The party update will come, I’ve tried to draft it a couple of times, but with Nancy being so sick it just hasn’t felt right – or flowed. I think the following will come easier. Sorry. I’m using this to help me feel better. So this may be self-indulgent.
We went to see Nancy last night at the NY Hospital (they’ve moved her over from Sloan Kettering) and she wasn’t in a good state. She was sharing a room with a maniacal woman who was screaming and shouting all day and night ‘I’m going to kill the nurses’ etc. Not condusive to staying calm with a 13mm aneurism. She eventually got a private room.
Patti (her cousin) was there being remarkable. You need advocates when you’re in a hospital. It’s something my mother has done and speaks of often. You watch nurses and Dr’s speak over patients ‘at’ them not ‘to’ them – as if they are as emotional as the barcode on their wrist band.
Ben arrived, and we thought that for her last meal before surgery we’d get her a pizza. No doubt against every guideline. Following the sled load of Jacques Torres chocolates, the pizza was a real task – for me that is, as Nancy didn’t touch it. She was scared. And upset. And stressed.
It’s so hard to be funny and diversional when someone you love has been told they could die in an operation tomorrow – and die if they don’t have it at any time. And that’s not including the stage 4 cancer which has been ‘put on hold’ as the brain trumps all.
We left her at 10 last night, promising to be there at 6 this morning. And I was.
I arrived, bought a big coffee and made my way up. She was in a real induced state. Euphoric, comatose, upset. Angry. And thought that what we should be watching was vintage baseball. What do you do when you’re there? You just be there. That’s it. You don’t have to fill every silence or crack every joke.
I won’t go into endless detail, but Patti and Tony Roberts – her brother – soon arrived and we all told her we loved her as she left for surgery.
Into the waiting room. No cell phones. I was cancelling meetings. Where else could you be? What else could you be doing? I’m on her living will. What if we have to make a decision there and then? Doing anything other than staring at the salmon pink walls was impossible.
We escaped for a shotgun breakfast – and some diversion, which included Tony standing up and performing 30 seconds of his new role in Xanadu – with hand moves. Funny and endearing.
We return. We get called into the room next to the OR. It’s like the 24 control room. Flat screens. I’m looking at an animation of her aneurism reacting to a dye being injected. Then the network of vessels it could damage or destroy. Then a 3D rendering of the aneurism. It is remarkable medicine, but bad news. It can’t be coiled. It has to be full cranial surgery – and the odds are reduced as it can’t be clipped – only modified into a vessel or bypassed. The ground swallows you – and you think black thoughts. I’m moved to tears and have to walk in front of Patti and Tony as I don’t want to look weak – I think my stupid humour, and ’spin’ is helping us all keep going.
Because Everyone Brings Something Different at a time like this. Ben is a rock. The office is being supportive.
We see Nancy in recovery at 5, Patti is an amazing advocate – we discover she’s been kicked out of her room. We demand another. We see she’s on a stretcher way to small. We demand another. We moisten her lips – which are torn and stained with blood. She is exhausted and they ask us to leave.
I see her alone at 7.30 – she’s much better, on a new bed, still in pain – still scared. I regale her with tales of the brilliant medicine, high tech-ery and caring, straight talking surgeon, in the hope this will bolster her and make her feel safe.
I tell her they have to be very careful not to damage the googlethalamus – the part of Nancy’s brain that controls her internet search and research addiction.
She laughs. I cry. We say goodbye.
