The Saddest Room

the-saddest-room

 

Early on in Cee’s illness, I think one of my lowest lows came in what I called “The Saddest Room.”

Cee had been taken into an operating room for her bone marrow biopsy.  Only one person could be with her as she went under anesthesia.  The nurse told me to follow her and my mom and David were taken to a waiting room.

The operating room was about the size of an average bedroom, and packed with all sorts of scary looking medical things.  There were 6 or so people not counting Cee and me in there, too.  It was tight.  As I kept telling myself to make sure not to accidentally touch anything, some kind nurses talked to Cee about what would happen.  She had had some “I don’t care” medicine so she was very go with the flow about it.  She made sure to show the nurses how she had just figured out (with the help of the “I don’t care” prep medicine) how to cross her fingers.

The anesthesiologist injected the “go to sleep” medicine into her IV, and she started to scream.  Even go with the flow Cee was no match for the burn when it was injected.  Officially the creepiest thing I have seen, I watched Cee go from screaming and fighting to completely asleep in seconds.  Watching her go limp like that is something I pray I never have to see again.

One of the nurses ushered me out as I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.  Between the anticipation of the results of the bone marrow biopsy and having just seen Cee go under, holding myself together had never been so hard.

It was a long walk to the waiting room, which held maybe 15 different clumps of people.  Upon entering the waiting room, I officially could have been classified as a hot mess.  David and my mom had seated themselves at the far end of the room.  “Great. Don’t mind me and my sobbing, large group of strangers,” I thought as I walked down the middle of the room.

The waiting was the hardest.  David pretended to do work stuff on his lap top.  My mom would periodically walk across the room to check Catherine’s status on a big TV–sort of like the info at airports.  She commented on the quality of the magazines.  (I did see an older gentleman take a copy of “The Smithsonian” while we were there, but poor “Birds and Blooms” was lonely the whole time.)

I don’t really remember anything else that we said.  I was able to collect myself enough so that my hot mess at least wasn’t audible anymore.  A Muslim couple was the clump of people closest to us.  They were probably about the same age as David and me.  The woman was beautiful.  And she was clutching a bag of unopened Cheetos.

Even in my current state, it was difficult not to stare, since they were seated between me and the window.  The man made eye contact with me and said, “It will be okay” in a very convincing way.  My thought at the time was, “Great.  Even strangers are trying to talk me down from hysterical now.”  But I realized that their collectedness probably came with experience.  They had probably been here before, and things really would be okay.

After that I felt a little better.  I decided to look around the waiting room a little.  Each clump was different, older people, middle aged people, a man who was waiting for a Somalian interpreter sat in a wheelchair.  He was probably about as tall as me, and he was sitting.  It was a big wheelchair.  Everyone looked tense to some degree or another.  You don’t come to Mayo for a picnic.  Everyone who was in the operating room was there for something at least semi-serious.  And everyone in the waiting room was praying everything would be okay.

This was only reinforced by a young couple marching around with an empty baby carrier.  The couple was young, about as young as a couple could be and still have a baby.  They had seated themselves as far away from the status TV as they could be.  So they’d walk all across the big room, infant carseat in tow, to check the TV.  Then they’d walk all the way back.  A few minutes later they’d walk all the way across the room to check it again, then go back to their seats.

Then they must have had a question because they walked all the way across the room to talk to the receptionist (located right next to the status TV).  My mom stated the obvious, that they were probably waiting for their baby to come out of some surgery.  Eventually they were called back, so that put the marching to an end.  I was glad, for their sake, that their waiting was over.  I hoped their carseat would be filled soon.

I’ve commented before that no one should be allowed to watch medical dramas.  It was in that waiting room that I had that thought.  I dreaded the possibility of someone in scrubs coming to talk to our little clump.  I dreaded the concerned/sad/sympathetic look doctors on TV always have when they deliver bad news.  I dreaded the thought of losing Cee and not being there for her.  I dreaded leaving with her carseat empty…

I saw the Muslim couple later, on the peds floor; their son was eating that bag of Cheetos.  The husband was right.  It was okay.

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