James Ross - A Young Adult Trilogy (Prairie Winds Golf Course)

by James Ross

  “Here’s another pain-killer,” the RN stated as she gave him a pill and a small cup of water. “Take this one too.” She handed him a sedative. “It will help you sleep.”

  “I need something to get rid of the gas,” Curt complained vigorously

  “Dr. Mason will be in early to check on you. Try to go back to sleep and we’ll try to get you some more comfort in a few hours. These pills should help,” the nurse urged.

  After swallowing the pills Curt pounded the mattress with his hands. “Ooohhh! Ooohhh!” His face contorted in pain—excruciating abdominal pain.

  “It should only be a few hours more. These pills should help you sleep immediately.”

  Curt put his hands to his face and sobbed. “I hope it works right now! This pain is killing me!” He was certain it was gas. Due to the operation on his colon there was no place for it to be expelled. The pressure in his abdominal area was unbearable. “Please! Please!” he cried out as his hand slapped at the mattress over and over and over again. “I don’t think I’m going to make it!”

  The nurse handed him an armful of towels and placed several under his waist and rectum. “These will help in case you have an accident.”

  “There’s no way!” Curt cried out once again. “Nothing works down there and besides I haven’t had anything to eat in five days. I just feel like I’m blowing up from all of the gas.”

  “Try to sleep,” the night nurse consoled her patient. “Dr. Mason will be in early in the morning.”

  Curt grimaced as she turned and headed out of his room. He took several deep breaths and slowly exhaled in an effort to calm down. The effects of the sleeping pill were slowly kicking in. His eyelids struggled to stay open. Gradually he drifted off to sleep.

  “Curt. Curt,” Dr. Mason spoke softly. It was seven-thirty in the morning and he had been called to aid his patient. “Curt, wake up,” he continued as he nudged Curt’s shoulder.

  Curt groaned. The sleeping pill had worked. He could hardly move his chin up and off of his chest. It felt as if his head and eyes were overloaded with weight. He let out another slow groan.

  “Curt, roll over on your back. I need to get you to sit up a little,” Dr. Mason advised. He helped Curt roll over from his side onto his back. By hitting the power buttons on the bed Dr. Mason maneuvered Curt into a sitting position albeit at a forty-five degree angle. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m full of gas. My stomach feels like it is going to blow up,” Curt moaned.

  “I was hoping that wouldn’t happen,” Dr. Mason replied. “When we were in surgery I cleaned up the whole area and clipped some other polyps out.” He took his hand and rubbed his brow. “Once in a while this happens. It’s a by-product of the extra cleanup work. There are more stitches down there.”

  “Can you fix it?” Curt whimpered.

  The doctor nodded his head. “Wait a second. Don’t go anywhere,” Dr. Mason quipped. The comment caused Curt to grin slightly. The thought of him leaving the room was comical. “I’ll be right back.” He left and returned a moment later with an aerosol can. After attaching an extension to the spray button he turned back to Curt. “This is a local anesthetic. When I spray it I want you to inhale through your nose as deeply as you can.”

  In the blink of an eye Dr. Mason inserted the extension in Curt’s nose and depressed the spray button. Greenish, yellow-colored foam shot up Curt’s nose and soaked his face with bubbly suds. “Aaaargh. That’s awful!” Curt exclaimed.

  “It kind of smells like rotten bananas, doesn’t it?” Dr. Mason chuckled and twisted his lips into a grin. “Hold on, just a couple more times.” He stuck the extension up Curt’s other nostril and again sprayed the foam generously.

  “Aw, come on, Doc,” Curt whined. “That stuff is nasty.”

  “We’ve got to do it for the next step. You want to get that gas out of there, don’t you?”

  Curt nodded and readied himself for round three. A split-second later Dr. Mason administered another dose as his patient surrendered to the inevitable. The smell and abundant froth caused Curt to violently shake his head back and forth. “I’m afraid to ask what’s next.”

