When I woke up, I was in recovery, and I was very disappointed that my breast surgeon, Dr. Dupont, had had to leave because I wanted to tell her that I had changed my mind and didn’t want to go through with the surgery after all. I guess I thought it would be funny.

I was extremely nauseous despite the hard core anti-nausea medication they had given me before surgery. You may recall my discussion on the tri-pack of Emend pills that I would take on the day of and two days following my Adrimycin and Cytoxin treatments, the pills that cost roughly $120 each. Well that’s what they gave me, except intravenously. Anyway, apparently it didn’t do the trick, because I was incredibly nauseous when I woke up. I remember telling the attending nurses this and explaining to them that, for whatever reason, Phenergen seems to work the best for me. Of course I didn’t know what I was talking about – I was, after all, just a patient, and right out of surgery to boot – so they gave me Zofran instead, which I know makes my vision blur, my head feel dizzy and swimmy and my body feel very tired. I guess it must have helped when they gave it to me with all of my chemo treatments, but I also remember it making me feel pretty bad.

So the nurses injected some stuff into my IV and asked if I felt better. I said yes, because I thought I did, but then changed my mind and told them I still didn’t feel well. I asked if they had given me Phenergen, they said no, and I asked if they would. They injected some stuff into my IV and asked me a couple minutes later if I felt better. I did, and not long after that a guy came to take me to my room. The whole time I had been talking and apologizing to the nurses. I don’t remember what I was talking to them about, but I remember that I kept apologizing for a) not feeling well and not being able to better physically accommodate whatever they were trying to do and b) for talking so much.

When the guy came to take me to my room, I still wouldn’t shut up or quit apologizing. I asked him what his name was, told him my name and that it was nice to meet him, and then said something to the effect of, “I hurt pretty bad and don’t feel very good, otherwise I would turn around to look at you when I talked to you, but it hurts a lot and I can’t do that right now. I’m sorry.” He assured me that it was alright and told me that I shouldn’t try to move.

There were a couple of people in my room when we got there, I think. My mom, maybe, and possibly someone else. I can’t really remember. What I do remember, very clearly, is the other guy coming into my room to help the first guy move me to my bed. I couldn’t really do any moving on my own – I think I was still paralyzed from the injections they did in my back – and I found it upsetting to have to be moved and was embarrassed when they had to kind of roll me partially on my side to get something under me or out from under me or something and I knew that my hospital gown wasn’t covering my ass. I tried to kind of reach back and cover myself, but it hurt to move and they told me to stay still. The whole thing was pretty quick, but I still felt humiliated and helpless. They each took hold of the sides of the pad/blanket thing that was under me and lifted me from the gurney to my hospital bed. They set me down very gently, although I was in a somewhat awkward position – a little too low and too far to one side. There was absolutely no way that I was going to be able to move myself into a more comfortable position; there was this agonizing burning in my chest, a pain that made me feel afraid to move the upper part of my body, and, like I said, I still felt somewhat paralyzed from the middle of my back down. The guys had already left, so the nurses moved me up and over using the pad under me and I was more comfortable.

For a while I drifted in and out of consciousness, fighting very hard to stay awake and talk to my family and friends that were in and out of the room. At some point I mentioned how badly I had to pee and the nurse who happened to be in the room helped me sit up. Pulling on my arms at all was completely out of the question and moving my shoulders would have caused considerable pain, so all assistance had to be directed to the middle of my back. The nurse positioned her hand on my back and gently hoisted me forward, and I shakily swung my legs over the side of the bed so that I was sitting facing the bathroom. Nausea immediately swept over me. I sat there on the edge of the bed considering my situation, trying to decide how far I’d be able to make it across the room before I vomited. My head swam and I felt a cold sweat coming over me; I felt very unsteady sitting there, my body moving in a slight circular motion. My arms hung awkwardly at my sides, lightly resting on the edge of the bed and pulling uncomfortably on my pecks regardless of how I placed them. A hot wave washed through me, settling most intensely in my chest. The area around my mouth felt cold and numb and cold pricks ran down my jaw line. I could feel the sweat forming on my back, chest and forehead and the breath being shallowly drawn in through my nose and mouth became noticeably cooler.

The longer I sat there the worse I felt, and at one point when I looked up at Bryan, who was sitting in a chair facing me about ten feet away, I knew that my discomfort and feelings of illness were written all over my body. He sat there watching me, his eyes over bright and his hands clamped together, pressed against his mouth. I tried to imagine what he was thinking, how helpless he must have felt, and I offered him a weak smile. He did not smile back – he did not move at all.

I knew that I could not possibly get up and make it to the bathroom without puking, and I knew, given the level of pain I was experiencing already, that retching would be unbearable. So I looked back at Bryan and decided to end both of our immediate suffering and lay back down. The relief was immense.

