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The Monday Before Surgery

Mid-weekend, in one frightening shared epiphany, Ramona and I remembered our lack of legal status.

“We don’t have a single piece of legal paper to document our” – I counted on my fingers – “twelve year relationship.”

“Our mortgage?” Ramona suggested as a joke.

But we both knew, in a medical crisis, a house document did not count as proof of domestic partnership.  If something went wrong in surgery, Ramona and I were unprotected.  Critical decisions would default to my feuding parents. They loved Ramona, they supported our relationship, but we could not take the chance that sanity would prevail.  We could not count on their ability to agree on anything, never mind trust in their willingness to step aside and let Ramona make decisions.

Monday morning found me in the office of a lawyer friend filling out medical power of attorney papers and answering questions I expected  (“In the event you are unable to make decisions for yourself, who would you like to designate as your guardian?”) and questions I didn’t (“Do you want to be resuscitated in the event that you stop breathing?”).

The second Monday appointment found me in a dentist chair.  Two temporary crowns needed to be replaced with permanent ones.  The procedure had been scheduled a month before, and I considered blowing it off, but learned in pre-surgery information that permanent crowns were recommended during intubation.  Intubation.  A word I had never used in conjunction with myself.

The dentist asked from behind her mask, “How was your Christmas?”  Tilted back in the chair, I didn’t know how to answer.  Good?  But the next day sucked?  I went for direct. Her eyes crinkled.   Over the next months, I would witness many people absorb this information, feel the weight of each one.

By the time we arrived at the third Monday appointment, Ramona and I were worn out.  Cursory research had yielded the information that the surgeon was well respected and liked by colleagues and former patients.  Since his hands would be in my belly the next day, I wanted to more than like him.

A little after 4 p.m., Dr. Donald “Call me Chip” Wiper came into the waiting area and ushered us into his office.   Over the next hour and a half, he was respectful and patient with Ramona’s many questions.

Gone was the shocked, silent Ramona from Friday.  Today’s Ramona was scared, steely, and determined to know everything.  I let her take the lead. My tongue still tingled from Novocain.  She had started with the inevitable, “Are you sure there hasn’t been a mistake?”

Dr. Chip, who must have been asked this same question everyday of his practice, responded as if explaining the process of validating biopsy results was the most important thing in our world.  Which it was.  When Ramona asked about the progression of clear cell ovarian cancer, he moved to sit between us on the couch and drew a diagram, which he then gave Ramona to take home.  (I later discouraged her from placing it on the refrigerator.) He was encouraging, even while emphasizing the aggressiveness of this type of ovarian cancer.  We would know more after the biopsy of the internal organs and lymph nodes, he told us, but early indications were promising. As we listened to him explain the surgery and outline the recommended course of chemotherapy, our confidence in him grew.

During the drive home, we confessed: we had already fallen in love with our doctor.  Dr. Chip was our age (late-thirties, early-forties), sandy-blonde handsome, and smart.  A hottie.  We honored “the bisexual within” despite the seriousness of our situation.  We recognized the emerging crush was emotional, but he had spoken with both of us, building a relationship with both of us.  When I explained the medical power of attorney papers, and recounted my morning in the lawyer’s office, he had acknowledged the extra stress we were under.

“Thank you for bringing the papers in.  Unfortunately, they are important.  You should probably take an extra copy to the hospital.” He paused. “I’m sorry you had to do that today, or any day, actually.”

That night, after the long, long day of appointments with the lawyer and the dentist and the surgeon, when Ramona and I were in bed and all the calls had been made and there was nothing left to do, I fell apart.  I didn’t want to lose this life we had built.

I felt Ramona smile against my neck. “Thank God,” she said, “I’ve been the one killing you off.  Now it’s your turn.”

She had been trying to kill me off since Friday, the day we got the diagnosis.  “I can’t imagine a life without you,” she whispered each night into the dark as we held each other.  Which meant, of course, she was imagining a life without me and it was freaking her out.  “You are everything to me.  What if you die?”

I hadn’t known what to say to this woman who was my partner and my love and the stoic in our relationship.  It had always been my job to worry about our future.  Now her stable world was crumbling and I didn’t have an answer to “What if you die?”  I could only wrap my body around her and tell her I loved her and tell her we’d know what we know when we know it.  I was surprised by my own calm faith.

© 2011 Cathy Kidman