salting wounds
some thoughts, some feelings four days post-op.
Every morning I wake up feeling broken into, sore and swelling, slow out of bed. I trudge to the bathroom and gently lower myself; a bowl of soup, four eggs on a saucer, liquid something at the edge of overflowing. And then I pull myself up, a bag of bricks thrown into the air and held there by sheer will. I popped my morning painkillers, strong enough to last me a day, make breakfast and try to hold my child at a safe distance as we play a game of thresholds, of soft touches, of faraway kisses. I ask my partner if he is feeling ok and tells him I think the pain is less now, and then the pain hits me like some bad joke and I trudge back to bed to breathe it away.
But this is not about that, no not really. There is something else that lies between the pain and recovery. Something that cuts deeper and wounds deeply. I look down at my body, a half deflating balloon. An incision of about 3 to 4cm is located at the top of my belly button, the largest of the four. Here was where the carbon dioxide was pumped in, to create space in my belly for the many things that will enter after. A tool that looks like a metal beak of a bird cuts the duct and my gallbladder is placed into a bag on the inside of my body before it leaves me.
Cholecystectomy is a surgical procedure to remove the gallbladder. Laparoscopic cholecystectomy requires only small keyhole incisions through the abdomen, know as ports. To reach the gallbladder, the surgeon will insert tubes called trocars through these ports. One port is usually located at the navel or the umbilicus. Carbon dioxide gas will be used to inflate the abdomen so that its contents can be viewed more easily. Next your surgeon will insert a laparoscope through the umbilical port. Images from its camera will be transmitted to a video monitor in the operating room. Using instruments passed through other ports, your surgeon will grasp the gallbladder, clipped off its main artery and duct, dropped it in a specimen bag and remove it through one of the ports. After the laparascope is removed, a port valve will be left in placed briefly to allow all of the carbon dioxide to escape from the abdomen.
I watched a youtube video today, followed by several others to locate the pain. The metal beak cuts at stubborn sinew and my pain shines bright, on my right side and up and down the shoulder blades. The pain is everywhere else but where it should be. I pop two panadol and get in bed forcing sleep to blanket the pain, quiet it down, make it stop shining so brightly. I dream strange dreams of twelve-apostles-dinners, each time a different set of twelve, elephants, trees, cars, friends I haven’t seen in a decade. My bed is a dining table, and my body is the feast and every night they dine as I lay still.
I undress my wounds, the ones where the plaster sticker things were coming off. I do it facing the mirror. It’s only been a few days but my body has lost all its muscle mass. In its place is softness and warm air. The incision is rather cute, darkened line hiding behind a strip of sticker. The nurse says the sticker will fall off once the wound has healed. I wipe the parameters with an alcohol swab, careful not to touch the wound. I apply a fresh one. My body scrunches up, a mimosa leaf, and then opens again. My hands are extensions.
I was kept a night in recovery so that my vital stats can be monitored for 24-hours in case something goes wrong. Two weeks before the surgery itself, a nurse has asked questions about conditions I may have such as heart problems or rheumatism, or any loose teeth. Not that I am aware of, I replied. They had taken my blood to make sure everything was ok. I had sat down in front of another nurse who had run through the risks, the costs and the recovery in under five minutes. Sign here if there are no questions, she said. On the day itself, I was prepped for surgery, coming in at 11:30am for a 1pm surgery. I laid in my surgery gown as I met all the people who will be in surgery with me, my anaesthetist and her assistant, two nurses, and finally, the warmest of the group, a woman who wheeled me out to ready me for the surgery.
I had my gallbladder removed too. Don’t worry you are young, this person told me. She pat me on my arm and pull my gown open. She switched on some hot air machine tube thing to bring my body temperature up and then I was alone. Five minutes later I was wheeled into the operation theatre and wonder if it was called a theatre because everything felt orchestrated, a sophisticated machinery. There was at least ten people in the theatre with me. One of them took off my glasses and then my surgeon asked if I had questions and told me not to worry. Seconds later, I fell into water and woke up somewhere else in what felt like minutes, hours and days had passed and not passed at all.
The first pain I felt was in my neck. Sharp and spiky. I moved slightly. The blood in my body was crackling, returning from stasis. Around my nose is some breathing tube. Breath deeply, a nurse said as she strap the blood pressure reader around my arm. It tightened and loosened. I breathe. A room filled with bleeps and other blurry bodies all around me. I was wheeled finally to bed 68. I read a few days ago that mobility is key to recovery so I tried sitting up, and lying back down. The pain glistened all over my body. I checked my belly, and was glad it was four cuts and not five. The nurse handed me my stones in the bottle. Black and tarry, like rotting tapioca balls from a mini bubble tea cup. My eight years of pain removed and contained in this bottle given to me for keeps.
