Recovery - 4

When I walked into the hospital room at 6:45 the next morning, Dad was sitting up in bed with a breakfast tray in front of him. He didn’t look as good as he had the night before. “How are you?” I asked, immediately concerned.

 “Sickish,” he said. “I’ve got a headache and my stomach feels lousy; I don’t feel like eating at all – and look what we’ve got – scrambled eggs. Ugh.” That was odd, since he’d been eating heartily ever since the surgery. “I ordered you a guest breakfast, though,” he said, and before I could look up, someone was bringing it through the door. I was hungry and somewhat sheepishly ate the whole thing while Dad picked at his, although he was right - it wasn’t great. 

The nurses had unhooked all the remaining tubes and equipment the previous night; he was sure they would send him home that day. In half an hour the doctor and his PA came into the room; the talk I’d heard was true – the surgeon was very handsome and just as charming. He was building himself a little empire there – a growing, very successful orthopedic clinic with several other surgeons now, and a reputation for excellent care and outcomes – in fact, during the time I was in the area, a report was released citing this clinic as the fifth best in New York State for knee replacement surgery. He sat down next to Dad’s bed while I perched on the windowsill, and unwrapped the dressing over my father’s knee. I winced inwardly when I saw the incision and the neat row of metal staples holding it together. “32 of them,” my father had noted, dryly. “A thousand bucks apiece.” The cost of this surgery – all paid by Medicare, but even so – was $32,000. 

“Looks great!” the doctor said, sounding and looking pleased with himself, and his patient, who I thought was actually looking pretty peaked at the moment, in spite of putting up a good front.  

“The worst thing was when you took the drain out yesterday,” my father said. 

“Yeah, I know,” said the surgeon, sympathetically, standing up. “Everyone says it’s excruciating. I used to not use that kind of drain because I knew it hurt people so much to take it out – but the recovery is much better and faster when you do use it; you get a lot less swelling in the knee itself. 

“Well, it’s the kind of pain that’s over quickly too,” my father admitted. “Unlike what I’ve had up until now, and what I’ll have while this gets better.” 

“Right – but if you do the therapy you’ll make fast progress. So, you all set to go home today?” 

My father said he was ready if they said he was, and explained that I’d be there for at least a week to help him. The PA and surgeon beamed at him. “I have no doubt but what you’ll do great,” the doctor said, patting my father's good leg. “You’re in great shape and everything went really well,” He got up and headed for the door, then looked back over his shoulder and grinned, “and I know you’ll be excellent advertising for our practice!” 

He was right in his assessment that my father knew and talked to a lot of people, but I doubted if the practice needed any more advertising. Glamour was in short supply in this rural area, and this doctor definitely had it. Everyone I talked to over the next week told me about the house he had built for himself outside town – it was apparently huge, and included a full-size hockey rink for his boys. I was used to local people being pretty bent out of shape about that kind of wealth, but while these remarks had a tone of amazement, they didn’t have that familiar, expected edge of resentment – probably because he had helped people close to them and was clearly a down-to-earth, nice guy. Or maybe things had changed since I lived there, and people were just more used to the widening gap between the haves – always a small minority here - and the have-nots who made up the vast majority of these rural counties. We were never rich, but my family gradually became better off than most of the families of kids I went to school with, and I had always been uncomfortably aware of the fact, trying to understand and compensate for it whenever I could and never flaunt it. Even so, growing up, I never knew anyone with the kind of money this doctor was making; it was only when I went off to college that I found out what real wealth was. 

The physical therapy team showed up then and put my father through his first routine of exercise, showing him what he needed to work on the first week at home, and then they had him walk down the hall with a walker and taught him how to go up and down stairs with a cane. The head guy – a kind and friendly fifty-year-old with the open face that’s so typical of local people - turned out to be the younger brother of an old classmate of mine, so we had plenty to talk about; he bantered with me while maintaining his concentration on my father.

When we got back to the room, my father was exhausted and nauseous, and he lay in bed with his eyes shut until the discharge papers were prepared. A nurse brought a wheelchair. I went to get the car, which was covered with lightly falling snow; we helped him in, putting the seat back as far as it would go and swinging his stiff, braced leg into the empty space - and headed home, just about exactly three days after his surgery. I wondered what we were both in for.

Comments

[Dave]

We have a doctor like that - great guy, but built himself a mansion in a corn field and plays farmer, with pet bison and llamas and such. I gather his daughter didn't have an easy time of it in the local public schools, but that's more becasue they're Jewish than becuase they're rich. Not anti-Semitism per se, I don't think, just anti-anything different.

[dale]

Good luck! Hope all goes well.