Eating the Underworld

by Doris Brett

  If I study its whorls

  and shadows, would it speak

  to me? Invite me up

  into its vast interior?

  I could float up, spreading

  the arms of my hospital

  gown wider and wider,

  and live there,

  clean as a fish

  and devoid of knowledge.

  But the lift swallows us all

  up into the whale’s

  journey, out into a tunnel.

  The story pauses.

  And now I see:

  Here is the room of light.

  The red-haired anaesthetist,

  the surgeon with gloves

  are all waiting.

  This is how fairytales are.

  I am the princess in the casket.

  They are offering me the apple.

  Operating Theatre

  The first thing they do

  is take your shadow.

  Also your clothes.

  This is the strictest temple

  and the priests here know

  the meaning of worship.

  You have fasted,

  you have been purged

  in the cold grey rooms

  where daylight is only

  the beginning.

  This is another world.

  They have made you a citizen of it.

  This is the room that God lives in

  with his single eye

  staring down from the ceiling.

  This is the room

  you will be born in,

  do not ask why.

  If you close your eyes

  you will see again

  they tell you

  and in the end, remember

  after the sacrifice

  comes the ascension.

  They are coming for you now

  in their loose green gowns

  and masks …

  Soon they will reach out their hands

  and bend over you

  green and leafy as hearts.

  SOON I’M ROLLING DOWN THE corridor with that crazy, bat’s eye view of the ceiling that’s part of the trip. The orderlies wheeling the trolley are cheerful, cracking jokes as we lumber along. We pause, momentarily, outside the operating theatre and then we are in. The first impression is of light and cold. Then a sense of conviviality. People in masks and gowns are chatting genially, music is playing. The walls are white and everyone is dressed head to toe in the pale colours of scrub suits. It’s like a party in Antarctica.

  Greg greets me and I make my request about not saying anything negative aloud. He looks surprised, but agrees. The anaesthetist taps my hand, looking for veins. I feel the prick of the needle. Then I’m asleep.

  The next thing I know is that someone is speaking to me. It’s Greg. I’m still in the operating theatre and Greg has just finished sewing me up. He’s bending over me saying, ‘I am very pleasantly surprised.’

  I am sure that I am looking at him, staring straight at him in fact. But then I notice that my eyes are closed. And that I can’t open them. Can’t move a muscle—of them or any other part of my body. I am puzzled by this. I try again, but am completely and utterly paralysed. I’m not in pain and am not frightened, just frustrated. I have to let Greg know that I can hear him. It feels urgent, imperative even. Just then, there’s another voice. It’s the anaesthetist.

  ‘She can’t hear you,’ he says, and I can hear the dismissiveness in his voice.

  I redouble my efforts to open my eyes, to make a sound, to show even the slightest sign of my conscious presence. I have to let Greg know that I am here, that I can hear him. I struggle intensely, but remain silent and utterly immobilised. Then Greg responds to the anaesthetist’s words.

  ‘Yes she can,’ he says, firmly and clearly. I feel a sudden, extraordinary relief, almost elation—he has heard me, he knows I am here—and I sink straight back into sleep.

  When I wake next, I am in my hospital room, with Martin sitting beside me. I’ve woken before after general anaesthetics. It’s a strange process, with the mind convinced it hasn’t been asleep, that time hasn’t passed and that the surgery is yet to begin. This time it’s different from anything I’ve experienced. I wake clear-headed. I know exactly where I am, what has happened and how much time has elapsed. But over-riding all this is something which has an intense and moving life of its own: I wake with the words ‘I am very pleasantly surprised’ burned into my consciousness. I can remember every detail of that conversation above my anaesthetised body in the operating theatre. It feels strange and wonderful.

  It is evening already, the surgery took several hours, and Martin relays what Greg has told him about the operation. It is ovarian cancer, but I’m in luck—it looks as if it’s early stage, with an excellent chance for cure. We are both weak with relief.