My mother came and then M and then they left. The pain returned, this time around fiercely. I could not lift my left leg. I asked for painkillers. When M came earlier, she passed me my Risperidone from home. The nurse took it away and told me that its protocol that all medication be administered from here. I need to order this, the nurse said. I fell in and out of sleep. I ate a red bean pancake, got up to pee, got back into bed. My body was sore with pain shooting up like rockets, explosions, bursting me wide open. The nurse could not issue me the painkillers because my Risperidone has not been ordered up. Please nurse, I said, just something for now. She gave me two tablets of Panadol and I fell lightly into sleep.
At 10pm my head was cotton and the noise was overpowering. Pins and needles all around my face. I pressed the call button and asked for the Risperidone. I need it to sleep. The nurse said that doctors are in surgery and I’d have to wait. 12am, a doctor was doing her rounds. I see her at the nurse’s cart. It’s just anxiety right, one day with no meds I’m sure she will be ok. I heard her say. Was that about me? Doctor, I called and she walked off. 12:15am I pressed the call button. Nurse, please can you get the doctor here I really need my meds. Oh she is discharging a patient at the moment. But it’s urgent. The nurse looked at me strange and asked me to wait. 12:30am I pressed the call button again. The doctor walked in, passed my bed and walked out, some people here are having actual fevers, she said.
1am I pressed the call button again. This time I was crying and begging. The nurse asked if I was in pain. I hesitated. I was in pain, but just not the kind that is accepted as urgent. Yes, yes I said. I need those meds. Please. Finally the doctor came. I asked her about the lapse in time and how I truly need my sleep. I asked for her name. She said they had a busy shift and more urgent matters. She finally ordered my meds and then the nurse gave me a tab to bite in half from my own stash. 2am The noise subside, the pins and needles soak up softness like a sponge. I was finally falling asleep.
I slept deeply. The pain was different in the morning. Localised at specific areas of my body. The nurse finally gave me the stronger painkillers after a better doctor checked me in the morning and asked if I had asthma. I didn’t, not for a while. I have informed the hospital this very fact two weeks ago. She shrugged and apologised. Iz came to fetch me and the hellscape of last night filtered to a lesser thing at the sight of her face. Her knowingness. She, as Sontag had described had for a spell been a citizen of the night-side of life and now she is here to guide me through.
So what lies between all the pain experienced and the strange processes of recovery, in the dressing and undressing of my wounds and in its telling? Tbh, as I struggle deeply from my bed to this chair, and find the energy to write this out, I think of the smallness of it all and how broken my spirit was in the moment where I was denied my right of accessing medical care that I desperately required. How it continued to feel broken and beaten. And the body reminds me here and now, in the pain that I carry gently through these last few days of Palestinians who had to walk for miles with bigger wounds and lesser medical attention, or none at all for months now, coming to a year now, for years now.
Therein lies a deeper pain, a salting of the wounds, how cruel this world, how ugly. And I do not know where to place this pain but here in my words for now and hopefully it remains even as I heal.
This is a campaign for relief on the ground in Gaza that I truly believe in supporting. If you have the means please donate. If you don’t do share this campaign on your platforms. Nidal provides food for children and their families every day. Here is his instagram account and gofundme link :
I am citizen Nidal Abu Samra, a resident of the city of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. I am 31 years old
We were living a calm and beautiful life before October 7, and since that day we have been living under bombing, destruction and killing. The Israeli occupation destroyed everything and we lost our homes. We began to need food for my family and all the people in Gaza began to need to provide food. I decided to create a donation account in order to receive financial support in order to help my family and help people provide food for children and their families every day. I started this voluntarily because children died of hunger in Gaza. Our lives have become almost impossible to live under bombardment and killing every day.I have become an important part in the lives of children who depend on me every day to provide them with food. Therefore, I ask the good people of the world to provide us with assistance for the sake of these children who lost their homes and lost their families in the devastating war.
We will need more donations even after the war ends because people have no homes to return to and have lost everything they own
We hope that this war will end soon and our lives will shine again.
Till next time my remote lovers,
Hydrate, ressociate and stay in love.