This is going to seem disjointed but here goes .... Of course the reason that we're here at all is due my sister's medical condition. I debated even talking about this, but in the end this is my blog and I guess I want to note all this down for future reference. Rochester is the home of the Mayo Clinic, which sprawls across three different campuses all across downtown. It looks like the evolution of a hospital more than anything else, with some buildings that no doubt were built in the early part of the 20th century and others that are the typical edifices of steel and glass that one finds in any city in the world. The weight of medical wisdom makes the air unbearably thick, yet comorting like a blanket that's too big. It's comforting that others have chosen to get their medical care here - in fact the Dalai Lama was here today which caused quite a stir, and annoyed us to no end since we had to deal with all his security folks on the way to the cafeteria. This is a big shift from the feeling of frippery and general incompetence that one felt in the Mayo Clinic's Scottsdale branch, which is more like a service center/hotel for the superannuated.
The operation itself was supposed to take place in St Mary's Hospital which is part of the super-hospital that is the Mayo Clinic. Arriving, one travels down a long arched glass gallery and into the lobby which is dominated by a large stained glass window at the far end, occluding a grassy quadrangle beyond. St Mary's is like every other hospital in the Mayo complex, which is to say that it consists of several buildings all tied together by doorways, walkways and cleavings. The main hall is overlooked by the portraits of the Mothers Superior who have run this place till it sold out to the Man. Some of them have the kindly eyes of a Disney Mother Superior while others are more like the iron ladies who ran the Catholic school I went to as a child. The old-timey lobby hides the state of the art facilities that exist throughout the hospital, though you can see the roots of care at St Mary's in the historical room. There, on display, is the surgical steel of the late 19th century twisted into shapes that defy explanation. But I digress...
Arriving on Saturday it felt more like a family vacation than anything else. It's all the same jokes and card games, with regular breaks for meals that my mom finds distasteful. I had missed the meetings with the cardiologist and the surgeon, so the whole thing was even further removed from my mind. I did feel the tension in my mother, but she's always like that so I didn't pay too much mind. These moments always bring what feels like irrational fear and apprehension, and I didn't want to be a part of that. This morning I woke up dehydrated, with a good bit of confidence. The day was going to go well, my sister would be in surgery at 6a, out by noon and we'd all cluster round and have a nice lunch while reprising the jokes of the day before.
She'd been up before us, showering with the special anti-bacterial soap and charging up her iPod, no doubt for the recovery period. We laughed and joked and needled her. "I thought you were supposed to be nice to me today," she complained with a little smile. The arrival in the hospital was a stampede of efficiency, with what seemed to be a hundred nurses coming in and out, helping her change, putting in the IV needles, asking questions and pulling us out of the room to give us instructions on where we could go and what sort of information we could expect. They gave my sister a pill to start the anesthesia, slowing her down and relaxing her heart muscles prior to the surgery. It was sort of fun watching my straight-laced little sister get high as a kite. It all just added to how surreal the whole event has seemed from the beginning.
And then she was wheeled away. I stood there in the hall with my family, each person dealing with it in their own way. I patted my brother on the back, he was taking it hard. I felt a sting in my own eyes, which had to be due to the recirculated air. It also explains my breath catching in my throat and the flush on my face. Because it can't be anything else right?
The unbearable part about this sort of thing is of course the waiting. Five hours of sitting in a room full of other people who are also waiting. You stare at them and they stare at you, and everyone wonders where their loved one is and what's happening to them. You try to talk to each other but sooner or later the conversation dries up and you're sitting there. Silent. You try to play cards but are slightly self conscious about playing cards in a hospital. You cough and wonder whether your cough is actually a real one and you're an infection risk - in my case I think I am, having come down with something literally two days before I arrived. My chills and sneezing metastasized into coughing fits that are shaking me and bursting blood vessels in my eyeballs. Poor timing to say the least. But I digress some more ...
My sister insisted that I take pictures of her starting at the hotel and then in the various stages of going in for the surgery. That wasn't so hard. What was hard was trying to take pictures after she was out of the operating theater and in the ICU. With tubes sticking out everywhere I found myself suddenly squeamish, but I went through with it. For her. She would wake up and wince with every movement, and that's not something that brings out the Cartier-Bresson on me.