On Wednesday morning I helped my husband, Buz take his first post-op shower. As he stood with warm water cascading over his body, the umbilical like catheter coiling on the shower floor it was the first opportunity I had to take in the entire scope of the operation. His belly was slightly distended but it was obvious that the incisions are already healing. Not even a band aid needed. What a miracle our bodies are. I soaped his back and after he had rinsed, I towel dried him below the knees since bending over is not on his to do list yet. He said, “Hon, I guess this is what is meant by in sickness and in health.”
We took those vows many years ago and if you had asked me on Monday exactly how long ago I would have had to pause and mentally calculate the number. However, when my husband was wheeled into his room after a four hour surgery and an hour in recovery he had no such need to pause. Though still under the effects of the anesthesia and quite groggy he was very clear when the nurse asked, “Who is this nice woman waiting for you here?”
The most impish grin appeared on his face and he said in heavily slurred speech, “Why it’s my lovely wife of thirty-six years.”
Of course he doesn’t remember most of those hours after surgery. They are lost to him but not to me. As I held his hand and stroked the top of his head, he asked what the surgeon had said though he doesn’t remember ever asking that question or hearing my answer. Part of what the surgeon told me was that the operation had gone well regarding peeling back and reattaching nerve endings and because of that as well as Buz’s great abdominal muscle tone, he would recover his sexual function sooner than what was the norm for this operation. When I told Buz this, his eyes were closed and I was not sure he was aware of what I was saying until he smiled and in a hoarse voice, said, “Yeah, I think I can feel something happening already.”
This from a man with four ‘stab’ incisions extending across his abdomen like a dotted line, a longer, vertical incision above his belly button, a catheter draining into a bag hooked to the bed, another drain coming out of his side, and an IV line going into the back of his hand. The CO2 that they had pumped into him to do the robotic prostatectomy had leaked into his chest, eventually to his neck and head and had left him with a swollen half of his face and two black eyes.
Hard to believe the removal of a little organ the size of a walnut could wreak such havoc! Not hard for me to believe his sense of humor was still intact. It is really what attracted me to him in the first place and is what has got us through the past few months. Of course it is not my prostate and not my body but deciding between retaining his sense of humor or his prostate would not be a hard choice for me. I am hoping that his humor sticks around if I ever need to cash in on that part of our vows.
In the meantime I might buy myself a nurse’s cap. Not the lacy handkerchief kind that Florence Nightingale wore during the Crimean War but the white starched one with the little red cross on the front. Kinda kinky.
We took those vows many years ago and if you had asked me on Monday exactly how long ago I would have had to pause and mentally calculate the number. However, when my husband was wheeled into his room after a four hour surgery and an hour in recovery he had no such need to pause. Though still under the effects of the anesthesia and quite groggy he was very clear when the nurse asked, “Who is this nice woman waiting for you here?”
The most impish grin appeared on his face and he said in heavily slurred speech, “Why it’s my lovely wife of thirty-six years.”
Of course he doesn’t remember most of those hours after surgery. They are lost to him but not to me. As I held his hand and stroked the top of his head, he asked what the surgeon had said though he doesn’t remember ever asking that question or hearing my answer. Part of what the surgeon told me was that the operation had gone well regarding peeling back and reattaching nerve endings and because of that as well as Buz’s great abdominal muscle tone, he would recover his sexual function sooner than what was the norm for this operation. When I told Buz this, his eyes were closed and I was not sure he was aware of what I was saying until he smiled and in a hoarse voice, said, “Yeah, I think I can feel something happening already.”
This from a man with four ‘stab’ incisions extending across his abdomen like a dotted line, a longer, vertical incision above his belly button, a catheter draining into a bag hooked to the bed, another drain coming out of his side, and an IV line going into the back of his hand. The CO2 that they had pumped into him to do the robotic prostatectomy had leaked into his chest, eventually to his neck and head and had left him with a swollen half of his face and two black eyes.
Hard to believe the removal of a little organ the size of a walnut could wreak such havoc! Not hard for me to believe his sense of humor was still intact. It is really what attracted me to him in the first place and is what has got us through the past few months. Of course it is not my prostate and not my body but deciding between retaining his sense of humor or his prostate would not be a hard choice for me. I am hoping that his humor sticks around if I ever need to cash in on that part of our vows.
In the meantime I might buy myself a nurse’s cap. Not the lacy handkerchief kind that Florence Nightingale wore during the Crimean War but the white starched one with the little red cross on the front. Kinda kinky.
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