The first time I was put under general anesthesia was five years ago when I was having my gall bladder removed by the robotic Davinci. My current girlfriend (the one who would bolt in a few months) was beside me in the pre-op waiting room. She was delightful, had a beautiful smile, and had a lot of experience taking care of a dying mom over the course of several years. She was holding my hand (a big thing for me) and telling me it was going to be fine.
And then it was time to go. They wheeled me down the hall on the squeaky gurney. It was the dream sequence of in a movie about trauma. Bright white fluorescents, everyone else left behind, except for the wizened nurse who was pushing my gurney from just above my head. I looked up at her for some hope. She smiled down on me and patted my shoulder, slipping around people and other equipment in the hallway, and we turned left down a long corridor.
The valium they gave for anxiety was warming my sense of humor and wonder, “Is this supposed to be so dramatic?”
She looked down at me, no smile, and we continued on through a few hissing doors and viola! we were in the surgical room with about 5 brightly masked medical folks, my future landing platform, and the shiny white spider arms of the cyber-surgical miracle robot. I could see from the eyes that folks were smiling at me, giving me good vibes. The IV was already in, so they just juiced the meds and away I went. Glad to be out of the sci-fi horror movie about to unfold.
An hour or so later the fog appeared to be blurring the same waiting room I’d been in for pre-op. The smiling lady was in a chair near the window, she appeared to be reading a Kindle. I took a few minutes to make sure I was not being tortured or imprisoned for something. I could hear the whirr of the AC. They keep hospitals so cold. I could see a boring sad Sunday afternoon out the window. I think I fell asleep for another twenty minutes, because when I woke up, my girlfriend was beside me, holding my hand and giving me a tearish but happy smile. Ah, Lori’s smile.
After about an hour of waiting I was wheeled to the front and loaded into Lori’s beater Ford Escort.
“Can you get the prescriptions after you drop me back at my place?”
“Sure.”
There was a stern tone in her voice. I ignored further communication and tried to breathe into the rising anxiety. I closed my eyes and tried to defocus my mind.
“That’s the turn,” I said.
“We’re going to get your meds first,” she said.
“Why? I want to get in bed!”
“The pharmacy will close, it’s Sunday.”
“Not for another hour, fuck. What’s the matter?”
She was at a loss for words. Driving and holding the steering wheel with white hard knuckles. I shut the fuck up and went back to my Tai Chi breathing exercises.
Then I was trapped in a shitty car with an asthmatic AC in the packed grocery store parking lot. I had my AirPods so I was in-tuned but flashes of pain or anxiety were giving me dull punches. In my fevered mind it took hours, Lori would tell you, “It was twenty minutes, tops!” I was furious. I should’ve been home in bed. The dropoff would’ve taken 5 minutes, and that’s with me walking super slow. Instead, I was baking in the uncomfortable seat on a humid Sunday afternoon.
“What the fuck?” I said loudly as she got back into the car handing me the crinkling pharmacy bags.
“Such a baby,” she said.
I choked back my reply. Breathe in. Energy, joy, hope. Hold for three seconds. Breathe out. Releasing all the bad energy with your exhale.
It was the next day, under the influence of Ty-3s, when I wanted to sort out the “fucked journey home from the hospital.”
As is usually the case, there was a massive part of Lori’s story that I couldn’t comprehend. She had nursed her mom, dying of cancer up in Minnesota, through a full cycle of the seasons. It was a horrific, spiritual, and bonding time. As her mom was disappearing, her dad needed all the support and love she could add. But the death, the dying, the meds, the hospice, the waiting crying cursing hoping, and losing hope, that came with sitting vigil.
“It wrecked me. I had an anxiety attack on the way back, my heart started racing, I lost touch with reality, and was back with my mom. I was scared. I was blind. I was worried we wouldn’t get your medication.”
Weeks later, she was moving from Lockhart back to Austin for a new job, teaching 2nd graders in Georgetown. There was a moment, I think we’d been dating for 4 months at this point, and there came a sheepish discussion about her sadness that she was having to move into an apartment rather than into mine with me.
“It’s too soon, I know,” she said. “But I wanted a partner, a home, a place to begin. This feels like a punishment.”
She stayed with me, her and the cat, for five days while they revamped or cleaned her new apartment. It was good. It was bad. It was telling. It was just as she began contemplating escape. I just now realize, as I’m writing this, that her cat was also part of the crisis when I decided to get Tempo, the baby Boston Terrier that would create so much joy and reconnection between my daughter and me, but also closed the near-term prospects for us moving in together after her year in the apartment was completed. Of course, it was all kinds of things that were going off in her head as she left the car containing me, Tempo, and my daughter. She ripped her life out of my condo while we were introducing a bundle of joy to my dying brother.
It was too much. Death. Dog. Daughter. Hospitals. She hinted at suicidal ideation a few days later and a switch flipped in my soul. I had cooked dinner and we were struggling with our conversation.
“I went to Walmart to buy a gun,” she said. “I filled out the background check form.”
Lori instantly transformed from a struggling girlfriend to “this person needs professional help, and it ain’t me.”
What became crystal clear for me at that moment with Lori was a new guiding principle that has come into play recently in my present life. “I can only manage one crisis at a time.”
My brother was dying. My mother was putting on her usual brave face even though I could see the hopelessness in her eyes. When my mom loses hope the affectation is dramatic. She flips from the mom who preached “Turning exes into plusses” to the “I cannot do this. It’s too hard.” Her anxiety triggers all her “gifted child” dysfunction and her kids get outwardly stoic and internally wrestle with the emotions we’re no longer free to share.
I had one more gathering with Lori before she disappeared. I invited her to meet me, Tempo, and my daughter at a pizza place. “I’m buying.”
Laying my eyes on her, I was somewhat relieved that the “gun talk” appeared to have righted itself. She was more of a ghost, sitting on the opposite side of the table, no warmth or smiles. She was clearly still in deep crisis about something. It was a lot bigger than my dying brother, her dead mom, and the new dog that was going to prevent an easy conjoining of our living quarters. Even sleeping over at her apartment was out, while the dog was being potty trained.
It’s not like I had all the mad skills I have today when I was looking over at this beautifully fragile and frightened animal. I did know she was no longer for me. I’d come back to question that in a few months, but while my brother held on and my Tempo/daughter connection continued to bring us together, I was relieved to release her back into the online dating pool. I didn’t really have time for a relationship right now, anyway.
I came up with a pithy line to summarize my new unenlightenment. “Maybe I didn’t need a girlfriend, I needed a puppy.”
The part I didn’t say out loud, “And a renewed connection with my daughter.”
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