I Can Feel It Getting Down To The Wire

The second-last week before summer vacation just finished, and it was quite the time. By Wednesday of this coming week I need report cards done, parents of unsuccessful kids phoned and so on, and I need to finish the yearbook by Friday. I took last Friday off to take Dad in for prostate surgery.  

    Thursday evening, I worked on the yearbook for a while, then went to my folks' place two towns over.  As I drove through my old town on the way and looked at buildings and houses where I used to shop or know people,I found myself noting "burned down, out of business, dead, killed, died, moved away, died, torn down and replaced with Shopper's Drug Mart, died last week" and so on. A morbid inventory, I realized. 

      I arrived to find my folks very tense and nervous about the surgery, and glad I was helping out by coming along and driving everyone.  My dad's voice was unusually high and soft, and he stammered often when talking about the surgery.  They both went to bed and I couldn't sleep so I took the sort of silent, contemplative walk I used to take when I lived there: down long, unlit dirt farm roads with trees overhanging on both sides. There were no stars due to clouds scumbled thickly across the sky, and the moon only a glow cutting through that here and there. There were some unbelievably loud frogs nearby. 

     I startled a huge deer which was walking right toward me until it heard me from a couple of meters away, and thudded and splashed away. The trees were all bespeckled with fireflies. It was like walking through an entire forest glen of Christmas trees filled with moving sparks. There is a new radio tower visible from that neighborhood in the distance now, with an obnoxiously bright, slowly pulsing white light on top which looks like a bad UFO effect in an old movie. I could swear some of the fireflies were frantically signalling back at it. I hope it isn't coincidentally flashing the firefly equivalent for "I'm not wearing any panties" at the little buggers. Big disappointment all around if that's the case. 

   At 4am, we piled into my folks' old car and I drove them to the hospital 1.5 hours away.  It takes me 1.5 hours, anyway, and my mother was panicking and asking me to slow down because I was driving around bends over the speed limit.  I had my father's support in driving 20km over the limit, but she was having a tough time with that. 

     We got to the hospital and had to wait 40 minutes for them to be ready to let people in.  Then we sat in a room for almost an hour before the doctor and anaesthesiologist, each in turn, came to have a word.  My dad and mom didn't see the humour in the surgeon and anaesthesiologist (for a prostate removal) being named Dr's Siemans and Ho.  It struck me as absurd and funny. Then my father was eventually gotten into a robe and slippers prior to surgery and came and sat with us some more, and was then whisked off to surgery.  

    Mom and I went down and had breakfast once the cafeteria opened. Then Mom and I sat in the O.R. Waiting Room and I marked final exams.  She was trying to read Blue Like Jazz by Don Miller, which I'd brought for her, but was, of course, having trouble relaxing and concentrating.  I'd about finished all of my English class when the nurse came to say the surgery was underway and we'd hear something in maybe 2 hours.  

     Mom was all for sitting there for 2 hours, but I was all for breaking our time up by going and sitting in a park across the street in the sun, under some trees.  We did that, which was a good idea. We came back in, and I marked some more, finding it harder to concentrate because some idiots decided they needed to watch afternoon television in the waiting room with the volume up.  

    I put on my iPod with King's X (I don't know why, it's just been a while since I listened to Gretchen Goes To Nebraska, and it's better for blocking out nattering shrill voices than Glen Hansard of The Frames and The Swell Season is) and marked at about half the speed I'd been going before. 

    The nurse came and said the doctor would be coming out to speak to us in about an hour and a half, so Mom and I had lunch and sat in a different park, then came back.  The doctor said the surgery was textbook, that the cancer had been very localized and they'd also been able to leave the nerves on the right side so my father could retain some sensation, and that he was very happy with the job he'd been able to do.  Then we were told we could see Dad in a couple of hours.  So, more marking.  

     I got one of my Civics classes all marked, and had an interesting conversation with a woman who turned out to be an elementary school teacher in our school board (despite us being 2.5 hour's drive from my school) and we were told there was delay in getting a bed for Dad.  

    Eventually, they let us come in and see him in recovery.  He was lying in a funny little bed, looking very small and pale, with his foot sticking out of the bed with an O2 sensor clipped to it, shining red LED through his big toe.  He was on morphine and was very out of it, but we spoke to him, and then drove back home. 

    Saturday I worked on yearbook, pottered around not getting much done, had an energy drink to get moving, drove into town and saw The Incredible Hulk, which was OK, though I'm completely sick of CG, I've come to realize.  The movie was nice when there was talking, but was also like an adaptation of the classic 80s video game Rampage in spots, especially when the giant pudding monsters were wobbling about, roaring and fighting, with not the slightest bit of suspense due to no one being able to picture them being real, physical things, nor capable of getting hurt in any way.  

    I realized what my problem with all these people making the movies I would have wanted to see back in the day: I am tired of being pandered to rather than challenged. 

    Sunday I phoned Mom for news and she said she was going to drive in and see Dad, as he was staying in a couple more days.  I hadn't got much work done, and it was looming, waiting to get done, so I offered to drive her in to see him, and did.  Mom made no comment on me driving even faster than the speed limit, and I put on my iPod with the hymns my sister and I recorded last summer. She'd never heard them and was quite impressed, and sang along.   

    Dad was in bed, but able to get up, which he did. There was some joking about his "aquarium equipment" (catheter stuff).  The view out the window of sailboats on Lake Ontario, and a medical helicopter landing and taking off was quite lovely.  He wants to sleep a lot, and he's not really feeling like eating, but that takes time.  

    The nurse wasn't bad looking.  Brunette, brown eyes, ghetto booty.   

    I drove Mom home to find her power was off, then drove me home and found I needed to take a nap before I could do any work, then didn't want to work, then got some yearbook pages done and felt a lot better.  Bethany phoned in the middle, which helped.  Interruptions and being able to ask for second opinions help me work.