Sylvia's Journal

Sita’s bad luck got my entries out of order. This predates the panic call.

On Saturday we drove out for a lovely breakfast somewhere on a pig and peach and apple farm. This is Western Massachusetts at its best. We stocked up on juicy white peaches, apples, jellies and more. Faro’s other oma and opa arrived midway through the morning and we hung out in the local park, watching dragon flies skim the water and birds dive for fish.

After lunch we sat in the garden, the other oma having first dibs on Faro, since I will have him for 10 days in a row, soon. Sita and I weeded the zinnia plot, overgrown with grab grass. It is a dirty but very satisfying pastime, weeding. We drove back in the late afternoon.

We are going through some 10+ late summer days. Sunday was one of them. After a very quiet Quaker meeting, where we welcomed Carole back from 3 weeks at an orphanage we support in Kenya, I pedaled back to Manchester.

We had a lunch date with Alison and Carry, two ex-colleagues and dear friends, accompanied by their mates. While Axel went to get the lobsters (only our 2^nd time this summer), I prepared a Martha Stewardesque table for 6, in spite of the cracked plates and mismatched glasses, under the tree looking out over the cove.

Axel made us poblano-cucumber margaritas, a concoction that may well be our all-time favorite summer drink. After lunch Alison and Mark ventured out in the kayaks while I swam behind them to the sentinel rock at the mouth of the cove from where I could just see Alison’s kayak as it was turned over by a wave.

I swam back to shore to get my kayak for a rescue maneuver but she was already being towed into the cove. The unexpected swim was wonderful because of the unusually warm water. By the time we arrived at the beach we discovered one thing that tends to come along with unusually warm waters: a dark red and translucent jelly fish the size of a dinner plate and thousands of small ones, the size of a finger nail. Suffice to say we did not go back into the water.

As I was paying the cashier in the supermarket for the ingredients of what was to be a spectacular desert to follow the poached wild salmon, Jim called. Could I get in the car and drive out to Western Massachusetts?  Sita had gone in for what should have been a routine procedure, part of the aftermath of the difficult labor three months ago. The emergency C-section back then had not been neatly completed.  There were adhesions and things needed to be corrected. Why this had to wait to five days before our departure for Italy is a mystery.

But things had gone bad – a puncture, nick or perforation led to profuse internal bleeding and she fainted just as she was discharged. When she came to she was in agonizing pain and wheeled back into surgery. That’s when I got the call. Jim was with baby, unprepared for a long stay into the night.  The only thing that worked out well was that the baby is used to being bottle fed. If he hadn’t, it would have been a very abrupt weaning.

I canceled the desert, Axel packed me a commuter dinner and I headed out to Western Mass, just barely after the heavy commuting traffic had eased up.  I made the 125 mile trip in just over 2 hours (don’t ask) and found a restless baby and a distraught Jim.

The hospital closes exactly at 8 PM. Except for the emergency entrance and the wards, there was not a soul to be seen, a ghost hospital. Doors closed after you went through and locked, requiring a search for someone with an electronic key to get you back in. Jim’s cell phone battery had died and the charger was of course at home.  To make things worse there is no phone signal in the hospital. We had already experienced that in another wing, three months earlier, but the day surgery family waiting area was also without signal. So you have to go outside, but then the doors lock behind you. Ughhh. I was able to bring relief (cellphone and baby wise) so that Jim could go outside and let a long list of anxious people know what was going on, and, after the phone call, get back in.

Faro and I were the only two in the large day surgery family waiting area. A large flat screen monitor was mounted on the wall. It indicated, with color codes, the various stations one has to go through in day surgery. I can’t remember them all but there are about 9 stations. The screen was empty except for one line: patient initials S,M. Under the station column her row was colored blue, meaning she was in PACU. A discarded brochure explained to me that that meant she was out of surgery and in the recovery room.

In the meantime the baby started crying, wanting more milk, but nothing was prepared and there was only one, used but empty bottle. I also had to go to the bathroom. It reminded me of the trials and tribulations as a new mother, lacking hands, juggling, packing the baby up for a trip to the bathroom, with the added difficulty of doors shutting behind me, not to open again.

Eventually we were notified that the patient was in her room – on the joint replacement ward for lack of beds elsewhere. She was groggy and in great pain and utterly depressed about the bad turn of events. Seeing us all back in the same hospital where she struggled through and after delivery was an unpleasant deja-vu. The only difference was that Faro was gurgling and smiling at his mom who couldn’t hold him but gurgled right back.

And now I am waiting for the house to wake up, anxious to get back to the hospital. Only three days after I was here last, the cats are starting to accept me, no longer an interloper.