i went to see my friend in the hospital the other night to bring her gifts of love and distraction. my House Mate went with me [read:
not my partner,
kimmyk. :?J ] and proved once again that i am the luckiest girl in the whole world.
my friend, BK, was
transferred to another hospital where a surgeon who "knows his shit" was willing and able to perform a really fantastic bowel reconstruction. a lot of small intestine was removed and then reconnected to her colon above the tumor on the right hand side. unfortunately the little fucker was also having it's way with her rectum, so she has a lower left side colostomy [did not get into the finer points of whether it was a sigmoid or not.... but soon, my pets, soon]. still on "cookies and milk," as her nurse appropriately named
BK's TPN, my friend looks the best i have seen her in a long time. i have never seen her smile with an
NG tube in before. her skin looks incredible. only dry from the air, not the dehydration of constant shitting of water and the sometimes vomiting. [which i have never seen someone do with such ease, either. the girl would be mid
sentence, pause, ask for the
emesis bag *which far exceeds the kidney or wash basin,* vomit, wipe her mouth, take a breath to assess if she was done, hand you the bag and complete her sentence. holy shit, batman.]
and here is my one highlight: ....
i love stomas. i do.
i'll explain it another day. they just simply fascinate me. and this makes BK feel a tiny bit better than there is one friend [one damn good friend] who is remotely excited about the fact that her best friend will be shitting in a bag!! how wicked!!
she was feeling a little down. and normally i am the one to give her permission to feel like poo, but she specifically asked to be cheered up. when i ran out of
humorous tales about the random
dumb asses i interacted with that week, House Mate jumped right in with stories about her retreat working with youth from her church back in suburbia, apparently on a tour of a
burbanite prison, she and the other two leaders locked themselves in an interrogation chamber dilly dallying behind the guided tour. yeah, that one looks good over dinner with Pastor... ah. lucky me. i have excellent friends. friends who don't at an eyelash when i take them to see my loved ones sick in beds with more tubes than you can fathom being comfortable. and HM made BK laugh while i went to get the nurse for more pain
meds. sigh me.
somberly, BK told me more news. her primary
onc doc may be bowing out. he is affiliated with a little clinic. an excellent clinic, but too small to be participating in drug trials. the hospital where she is now, on the south side of the city, is bigger and has some of those trials readily available for her to enter. that was a hard blow. we like her primary
onc doc. he's a Good Guy and a Kind Doctor.
more somberly, the docs aren't sure how much they can do for a tumor that won't give up the ghost. the gut doc said he wasn't going to mess with the tumor once he got in there and saw what was going on [which really makes me want to see what was going on...] and did his kick ass job of making her gut functional. we've gone from months to years.
but she said maybe a handful.
she doesn't want the rest of her life to be chemo.
she mentioned that she wants to be cremated and have her urn
buried with loved ones and a small stone.
i told her she could have whatever she wanted.
there was a peace about the conversation i can't explain.
i was grateful that she brought it up. it's something i want to be a part of. knowing what she wants. and what she doesn't want. and making sure that her wishes are carried out.
she's an amazing friend.
sitting there in her hospital bed with an
NG tube and a flight deck worth of dials, pumps and fluids asking me about my family [my mom's dad passed on the 1st. it was mostly expected, and quick to pass in dignity and free of pain. i flew to
cleveland for the funeral.] and becoming emotionally moved to the point of tears when telling a story about a gay male friend from high school who's family disowned him when he came out [she asked how my date went that afternoon with a new girl, it went very well], and also her anger and frustration at the county hospital's cuts of 17% from the neediest of the needy while she lay in a private room with incredible nursing response and a DVD player. ....
and i bit my tongue at the injustice of someone so giving and loving of others at a time like this might be taken from me before the children we have not yet imagined nor born can laugh at her faces.
not yet, i told my Granpa when we left him at the cemetary. she can't leave me. not yet. she looks too good to leave us now.
Labels: colon cancer, dying, friend, homo, hospital, patient care, stomas