  Dr. Mason grinned. He grabbed a plastic tube and said, “This will only hurt for a second.” With a lightning quick move he shoved the tube up Curt’s nose. It felt like the tube continued up into the brain. Then Curt let out a slight cough. In reality the tube had gone up his nose and down his esophagus. Immediately a vile, brown and green and yellow trail of fluid traveled through the tube and into a reservoir mounted on the wall. “That should help you,” Dr. Mason said.

  Startled, Curt cried out. “What did you do?”

  “That’s the quickest way to get that out of there,” Dr. Mason replied.

  Within seconds Curt could feel the pressure in his stomach start to subside. The fluid flowed rapidly. “I guess I’ll feel like new in fifteen minutes or so,” Curt said hopefully, “and then we’ll be able to take it out.”

  “Maybe in a couple of days,” Dr. Mason countered.

  “You mean I have to keep this tube up my nose for two more days!” Curt protested.

  Dr. Mason nodded. “It beats the alternative, doesn’t it?”

  Curt closed his eyes and reluctantly nodded concession. “Have the nurse put a Do-Not-Disturb sign on my door. I’m hurting today. Between the gas, the pain killers wearing off, and this tube up my nose, I have a feeling this is going to be a bad day.”

  Dr. Mason winked at his patient. “Hang in there. You’re on the road to recovery. Everything is still on schedule.”

  Later that day . . .

  Tina and Justin exited the elevator and strolled down the hallway toward Curt’s room. The tile floor had been waxed so well that Tina could almost see her reflection. Nurses in scrubs scurried about the floor darting in and out of patients’ rooms. Visitors walked more slowly, ambling about the floor and gathering in the waiting room. Justin gazed into the rooms that had open doors, curious to catch a glimpse of what sort of health issues a patient might have.

  When the pair reached Curt’s room, the door was closed and the sign posted at eye level read Do Not Disturb. “That’s funny,” Tina said as she turned to Justin. “He told us yesterday that he was expecting a lot of people to stop by today.”

  “Maybe he’s going to the bathroom, Mom,” Justin said.

  “They wouldn’t put up a sign for that,” Tina countered. “Something’s wrong.”

  “Mom, maybe he’s sleeping or something.”

  “No, they wouldn’t close the door for that,” Tina worried. “Something’s not right.” Her stomach knotted and got queasy. “I have a feeling that something isn’t the way it should be.”

  Justin downplayed his mother’s reaction. “I bet he’s taking a shower.”

  “Not if he’s hooked up to an IV pole and a catheter,” Tina replied. “Something is wrong!” She turned and headed to the nurse’s desk down the hall. “What’s wrong with Curt Schroeder?” she shouted to the nurse on duty.

  “Nothing,” the nurse replied. “He asked us if we could close his door to all visitors.”

  “He’ll see us,” Tina said confidently. “He knows that we were coming to see him today.”

  “I can’t let you go into his room,” the nurse urged.

  “Then I’ll call him on his cell phone,” Tina relented.

  The nurse shook her head. “He turned that off.”

  “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Tina’s fear mounted. “He’s had complications.”

  “He didn’t sleep well last night,” the nurse finally said. “We gave him a sedative to help him rest. He’s asleep right now.”

  “Can you assure me that he’s okay?” Tina stressed. “My intuition tells me something is wrong.”

  “He’s doing fine and resting comfortably.” The nurse wasn’t about to indicate that Curt was having problems with gas and that they were draining it from his abdominal cavity.

  “Mom, everything is okay,” Justin s
aid tugging at her arm and wanting her to back off from the nurse.

  “I don’t think so,” Tina replied skeptically. “They wouldn’t have his door closed if things were fine.”

  “Don’t worry, Mom. Curt told us yesterday that he wasn’t ready to reach the end of the road. He’s okay.”

  Two days later . . .

  The pain that Curt had been experiencing had subsided. As the hours passed, less and less fluid drained from his interior. The pressure in his belly had returned to normal, and only the tube that was still stuck up his nose and halfway down his throat annoyed him.

  The staff had encouraged him to get up and walk the hallways in an effort to alleviate the soreness from surgery and stimulate some cardiovascular activity as well. He had become a familiar sight roaming the hospital halls, albeit gingerly with reservoir in hand. Dr. Mason had also instructed the staff to make sure that Curt was getting plenty of fluids to drink in addition to his intravenous feedings. He wanted Curt to start using his bodily functions to make sure that the healing process was on schedule.

