COUNTING DOWN THE DAYS TILL SURGERY: A LESSON IN LONELINESS

You have those moments.

Which turn into interminable hours.

Of waiting.

Waiting for appointments. Waiting for doctors. Waiting for news.

Then the news comes.

You’ll need this. You’ll need that. We’ll schedule this in order to schedule that.

Pre-op visits.

Pre-surgery admonishments.

“Don’t eat after… Swish water around in your mouth while brushing your teeth but spit it out; don’t swallow it…”

“Of course, no coffee; can’t tempt a spike in blood pressure. You must be as depleted as possible before we anesthetize you so you don’t choke on your own vomit. Nothing in your stomach.”

What torture!!!

You can hardly wait to have the surgery.

Not just because you need it. Or because it signals the beginning of a very long road back.

And not because you like to have surgery; few do.

Not even because of the pain quotient involved and whatever your tolerance level may be to it.

But because when that fateful hour finally arrives — the overwhelming feeling of loneliness softening a bit amidst the anesthesia-induced haze and you, resplendently adorned in a hospital johnny and elasticized shower cap and flat on your back atop the slowly wheeling gurney, eyes either fixed on the ceiling or darting to the eyes of your attendees, the multiple sets of heavy swinging doors closing behind you — you know the wait is over.

And then the next phase of waiting unfolds.

But this is different.

Post-op waiting is spiced with the recovery process.

You can now begin to move forward, albeit in microscopic steps but moving nonetheless. The tiniest bit of progress can be tracked and spun in a positive way. Small attainable goals are set and met.

New ones are identified and dangled in front of you like a carrot to a horse.

You learn to be pleased with the progress you have made and you recognize that you are involved in one of life’s ultra-marathons. You are motivated to succeed in your quest to get better and return to whatever your normalcy may be.

You yearn to be healthy again.

How badly do you want it?

How hard are you willing to work in the face of this life-threatening pervasive and embracing adversity?

How tough are you mentally?

Are you willing to wipe the slate clean and start over from square one?

Or do you choose to make it so that the thought is just unbearable?

What kind of person are you really? If the deep-in-the-pit-of-the-gut reality check is allowed to begin — if you allow it to begin — success could be as close as your next breath.

You can do this.

You can come back.

Of course every story does not promise a happy ending.

But the word “miracle” exists for a reason.

Only God knows when your time is up.

So you do your best to keep going. To keep moving forward.

And for those of us with little patience, we re-learn how to exercise whatever patience we have and grow it.

It is the only way.

Certainly all illnesses and injuries are different as are their degrees of severity. But the underlying principles remain the same.

And last I checked positivity trumps negativity every time.

So if you feel alone — lonely — in the days and hours leading up to your meeting with the scalpel, it’s normal.

What happens on the table is largely out of your control.

What happens afterward does not have to be.

The questions are do you want to live or not?;

And how badly?

[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in October 2016.]