Going under

I was in my mid-twenties the last time I had a general anaesthetic.  

My wisdom teeth needed to be carved out of my gums, after they refused to come quietly.  The dental surgeon told me to tell him when I tasted onions.  I did, and immediately felt myself sink into my supine body, falling and drifting downwards and backwards into blackness.

Years later, another anaesthetist told me he was adding "medicine" to the oxygen I was breathing in, to help me relax, he said.  I remember nothing after that -- until I awoke, firmly swaddled and disorientated, thinking I was back in my own bed at home.  Then I felt the gurney moving, and heard reassuring voices from the masked and gown figures pushing me along.

This was the long-hoped-for conclusion of four remarkably stressful (and educational) days, struggling with the logistics of consults and time-tabling by phone, and then three days of on-and-off fasting in preparation for a procedure that kept being postponed for other people's emergencies  - which is only right, I add hastily.  All in all, it's preferable to be a case of urgency, rather than an actual emergency. (Although, in French, it's the same thing, isn't it?) 

Being "urgent" rather than an emergency bought me time to get my head around how to navigate healthcare these days.  It reminded me strongly of the days when younger daughter was first "identified": when the Resident Fan Boy and I were like mice dropped into a maze and frantically figuring out where to scuttle to get the help she needed, with various degrees of success and a lot of wrong turns.

On Sunday morning at 8 am, the call finally came, telling me it was "likely" I would be admitted that afternoon, and to plan to arrive at the hospital at 11 -- but only if called.  The Resident Fan Boy decided to skip church, partly because I was terrified, and partly because he figured God would know where he was.

What followed was our weirdest wedding anniversary ever.

The "come in" call came at 10:30; we arrived at Emergency just before 11 am. When I was last here, in the catastrophic whirlwind accompanying Demeter's final fall, I don't remember much of what was going on around me.  This morning was rife with other people's bad days.  There were few seats, because a weeping young woman was surrounded by police officers.  The Resident Fan Boy told me that she had been out somewhere involving drugs, and someone had dumped an unidentified liquid over her.  Her grandparents had dropped her off at Emergency.  

Every time the sliding security doors opened on the Ambulatory waiting room, we could see a man slumped in a "baby pose" in the middle of the floor, rather like Mr Bean at church -- without the comedy.

A few months ago, I came across a remarkable article by Jody Paterson, of the Times-Colonist.

It's a detailed depiction of how steadily deepening opioid crisis has manifested in Victoria.  

Paterson begins with a street person waxing nostalgic about the days when there was one opioid on the streets:  "Heroin was like a warm hug."

This article was, for me, a clearer explanation of the decade-old nightmare into which drug-use has descended, and how dangerous even recreational drugs have become.  I grew up with quite a few of my peers casually experimenting with pot, hash, and even cocaine.  It was almost normalized.  Evidently not, now.

Back in Emergency, I did what I had been told.  I informed the lady at the reception desk that I had been called in for a procedure.  She pointed me to a seat, took my blood pressure and temperature -- and disappeared. With my health card.  

After conferring with the Resident Fan Boy, I used the phone number I'd been given, informed the team upstairs I'd arrived, and pretty soon people came looking for me.  Then I went looking for the lady with my health card.

Apparently, I'd failed to use the magic word:  "surgery".

As I was guided, kindly and patiently, through the preparation and procedure, it did occur to me that I was getting the care I needed, not because I deserved it, but because I had the right connections and information, was reasonably well-groomed and articulate, and was in the company of my attentive husband.  Unlike those people downstairs.

Also unlike those in Emergency, I was home about four hours after I left.