Trauma Club

My mom is having heart surgery today. She has already had open heart surgery (as have I) but this time, she's having a stent put in to try opening her Superior vena cava. There is a good possibility that the balloon they're using to open the SVC could rip through the old scar tissue, causing her to bleed out or go into cardiac arrest. There's also a good possibility that everything will go perfectly and she'll leave with totally restored blood flow (or at least better blood flow than she has now...it can't get much worse than it already is).

My mom has worse luck than me. She has lupus, fibromyalgia, diabetes, COPD, sleep apnea, Raynaud's Disease, and she also had her open heart surgery for a freak reason: she lived near the airport for many years and the pulverized pigeon shit on the runways became airborne and entered her lungs, leading to histoplasmosis which caused severe scarring and started blocking veins.

On top of that, my mom is big. Large. Shorter than me but rounder. I still envy her, though. She was tiny and beautiful when she was younger. She went to modeling school. She was, like, 110 pounds. I'm jealous that she's at least had a chance to be thin. But then she got pregnant with me and never lost the baby weight. 30 years later and she's bigger than ever. I'm sure she blames me for making her fat just as I partially blame her for making me fat. In the end, I guess we can only really blame ourselves. Her fat drags her down as much as mine drags me, but her additional health problems make her situation even more grim. Not like anyone is going to convince her to lose weight (or stop smoking when she's on her third bout if pneumonia or bronchitis or pleurisy in a season, or wear gloves when her fingers go numb and turn white, or stop eating cookies for breakfast when her blood sugar is 250).

With all of her health problems, you'd think that going into heart surgery she'd be worrying about what could go wrong in the operating room, what complications they might run into, bad reactions to the anesthetic, waking up in the middle of the surgery and feeling everything...the usual concerns (for me, at least).

Not my mom.

Instead, the thoughts that have occupied her mind and driven her sick with anxiety are all pre-operative. She's had this procedure done before--although it was years ago, and the blood flow is much more restricted now, making surgery even riskier--and she still remembers the steps they took.

To insert the cameras and tubing, they go through her groin. This makes a scary procedure instantly transform into sheer torture. First, they have to wash you. THEY wash you. I know first-hand how miserable and humiliating that is for a fat girl. I had the misfortune of being rushed to the cardiac ICU to treat a blood clot on my artificial valve once, and they pumped me full of clot-busting blood thinners. Because of the risk of bleeding, they confined me to my bed for several days (I even had to use a bed pan. Seriously one of the worst things I've ever been through.) and, because the cardiac ICU is apparently sterile, I had to be bathed when they brought me in. They wouldn't let me get up or move, so I laid there in horror as a team of orderlies wiped me down EVERYWHERE. And when I say everywhere, that includes under my rolls. Yes, someone had to push my stomach up to sponge me off. If I could have willed myself dead at that moment, I would have.

Which brings me to the second step my mom is dreading. In order to have unrestricted access to the entry point near her groin...they actually tape up her stomach. They push it up and hold it in place with tape throughout the entire surgery. Once, around three years ago, my girlfriend unconsciously reached up and nudged my stomach while she was going down on me and I haven't let her go down there since. That's something I have to get over...otherwise, I may never have sex again. That's a depressing thought, especially when I have such a hot girlfriend. But touch my stomach and I will never forget it. Just like my mom, whose belly will be shoved up by a stranger this morning in a room full of people.
 

Lastly, they shave her "down there." This may be the second step, I don't know, but I do know she is incredibly embarrassed by having someone push her fat around enough to shave her pubic hair. I can't imagine anyone doing that to me. That seems like something else I'd never get over. I keep myself shaved anyway (at least when it's not winter, although there isn't much of a point if I don't let my girlfriend anywhere near there) but if someone else had to get down there and shave me as I stared at the ceiling, I might die before I even made it into the operating room..

So that's what's on my mom's mind, and on mine too. I'm a little scared for her (okay, absolutely fucking terrified) but I also feel really sorry for her. That's a lot to go through in a day. Not to mention the other pitfalls of being in the hospital...having people struggling to shift you from one bed to another; not having a hospital gown that actually closes around your stomach; being in a bed with a scale embedded and knowing that one accidental button push will reveal your weight to the whole room; having to wait for a wheelchair wide enough to fit your ass...

At least she won't be alone. And I really understand where she's coming from. My sister will be there too but she can't relate--even at her biggest, she was still the small one. She wears size 6 jeans and is still losing weight. She will never know what it's like to face what my mom and I go through. Good for her. But I do know what it's like, and it sucks. It really sucks. My grandma knows too, probably more so than me or my mom, and that makes me sad. It's like we're all part of a Fat Girl Trauma Club. It's a club I never wanted to join, and I'm trying like hell to get out of it. I wish I could get my mom out too.