  When Martin leaves, I drift back into sleep, the hospital sounds receding further and further beyond my doorway. Hours later I wake again into the middle of the night. I discover I am wearing an oxygen mask. It is not uncomfortable, merely unusual. It rests lightly on my face and I am reminded of the elaborate feathered masks I have seen worn at fancy dress and masquerade parties. I think of the Everest explorers, their oxygen strapped to their backs as they labour towards the sky and I know I am in rarified weather. In the mountain tops where strangeness is ordinary and even ordinary air is strange.

  I lie quietly in the unfamiliar darkness. A nurse enters like a night animal with one glowing eye. She adjusts the drip and pads off quietly. I slip back into sleep.

  The next morning, Greg comes for his first post-operative visit. After telling me what he found and did during surgery, he asks me if I remember anything of it. I repeat the conversation to him and his jaw nearly hits the floor. It is clear that he didn’t really think I could hear. I am touched again by the way he stood up for me in the operating theatre, stating his belief in me, even against doubts and the risk of looking foolish before colleagues.

  When I’m well, I tend towards rather roseate visions of hospital. It takes on the shape of an expensive spa: meals in bed, being tended to hand and foot, oodles of time for reading, relaxing and napping. The shock I get each time I encounter the reality ought to be enough to permanently shake a few neurons out of day-dreaming on the job.

  The first thing I notice when I awake on the morning after surgery is that the pillows I was so taken with yesterday have migrated downwards during the night and I am stuck in a neck-stretching, reverse-guillotine position. I try to shift either them or myself, but even the slightest wriggle brings a sensation like red-hot knives to my abdomen. The muscles in my neck and shoulders are also shrieking pathetically, but I am a beetle, stuck on my back.

  I ring the nurse’s bell for assistance. I imagine the women in white rushing to my side with soothing noises and capable hands. Five hours later, a surly nurse appears. She is clearly irritated by this intrusion on her day. She fixes the pillows and addresses me with a few terse words. At first I think she has taken a dislike to me. But as I overhear her conversational gambits with the occupants of neighbouring rooms, I realise that it’s not me. She is just one of those people with a natural talent for making enemies.

  The migrating pillows and beetle-on-back experience will be repeated tomorrow. As will the five-hour wait for assistance. By the third day, I can move enough to adjust the pillows by myself. The relief of this independence is marvellous. It gives me a sobering, and thankfully brief, insight into just a little of what ‘disabled and at the mercy of others’ feels like.

  That first day, as I wait hopefully for the nurse to come, I have plenty of time to complete a ‘before and after’ inventory.

  Before surgery, I hadn’t noticed that the bed was lined with a rubber under-sheet. Now, with the clarity given by a sweaty night, I am all too aware that I am sleeping on rubber.

  Before surgery, my abdomen was inflated, but otherwise unencumbered. Now my midriff is firmly girdled in tight, white bandages.
I look like half a mummy.

  Before, as I filled in the lengthy hospital admissions form, I was asked whether I was allergic to adhesives. No, I blithely replied. After all, how much chance had I had to find out? It’s not every day you decide it would be fun to experiment by wrapping yourself in large expanses of white, plastic-backed adhesive. Soon I will discover that under that dazzling, waterproof exterior, my body has decided that no, it doesn’t like adhesives, and is bubbling and blistering away.

  Before, I was pain-free and had total ease of movement. Now, any movement involves instant, intense pain. Even though the operating site is in my abdomen, theoretically leaving my arms, legs and head free, I am discovering that, in the spirit of true friendship, anything they do, they want the abdomen to do with them. I can’t move up, I can’t move down, I can’t move sideways, I can’t roll over. If I lie still the pain is fairly bearable, like an unpleasant background buzz. If I attempt to shift myself, in any direction, it roars up to 707-accelerating-for-take-off levels.

