The Two Worst Days, Part I

The bad days these past two weeks have been many, but there are two that stand out. The first worst day was Friday, the 27th of June, the third day following surgery, when Kay spent a second day in a stupor more pervasive than the preceding one, in and out of a fever, unable to get past 1500 on her incentive spirometer. She was awake, but not endowed with anything resembling her true personality, just grimly trudging through life and sleeping a sleep that may have been a “prisoners release” but was not “the certaine knot of peace, / The baiting-place of wit, the balme of woe,” for when she awoke she only trudged the more. In the late afternoon and the late evening, she was given a diuretic, the diagnosis being that her somnolence and fever were due to the external compression of her lungs by fluids used during the operation. This diuretic had no impact until late, perhaps twelve midnight, at which point she got up to go to the bathroom. This continued all the night, every half hour exactly, until it tapered off near morning. As she was still somewhat disabled from bending and yanking, I was point man for unplugging the IV – conveniently between her bed and my couch – and we both spent a vergessenworthy but unforgettable night. Miraculously, the next morning, she was better. The fever was down, the lethargy gone despite the long night, and she was allowed to take her first liquid tray since she had gone under, her first food, in fact, since noon of the day before the surgery. All seemed well.