Part II What I didn't realize is that I would spend the next six-plus hours in this room. It was punctuated by various people introducing themselves as they cam on or went off their shifts, asking for personal information, taking my charts, other people coming in and asking the same questions or "Where's your chart?" new people following up on old charts or, later, wanting to take the same tests as the ones I had just taken some five minutes before and where-could-those-folders-be? In my former life, I would have been in a deep snit-fit and have been knocking some heads together to get some sense thumped in them, but as it was, I lay there beyond caring and waited for it to end. There was even a moment after the lights were turned-off around 4 a.m. in a vain attempt to sleep, with Jon lying close by, when I thought I'd prefer to just die. Please, if there is someone listening, just let me go unconscious to escape this pain, and the next moment would pass and the next and the next and no end in sight. I ran out of tears and just lay there with it. A humbling experience if ever there was one. Some of this I can only blame on myself. Early in the wee hours, a doctor flew in with authority all about him like a suit of armor. He stood over me with a straight glower and a surgical mask over his chin and throat. He jabbed me. "That hurt?" "Yes, everything hurts." He jabbed again. "Hurts there?" "Yes, so did the first one." He looked up. "Appendix. Open her up." People fluttered about like ants to do his bidding. Me, having just gotten to the hospital and had a few people run in and out with questions and charts and missing folders, was worried something had gone unnoticed. "Hold it," I said. "Isn't there some test that I'm supposed to have first?" While not wild about the pain, I wasn't too wild about being cut open on a whim, either. The surgeon looked perplexed. "Well, we could run a blood test and an ultrasound..." "Fine, I'll take those." And then he left without a word more. Stupid, stupid, stupid me. After nearly four hours of blood samples, shift changes, lost information, returns to take blood which had been misplaced, barium solutions swallowed, barium solutions thrown-up, antiquated machinery mishaps, frighteningly inaccurate identification and other sordid and time-consuming blunders, it was no clearer what was wrong with me, and furthermore evident that some of the tests would never be answered, since the data had been lost in transit between the stooges running this station. Somewhere around 6 a.m. the very same authoritarian surgeon marched in and jabbed me in the side. I no longer cared. "That hurt?" "Yes." He jabbed again. "Hurts there?" "Yes." He looked up. "Appendix. Open her up." "Yes, please do." The anesthesiologist was a nice woman in scrubs who came to wheel me around and began babbling her litany of rote questions which I heard through the bleary fog that was my head. I actually don't think I heard anything she said except one nagging thing that actually escaped my lips. "...and have you eaten anything in the last five hours?" "Ha-ha, I've been here for over five hours and all I've eaten was the barium solution..." We all screeched to a halt. So did my heart. She looked at me blankly. "Oh, well then you can't have surgery for another five hours." I wanted to cry right then, right there. "B-B-But I threw all it up!" "All of it," Jon confirmed. "I did! I swear! Please!" The surgeon asked to speak to the anesthesiologist out in the hall. And this is probably all I should've known about the short delay, save that I was once again lying in a gurney, but this time slightly angled towards the door. However, this was not the case, as the two doctors didn't quite move far enough down the hall to be out of earshot. I will spare you the gory details of the conversational spat that took place but at one point this became clear: anesthesiologists and surgeons are on either side of the hospital spectrum, mostly around points of legality and liability. One particular point of this tete-a-tete was ringing clear: Anesthesiologist: "Well, I don't want it to be my responsibility if she goes into anaphalactic shock!" Surgeon: "Fine, fine. Don't worry about it, you can put my name on it." I turned wide-eyed towards Jon who had also heard the whole thing, and mouthed "I don't want to go into anaphalactic shock!" He smiled wanly and patted my hand. Back into the room came the anesthesiologist; the surgeon was gone, and she began rattling on again right where she left off and out we went. The oddly funny thing at this point was that Jon was still with me as we bustled down the hall: the nurses, the anesthesiologist and I. A nice African man in white even mentioned to Jon that he couldn't be here and could wait in the hall. Jon nodded and kept walking with us. The anesthesiologist kept talking, Jon kept walking, into the surgical wing we go! New people dressed in scrubs joined us as we kept going, another nice woman turned to Jon and said, "You know, you really can't be here. Please go wait in the waiting room." Jon smiled and nodded his understanding and kept right on walking with us, into the operating room we go! The group came to a halt as they began to transfer me from the gurney onto the operating table. The officious surgeon looked up in surprise and said directly to Jon, "You can't be here. Get out." Jon smiled and left. It was cold. I lay there and they even put warm towels on my body. The nurse was explaining what was happening as it happened. I didn't even look at the surgeon. I stared at the lights and then all was light, and then not.

Part III I woke in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm and cracks of sunlight seeping through the blinds. I felt nothing: no pain, no body. I was mildly interested in the Morphine; my fear of needles seemed to disappear under the constant need for IV and regular injections. I was interested that I didn't need to eat. Jon came by often with books and cards; a friend stopped by with her kids, but I don't remember anything, save the vague strain of trying to be more intelligible than I really was, and I remember being thankful for the nurse's caring-but-frank honesty which told me exactly what I needed to do to get better whether I wanted to or not. Jon walked with me and my IV up and down the halls once I was fit enough to stand. Eating anything besides ice chips was a major achievement and the day I could swallow Jell-O was a sure sign I was headed home. My second vein collapsed around the IV before then, and I begged them after the eleventh try to see if we could abandon the needle for oral painkillers. The deep bruise on the inside of my arm stung like a wasp for what would be months to come. I was not allowed to leave until they had proof my bowels were working properly, and after the ordeal getting here, I had no more shyness about this than my lost fear of surgery. The surgeon came in once to check on his handiwork: three, small slits like a tic-tac-toe across my abdomen -- he said the scars were minimal but chided me there had been layers of scar tissue so I must have been having flare-ups for over a year! [So much for my soy allergy...that was really due to my appendix trying to explode.] When I finally went home to the comfort of the carnivorous couch and warm broth and Jon close by, I marveled at modern medicine, changing perspectives and the ominous Health Care System. Then it was all swept under the rug as I was notified of being dropped by our auto insurance, turned twenty-nine, and watched the free world dive into chaos with a 49% split over Florida. Ain't life a wonder?