Everyone is fine. Everything was scheduled and everything went just as expected and everyone is healthy and happy.
But we’re at the Cleveland Clinic because The Yankee finally found the proper diagnosis for a leg issue that’s vexed her for years. She’s gone through many doctors — some doing diligent troubleshooting to eliminate possibilities, others stymied by the problem and at least one that said “Oh, that’s just stress” — and it finally led to an answer, and a reminder of what it means for some people who are ‘practicing medicine.’
Anyway, one doctor somewhere along the way uttered a medical term and she came back to the house and looked it up and read about it and then, mindful of her training as a social scientist, she deliberately stopped reading about it, hoping to avoid confirmation bias. We talked about it at great length, medical doctors that we aren’t. And we went to see a guy here:
Because one of the things we know how to do is research. And when you have a tricky and difficult and rare circumstance you want the very best specialist in the game. There are two figures at the top of the list on this particular artery problem, and one of them works at the Cleveland Clinic. So we went over for a visit in July and met The Expert, Dr. Sean Lyden, and part of his team.
He heard the story, even guessed at some of it, as he explained how this came to be his specialty, and did some demos on our arms to demonstrate the problem in a different way. He drew a picture of how it was all supposed to work and a picture of how it probably looked. Then he sent my lovely bride off for some scans. And, wouldn’t you know, the scans came back exactly as his drawings. He’s The Expert, you see.
You have five arteries in your leg. One of them, the popliteal, is the focus here. It’s a rare thing, but in some people the muscles surrounding that artery can move it out of position. That can cause problems with the circulation into your calf and foot. So you get tingling, numbness, discoloration and some other uncomfortable complications. It’s a lot like crimping a water hose, if the water hose was moving blood around your body.
So this week, today, was the time for a small surgery to correct the problem in one leg. We came to Cleveland yesterday and had the pre-op meetings with a physician’s assistant, an anesthesiology fellow (or maybe he was a hospital painter, the uniforms make it hard to tell) and to do some bloodwork. All of the pre-op stuff was perfect, of course. So, this morning, we got up at 5-something and she was admitted and had the surgery at 6-something.
I sat in an uncrowded waiting room and read for a while. Then I dozed off because who can sleep in the nights before a loved one’s surgery? They give you pagers while you wait. You get text updates about the procedure and, eventually there’s a message that says come to the desk for a surgical update. At the front desk a woman who has what I will always think of as the most peaceful stroll in the world walks you back to a room to wait for the doctor.
There’s a love seat there, and two chairs. There’s a coffee table with a giant sketch pad and a phone. There are two doors. Everything is gray or brown. It’s a deliberately muted space. Eventually the doctor comes in from the other door. He re-introduced himself, sits down next to me and again makes his drawing on the sketch pad. Everything went just as planned, he said, and the rest of it doesn’t matter too much, plus he is, by now, also deeply into his morning’s ration of Red Bulls. “You’ll get to go back and see her,” he says, “in about an hour.” And then we chat about last weekend’s Ironman. I told him she won the whole thing because it’s a mental thing and she’s very strong.
So I stepped outside and called my mother-in-law to share the good news. And I called my mom with the good news and texted the rest of the people on the update list. By the time all of that was done it was time to be reunited. Up one floor, through some double doors and then sit in the step-down area. She wasn’t in pain, very calm and entirely lucid — but that part of mental processing that’s important for writing memories was still foggy from the anesthesia. After a while, she got a room elsewhere in the hospital, where we spent the rest of the day starting the recuperation.
She’s staying there overnight. All part of the plan. She has wonderful nurses and everyone in this place is incredibly helpful and kind. The only downside is that I couldn’t stay. Visiting hours ended at 9 p.m.
Almost all of the hospital stuff we’ve done over the years has been outpatient — modern medicine and insurance and good fortune. The one time she had an overnight hospital stay I spent a long, restless night in an uncomfortable recliner, just two weeks after a surgery of my own. (I can’t recommend that sequence of events.) Tonight, though, I had to leave her in her hospital room all alone, which is, to me, one of the worst sounding things imaginable.
We said our goodnights and managed not to cause a scene. I walked two blocks to the right to the drug store to get a snack and then the four blocks the other way to our hotel room. I turned the volume on my phone all the way up, wishing I could turn it up louder. I’ll go back in the morning, of course. The plan is to check out, staying local one more night, before leaving C-Town for B-Town. Tomorrow, we can rest.