  Curt had just returned from the restroom and climbed back into bed when Dr. Mason stopped in to see him. “How are you feeling today?”

  “I’m ready to get out of here,” Curt said. “I’ve had enough of lying around on my back.” He struggled to sit up on the side of the bed. “My side is a little tender, but it’s nothing that I can’t deal with.”

  “Well, I’ve got the proverbial good news, bad news situation,” Dr. Mason started. “We got the report back from the pathology department.”

  Curt had been rehearsing this moment in his mind the last several days. “Was it cancerous?”

  Dr. Mason paused and looked him squarely in the eye. He nodded yes. “That’s the bad news.”

  Curt took a moment to let the shock move through his system. His worst fears had been realized. However, he was encouraged to know that the tumor that had been in his body and had been sapping all of his energy was out. “Well, if that’s the bad news, then I guess that any other news we’re going to get today is pretty good.”

  “I think so. That’s a fair assumption,” Dr. Mason continued. “The tumor itself was the size of a baseball or maybe a large orange. I got it all out of there and it was all self-contained in your colon. The pathology report said that it didn’t spread outside the walls of your large intestine.”

  “So, I presume that if you cut it all out then the cancer is out of my body,” Curt ventured.

  “As a precaution I took out seventy-five to eighty lymph nodes that were in the area. All of them came back free of cancer.”

  Curt took a sigh of relief. He realized that if the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes, then he could probably start counting his last days. “How comfortable do you feel with the report?”

  “You can’t tell about cancer,” Dr. Mason said, “but I am sure that I got out everything that would be considered harmful.”

  “Do I have to go through chemotherapy?” Curt asked.

  “That will probably be elective,” Dr. Mason replied, “but I’ll let the oncologist make that call.”

  “Who is that?” Curt inquired.

  “The oncologist is the cancer doctor. You’ll probably see Charlie Lincke. We’ll turn you over to that department any day now.”

  “When can I go home?” Curt was anxious to get out of the hospital and back to Prairie Winds.

  “You’re not going to try to play golf, are you?” Dr. Mason said inquisitively. Curt shook his head from side to side. “You know what I said upfront. I don’t want you ripping out those stitches.”

  “You’re the boss. I’ll do what you say.”

  “If you agree to not swing a club, then I’ll set the wheels in motion. We have to give you what is called a small bowel series.”

  “What’s that?” Curt asked.

  “I have to make sure that nothing in your abdominal area is leaking,” Dr. Mason started to explain. “We’ll give you a liquid to drink called gastrograffin. That will illuminate the small bowel area when we give you the abdominal x-rays. We can’t give you barium sulfate to drink because if there is a leak, it could turn into a more serious problem.”

  “Like what?” Curt asked.

  “If you have a leak down there and barium sulfate gets released into your body, it could be fatal. That’s why the gastrograffin.”

  “Thanks for the precaution,” Curt said with a grin.

  “We’ll give you abdominal x-rays. As the solution moves through your system we’ll shoot the pictures. The x-ray techs will shoot them on an interval that will be anywhere from fifteen minutes to three hours. What we’ll be watching closely is the area where the titanium staple is,” Dr. Mason said. “In medical terms that is called the terminal ileum. That’s the point where the small intestine and large intestine come together. Remember our drawings? That’s the area that is most susceptible to leaks and infection.”

  Curt understood the procedure. “Okay. I got it.”

  “If the diagnostic radiology or imaging checks out fine, then I’ll release you tomorrow,” Dr. Mason spoke words of encouragement.

  “When can we start?” Curt inquired.

  “I’ll order it the minute I walk out the door. They should be up here to get you shortly after that.”

  “Five days. Start to finish. Everything was right on schedule. Just like you said,” Curt remarked as he stood up and faced Dr. Mason. “Now I don’t want you to think that I’m, well . . . you know,” Curt said as he shook his own hand from side to side as well as back and forth. “Do you mind if I give you a big hug?”

  Dr. Mason nodded his head. “Are you kidding? In my business I don’t get too many of those.”

