They are cutting me loose from the hospital. Saturday afternoon. The official record finally caught up with the medical staff “rumor.” I’m dressed and ready, but waiting on discharge papers, instructions, meds, and my ride.
Not a regular Feline Friday photo gallery, since I’m still in a bed in the University of California San Francisco adult cancer hospital until late today or tomorrow.
But a few photos and a short tale about Bessie.
Bessie is calico #2. She joined our household a little over a year after Ms. Kali. Unlike our other three cats, she apparently didn’t spend much if any time living outdoors in a cat colony. She appears to have been someone’s cat that was dumped off at the top of Aiea Heights, but quickly spotted and pulled out by one of the colony caretakers who saw her potential for adoption.
We were the ones who adopted her. In hindsight, the problem is that she was never socialized into the mysterious ways of cat behavior learned in the colony by our other cats. So she has been picked on by the others, primarily Kinikini and Kali.
During the times of day they are out and about the house, Bessie has to tread very carefully because at any moment she might be chased under a chair or back into her spot on the top of storage shelves in our pantry/storeroom. But when Kali and Kinikini are putting in their required 18 hours of sleep each day, Bessie emerges and can enjoy being the temporary queen of the living room.
But there are limits. She rarely ventures into the hallway leading to our bedroom, and since her earliest days, does not voluntarily enter our bedroom. Kinikini and Kali both made it clear that the bedroom, and especially our bed, was their nonnegotiable territory. Claws flashed and fur flew, and Bessie learned the lesson.
Interestingly, things get turned around when we leave the house, and the cats, in the hands of our cat sitter. Kinikini hides and is rarely seen. