The Past Is a Foreign Language

I hung out with some friends I met in 2007 this week. It was very nice to see them, but very odd. These were work friends, people I saw every day, for many hours, and knew an incredible amount about, for many years. It was a weird constant low-grade intimacy, full of real kindness and care but also the snark and purpose of work and the inescapability of family. There were a lot of bad times at that job, and a lot of truly lovely ones. And then we did escape—a few people quit right before the pandemic made the whole thing a lot less intimate for everyone still there. And then I was laid off, which cast a weird poison over the end of the relationship. I mean, it wasn’t the end—we’re all still friends. But it was the end of a version of it. We aren’t family-type friends anymore—no one in the group has been to my new home or even knows exactly where it is, people had to keep reminding each other of their children’s ages or even names. A few jokes, which I think vaguely would have been funny in the old times, thudded when I told them and hurt my feelings when someone else did. We no longer speak the same language.

2007 was EIGHTEEN years ago. I think we can all be forgiven for having changed a lot. It happens when one has grown up as much as an infant would need to in order to vote in an election. But one never feels ONESELF changing—I only see it in others. So it’s confusing. I was reading over some old journal entries from earlier 2007, before I got that job, when I was still in grad school. They are…remarkably similar to how I write now, actually, but not the same. I have changed, I do change.

Anyway, here is something from 2007 me, when I was 28 years old (!!) and had just had surgery and was so enthralled I was trying to capture every detail. It’s interesting to read what I was interested in back then, and also wild how much of this I had forgotten. Still forget, actually—even with the prompt of this post, I cannot pull back the whole piece in the hallway. It rings a bell but…the scene does not re-emerge from the mist.

Last Friday, 5am--I took my medically ordered dawn bath and my neurotically ordered 5:45 cab, to arrive at the hospital 1/2 hour early for my 6:30 admission, just the way I like it. The nurse actually did the initial intake early, so I sat in the first waiting room a while and read, and then got taken to the second admitting nurse, who seemed concerned that I was there alone, not because of morale but because I had no one to hold my stuff. I didn't have all that much, I thought, but once I'd taken off coat, boots and clothes it was quite a pile and had to be bagged in carrier bags, labelled and put on a cart. I got to put on the surprisingly coverage-intensive set of hospital pjs, pants, gown and robe, all mysteriously large, so I had enough fabric to clothe several mes, and was thus rendered clumsy and floppy. They took away all my baggage but I asked to keep my book and glasses while I waited in the second waiting room. "I know things sometimes get delayed," I told the nurse. "Ok, but I don't think they will," she said portentously.

So I sat in the waiting room for all of five minutes before yet another nurse came and told me it was time to go wait somewhere else. She also told me to ditch glasses and book. "They said I could keep them, that someone would put them away for me later," I told her. She was having none of it. "I can't see, I'm a -10 prescription." Nada. I put everything in the bags and holding the nurse's hand, I staggered down the blurry blurry hallway, and several others, until we were...? Another hallway. "That's the operating room," said hand-holding nurse. "Oh, wow." I try to follow her pointing finger into the scary scary operating room, but she told me I was in fact to wait in the hallway for someone to feel like operating on me.

Thus began the winter of my discontent. Upon close inspection, the outer wall of the hallway was lined with windows beside which were barred hospital gurneys. I was instructed to lie on the one beside the cleaning cart. The bars were pulled, my feet dangled over the edge of the gurney brushing the mop bucket, and I was left in the icy hallway. An indeterminate amount of time passed (I no longer had a watch, either). I watched the sun rise over the parking lot and was very very cold, despite all my fabric and a blanket someone gave me. I resented the bars, but after gaining escape to go to the washroom (with a different nurse who did not hold my hand and walked very fast, so that I was fearful of being abandoned and lost) they did not put the bars back up. "Hah," I thought, "I have been judged mature enough not to be caged."

Yet more time passed. I curled up in a ball facing the window and nearly dozed. "REBECCA!" someone shrieked. I unballed with rather great rapidity. "Ooops," said the shrieky nurse, pulling up the bars, "don't want you to fall out!" Argh. I filled out some forms that I couldn't read. The anesthetist came by to outline the procedure. Why couldn't any of this have been done with me in a chair? It seemed that the surgeon was late. Finally he turned up. We did more forms. He offered to lend me his glasses (!!) and then read me the form. Nice enough. I was then freed from my gurney to walk into the OR (I've complained about this before, but really: if you're going to have to walk in anyway, why a gurney? why not a bench????)

I lay down on another gurney, under those glowy lights just like on tv. They undid my gown (never did figure out why) and put some monitors on me. Everyone was chatty, there seemed to be a lot of people. It was really a lot like tv--isn't it weird when that happens? They warned me repeatedly that there would be tubes in my nose and down my throat when I woke up. I wonder why the constant warnings--maybe people have gotten scared and tried to rip them out before? I got a saline drip, one of those clear fluid bags, and an oxygen mask. The put a sedative in the drip, and I think another one in the gas. I'm not sure, this part is already getting fuzzy and then I was...

Out!

Dadum! I wake up in the recovery room, very very hazy. Since I've never been drunk, other than another anesthesia when I was five, which doesn't really count, this is my first encounter with an altered state of consciousness. I don't really remember everything, but I'm still kinda fascinated by how it felt. I remember there was blood gushing from my nose (sinuses bleed during this sort of operation, that's normal, though I'm really still not sure why) and it got all over the oxygen mask that I seemed to be covering most of my face (I was looking through it in any case, blue plastic all flecked with blood). My recovery nurse's name was James and he seemed newish, although very nice, and was constantly getting advice about me from the nurse at the next bed, who was taking care of a very non-whiny little kid. James put a "moustache bandage" (heh) on me to stop the bleeding, and we played a pointless game where I rated my pain on a scale of one to ten with my fingers (because I now couldn't speak, natch). They tell you if 0 is no pain and 10 is more than you can stand, what do you feel, but that is no scale at all. From zero to infinity, what is half of infinity? I rated it an 8, and James gave me morphine, and then I said 4, and James said, "I can live with four." It's funny, but the morphine not only eliminated the pain but my memory of it. I have no idea what 8 feels like now (probably just as well?) I wonder if that is what happens to women who give birth?

There was some inter-nursing-department feud going on about when my bed was going to be ready (someone on the ward claimed it had to be washed and then air-dried??) so I had to stay in recovery for a long time (my folks report probably close to 2 hours, during which they were informed I was fine but they were still VERY TENSE). The non-whiny child was replaced by one who was crying (and who could blame him?) and his kindly mother. Finally, my room was ready and I got to ride on the gurney. Good times. They asked me who was waiting for me, and James and I tried the handwaving gestures for “parents” for a while, and amazingly he eventually got what I meant. Then we pulled to a stop outside the waiting room (that seemed most unlike tv) and called them out. I was pretty hazy from all the drugs, but I still have never been happier to see my parents. My dad took my hand and we all trooped off to my room, whereupon I was moved from the gurney to a real bed (bye bye, gurney. Bye bye, James) and told to begin my recuperation.

***Present day be again: Isn’t that funny? Me, but not me? Because I was a BABY. Actually, maybe if you aren’t actually me you can’t tell the difference? I don’t know. Can you?

Anyway, these posts are obviously haywire now, completely off-schedule—it has been a hectic time lately Chez Sampsenblum. But since it is Saturday April 26, I can take this opportunity to tell you that TOMORROW IS THE LOWFIELD LAUNCH IN TORONTO! Mark’s new novel!! You can find out more or get tickets at that link—would love to see you there!