  Curt reached out and hugged the doctor, patting him on the back like a fellow athlete on the field. His own tears welled as Dr. Mason returned the hug. He backed away then took the doctor squarely by both shoulders. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you did for me. I mean,” he hesitated, “you saved my life. I don’t know how else to say it. Thanks.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The x-rays confirmed that there was no leakage at the titanium staple or anywhere else. Curt was free to go home. It hurt getting in and out of the car more than driving it, but Curt wanted to get to the golf course. A day later Curt walked into the clubhouse. There wasn’t a big need to show up at the crack of dawn. He had called ahead to let J Dub know that he would be in sometime during the morning. The surgery had taken a toll on his body and it was going to be a few more weeks before he really felt like doing much of anything. Nevertheless, it was nice to get outside, walk a little, and smell the fresh air.

  “Hey, there he is,” Julie yelled from behind the counter as Curt delicately negotiated the walk up the stairs and through the doorway. It was obvious that he was still hurting to some extent, but he’d have to put on a brave face for the rest of the guys. If the pain got unbearable, he could always pop a painkiller.

  “I’m glad that’s over,” Curt said and forced a smile.

  “What the heck happened to you?” Fred shouted from the back booth. “You wasted away.”

  “They said I dropped twenty-five pounds,” Curt said. He was a mere shadow of his former self.

  Fred’s mouth fell open. “Now we know how to fix ourselves, Pork Chop.”

  “Yeah, get a third of our colon cut out,” Pork Chop replied as he turned to Fred. “You’re so full of it, you might drop fifty pounds.” He dealt some cards out of the blue deck to Captain Jer while Fred dealt cards from the red deck to Rollie. The guys were playing partners in a gin game. “I want none of that surgery stuff. I’ll go on a diet before I have to go under the knife again. They got me a few years back with the hemorrhoid thing.”

  “I’ll take another one, Julie,” Captain Jer ordered as he raised his can of Bud Light into the air.

  “Jer, it’s not even eleven and you’ve already gone through a six-pack,” Julie said as she bent over to fetch a can out of the c
ooler.

  “Just trying to get loosened up for the afternoon round,” Captain Jer said as he drained the last drop.

  “The only thing you’ll be loose for is the women,” Julie remarked.

  J Dub walked into the pro shop from the office. “I’ve got the easy chair all set up for you.” Curt wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to go so he and J Dub decided that they would arrange to put a recliner in the office in case he wanted to lie down for a nap.

  “Thanks, little brother. I may need that in a while,” Curt said. “Where are the boys?”

  “I’ve got them out on the course with BowTye changing the soap and water in the ball washers. We’ve had them on some of the simpler jobs since you’ve been gone. And I’ve been working with them on the range,” J Dub added. “They should be in shortly for lunch.”

  Curt went over to the register and peered at the sign-in sheet. “How’s the play been lately?”

  “Steady,” J Dub said. “You know how mid-June is in the Midwest. The weather is as good as it can possibly get and we’ve got more daylight now than we’ll have the rest of the year.”

  Justin and Keith dashed through the door with BowTye several steps behind. “Hey, strangers!” Curt exclaimed.

  Justin ran over to him and gave him a hug. “I told my mom that you’d be okay.”

  “I’m not completely out of the woods yet,” Curt cautioned. He shook Keith’s hand. “It’s going to be a few weeks before I can do anything strenuous.”

  “I sure am glad that you’re back,” Justin said. “J Dub’s been taking us down to the lake every morning and he smokes us. He’s in shape!”

  J Dub’s smile spread across his face. “We didn’t want them to get out of shape just because you were in the hospital, Curt.”

  “Strong bodies mold strong minds,” Curt added. “I’m glad to see that you two kept up with the workouts.”

  “Dammit, Jer!” Fred screamed. The full can of beer that Julie had taken to him moments before had been knocked over. Suds soaked the tabletop traversing the playing surface and dripping casually off of the side onto Fred’s feet. He had to turn sideways and inch his way out of the booth. “Look at this mess you made.” He put his hand in the air to catch a towel that Julie had flung in his direction.