Not too long after that someone, my sister, maybe, mentioned that they were hungry. I became excited by this and suggested that they should all go eat while I took a nap and we’d visit when they came back. They thought it was a good idea and I fell asleep almost immediately after they left.

A couple hours later I woke up again and felt much better. Bryan and his mom were in the room and I told them that my bladder was going to explode. I hit the nurse summoning button for the first time and two of them came in. They helped me sit up and made sure I didn’t fall over when I stood, holding their hands tentatively near me but not touching me. One of them walked next to me while the other pushed along the computer station I was attached to. The machinery I was hooked to by IV’s, wires, cuffs and cords was large and made an annoying beeping sound every couple of seconds. It monitored my vital signs, administered huge bags of saline, and stayed plugged in when it was next to my bed, although could be unplugged for short periods of time for walking or peeing purposes. Naturally, all of these attachments coming down my sleeves and through the back of my gown made it very difficult to maintain decency, and the best I could do was to hold the right side of my gown over my ass while the left side stayed tangled up in cords.

I successfully made it to the bathroom without falling over, puking, or even becoming nauseous. I was pleased. Much to my dismay, however, the nurses did not close the bathroom door behind me, apparently worried that I would fall in the toilet and drown without their hearing the splash. So the nurses and Bryan sat there listening to Joey Falls cascade at full force for no less than 40 seconds and trail on and off for another stretch equally as long. I have never peed so much in my entire life.

I carefully got up and was confused to find out that there was a bowl attached to the toilet that caught all of the pee and toilet paper. I apologized to the nurses only to discover that they were writing down how much urine I had expelled. Slightly disgusted, I made my way over to the sink and began washing my hands one at a time while I tried to hold my gown closed. I heard a man’s voice in the room, and I thought it must be my plastic surgeon, so I tried to hurry. The nurses partly closed the door when they finished logging my fluid excretion rate so that no one in the other room could see me at the sink. Under this pretense of privacy, I turned my back as close to the wall as I could and let go of my gown to hurry up and get my hands clean, then grabbed some paper towels to dry them. Suddenly the doctor came bursting through the door, swept up to me and snatched my gown down to look at my bandaged wounds. As he tore the snaps apart and exposed my entire chest I looked up at the bathroom door and was horrified to discover that The Interns were all there, watching. I tried very hard to pull my gown around, but it was my left side that was facing the door, and the wires and tubes would not allow it, so there I stood with only my arms and stomach covered, the door and sink mirror revealing all else to the eyes crowding the bathroom.

“Looks good,” he said casually, and hurriedly snapped my buttons up and whipped out of the room, saying “I’ll be back by tomorrow” as he left.

Stupefied, embarrassed, I finished drying my hands with the paper towel I was still holding and missed the trash can when I tried to throw it away. Not trusting myself to bend down, I left it on the floor and pushed my computer station out into my room, one hand behind me holding my gown. The nurses intercepted me and helped me back to bed. I heard voices outside my door as I carefully situated myself in bed; the distinct voice of Becky B. and the muffled voice of the person she was talking to – I guessed Bryan’s mom, who had left the room so that I could get out of bed and show my ass in relative privacy.

The nurses left and in came Bryan’s mom and Becky B. with a card and a very soft stuffed dog in hand; in that moment, I became happy again. The four of us chatted for a while, then Bryan went to smoke and his mom said good night and it was just Becky and me. I seized the moment and asked Becky to close the door and get my pajama pants that I had been wearing before surgery (I learned last time that jeans are not the optimum pant materials to try to get into after surgery and decided that I would be much better off with PJ’s). She got them out of the plastic bag on the window sill, brought them over, and then, because she’s a wonderful friend, helped me put them on one leg at a time. I worked my way back into the bed and felt relieved that I would not again be caught with my pants off.

Day turned into night, everyone left, and I entertained myself with the Nintendo DS and television. The nurse came in every couple of hours to take my blood pressure and ask if I needed anything. I drank copious amounts of grape juice. I stayed awake most of the night. The generic Percocet made my skin dry and extremely itchy and it wore off every three hours, which was an hour sooner than I was allowed to have another dose, so I would hit my nurse summoning button and answer “I hurt” when the remote control would ask me what was the matter. This procedure would produce a nurse with a shot of morphine and then I would feel better and sleep for about 20 minutes. One time, in the middle of the night, I tried to wait out the entire four hours before I asked for more pain medication. I discovered that that was a terrible game that even the morphine couldn’t quite fix and I didn’t do it again. “Don’t let the pain get away from you,” I repeated in my mind at the first sign of the monster’s wakefulness, and then promptly told the remote control I hurt.

When 5am rolled around I thought about the previous 5am that I was there for and how fucked up I was now. I turned the Nintendo DS back on and half watched movies I’d never heard of.