blood from me and do an ECG.  This time I got to witness the same procedure by the station to which I had been subject.  A tech came out and bump, shove to the poor patient in the chair.  Seriously, I get that having that chair there impeding their access is a drag.  Instead of continuously hitting people all day however, I suggest either moving the chair altogether or learning the phrase, "excuse me please".  Rocket science this isn't - too bad good sense isn't common.

After another half hour I was called into the blood sucking back room.  Three techs in there.  One with me, one with another patient and one who just read e-mail - out loud to the other two - mostly about administrative matters as far as I could tell.  Again, cut backs my ass. The tech stuck me with a needle to draw blood.  Unfortunately, she missed the vein so she pulled the needle out part way and sort of moved it over (while still inside my flesh) to get at the vein.  Ouch.  When she withdrew the needle she applied pressure for a short while then removed the cotton swab, gave me a dirty look and said, "You're bleeding inside".  This is my fault?  Of course I'm bleeding inside - you were digging around in there!  Anyway, just don't use that arm and it won't be too bad she assured me:)  And it's not too bad - the bruise from the biopsy is still worse than my arms.

Finally, I was shown to the physiotherapy room where a nice therapist went over the exercises in the booklet that I was given at the beginning and gave me a number to call in the event that I can't remember any of them when I get home.  Then I was free.

Here is how the day of the operation will go.  I can't drive myself to the hospital (presumably b/c I can't drive myself home) - but they won't know if I drive myself in and someone drops mom off at the hospital later in the day and drives my car home...........

I have to be there by 06:30 and I am not permitted anything to eat or drink after midnight preceding, except one ounce of water to take my daily meds.  They are going to insert a wire through all my breasty flesh until they hit the tumour b/c no one can find the damn thing for certain manually.  They are going to inject me with dye in case they need to remove the nodes.  They will then give me paper gown and little paper slippers and sit me in a waiting room with other patients having the same thing done.  It's 15 degrees in there.  They told me that I can't have my phone, I can't wear my own house coat or slippers.  My surgery will be sometime between 09:00 and 15:00!  Seriously, when some foreign, cold hospital administrator was setting up this process, s/he failed to put patients into the equation!  I totally get that we don't want to have lapses in the use of the precious operating time, but seriously, this is the best that we can do?  I don't believe it.  If the average surgery is one and three quarters of an hour then bring us in staggered an hour or so apart.  Whom does it serve, and how, to have people sitting there, starving, freezing and cranky for the entire day?  I'll be hypothermic and I may pass out before I even get to the operating room!   In addition, no one is allowed to be with you while you sit and wait for surgery.  I was told that there was no room.  So, my poor mother is on call for any time between noon and six to come and fetch me from the hospital.  Good luck trying to find me!

Burst into light, burst into light, burst into light...........