  I also have a couple of tubes leading out of me. One is the catheter to collect urine. The other is an intravenous line attached to a drip. It belongs to the new-fangled patient-operated pain-control apparatus. It’s a terrific idea in principle. In practice, it turns out that the nurses haven’t yet mastered its principles. When the drip needs refilling, it lets out a piercing scream. Not just a short, sharp piercing scream, but one that, like the average baby’s, goes on and on until you feed it. As the nurses haven’t quite worked out how to do that, the kind of chaos that leads to thoughts of infanticide ensues. The machine is having a panic attack. The nurses are having multiple panic attacks. I am taking slow breaths, vainly trying to recapture wisps of my hospital fantasy; the one that runs along the lines of quiet peaceful rooms, tender nurses, leisurely hours to read and recuperate …

  At this point in my re-introduction to reality, the dietician arrives. Here, the peel-me-a-grape part of the fantasy dissolves. The menu she is offering looks quite respectable, but I discover I am not at all hungry. All I feel like having is vegemite on toast. And that is all I will feel like having for my entire hospital stay. Not having thought about vegemite for twenty years, I am startled by this new love affair. But, like all the best love affairs, it is irresistible and over the next few weeks, I work my way steadily through numerous jars of the stuff.

  All this, however—the pain, the discomforts, the nurses—are nothing, because what I am feeling above all else is happy. Incredibly, marvellously, ecstatically happy. I have won the lottery, I am going to live! I feel luckier than I’ve ever felt in my life.

  I’ve never thought of luck as playing a particularly auspicious role in my life. This last decade particularly has been dogged by bad luck. I’m used to getting my head down and working to undo it. It feels almost overwhelming to be handed this, the biggest piece of luck in my life, on a plate. Although I am not particularly religious, the word that keeps coming to mind is blessed. I feel blessed. By who or by what, I don’t know, but the feeling pervades me.

  Waking Up

  Does the caterpillar know

  what’s happening to it?

  Waking one morning

  feeling strange, an ache,

  for instance, a head

  like stone, the need

  to slow down, wind up

  into that oval sleep

  greater than darkness

  greater than the whole

  of dreams where you can

  hide and never be found.

  Is it love that breaks

  the brown carapace?

  Or is it something harder—

  the surgeon with his glistening

  knife, the anaesthetist

  with tubes. And how it must

  feelat first, waking to the news

  of loss. The city in ruins

  around you, brown

  shell and ash. The old

  body gone. The new one soft

  and unusable. Waking to the hot

  brute face of sunlight, hard

  as the arcs of operating

  tables. The thin

  cracking struggle,

  the unseen filaments starting

  to unfold, to name their colours.

  The crazing terror—your

  legs gone, your skin gone—

  and all the while

  unknown, behind you,

  rising, rising in the slow air

  are the strange markings of angels.

  Intravenous Drip

  The thin man is always beside me.

  He was there when I woke,

  holding my wrist like a genteel

  hospital visitor.

  He feeds me

  nutrients, water, morphine.

  Drop by drop, the most

  devoted mother.

  He performs magic too,

  thanks to him the flowers

  have started to beat like hearts

  in their baskets.

  and when the nurses come in,

  I smile at them gauzily.

  He is deeply attached.

  And it shows.

  He would follow me anywhere,

  even to Fairbanks, Alaska.

  I am his life, he exists

  only to serve me. He says

  this over and over

  the way the wolf speaks

  to the moon’s rising.

  Sometimes at night I see

  that if I just lie still,

  I will be fed forever.

  GREG COMES BY ON HIS daily visit the first day after surgery. He tells me what he has found—early-stage ovarian cancer, confined to one ovary. No sign that he could see of any spread. Martin has already told me this, but I like hearing Greg repeat it. I like hearing anyone repeat it.

  Greg has taken samples of the fluid in my abdomen, as well as tissue samples from various neighbouring organs. All of these are currently being examined by Pathology. If they show microscopic traces of tumour cells, Greg tells me, I could suddenly find myself classified as having late-stage, instead of early, ovarian cancer. This sobers me briefly, but only for a minute. I’m betting on my luck this time.

  After Greg’s visit, my nurse arrives. To my horror, I discover that I am supposed to get up and attempt to walk. Sitting up in bed is excruciating. Attempting to swing my legs over the edge of the bed is worse. Hanging on to the nurse, I manage to put one foot in front of the other and execute a few wobbly steps around the room. She pronounces herself satisfied and helps to lever me back into bed. I resolve never to move again.

  Hospital stays are like being a vampire’s house-guest—someone is always coming at you asking for blood. I’m getting so conditioned that I grit my teeth, roll up my sleeve and offer my arm the minute a strange face enters the room. Occasionally, the strange face turns out to be the cleaner.

  The cleaners, overall, are the friendliest staff members. My nurse and her successor are still into the Sturm und Drang method of care-taking. An Irish nurse has been assigned to patients in the rooms opposite mine. I hear her cheery morning voice saying, ‘And what can I do for you m’darlin’?’ as if she really means it. I lie there silently thinking, ‘I want you! I want you!’ willing my thought-beam to invade the nursing roster and bring her to my side. One afternoon for a brief two hours, the universe accedes. I am in seventh heaven as my fantasy nurse helps me up and disentangles me from my drip with gentle, loving care.

  The pathology results are supposed to be due back on Friday. I look up hopefully when Greg enters the room, but there’s been a delay. The same story is repeated on Monday. On Tuesday, Greg comes in grinning. They’re clear—it’s a confirmed stage 1. ‘Wow!’ I say, with stunning eloquence. The tumour was twelve centimetres, grapefruit size, and grade 3—meaning it was large and very aggressive—but somehow it hadn’t spread. I have a vision of it as a big, overgrown bully-boy, who is secretly agoraphobic and doesn’t want to leave home. I am also to discover that grapefruits will never again look
the same to me. Beside myself with excitement, I ring everyone I know to tell them the news.

  Twice a day, I haul myself up and go for a little stagger around the ward. The first few days of this are agony. Any movement involving my abdomen sets off sensations that feel like the classic torturer’s implements. I shuffle a few feet around the ward and return to bed feeling as if I’ve completed six marathons. I am stunned by how weak I am. It’s as if I’ve aged a hundred years in a few days. I set myself a goal of a few more minutes, a few more yards each day and enter into the challenge with the machismo of an elderly Schwarzenegger.

  One morning, a middle-aged woman tentatively enters my room. I figure she has come in by accident, looking for someone else. But no, she sits herself down by the side of the bed and smiles at me. I smile back, wondering who the hell she is. ‘I’m a chaplain,’ she says. And smiles again. I smile back. Silence. I smile again. She smiles back. Silence. I am sure that chaplains are supposed to speak comforting words to their patients. Perhaps she got confused and went to psychoanalysis school by mistake? She smiles again. I smile back. I deduce that she is actually very nervous and doesn’t know what to say. She must be a trainee chaplain. I decide to put her out of her misery. I’m feeling fine, I tell her. I don’t really need to talk. She sighs with relief and becomes positively expansive. ‘That’s wonderful,’ she says. And leaves. I feel exhausted.

  I have to decide what to do about chemotherapy. From the outset, I have been expecting to have it, but Greg tells me that it’s not considered necessary for a stage 1a. He knows that I was presuming I would have it, so he’s gone ahead and got a second opinion from another oncologist. He, too, says no chemo necessary. An oncologist friend of mine agrees with him and consults another colleague as well. Yet another voice saying no chemo. And so I figure that with four oncologists saying I don’t need chemo, it would be verging on masochistic to go ahead.

  Australia follows the European line; that chemotherapy isn’t needed for 1as. America takes a different position. Over there, a stage 1a tumour that is grade 3, ie. very aggressive, would be given chemotherapy. There’s no right or wrong position here; it’s an illustration of the tricky decisions that need to be made with early-stage ovarian cancer.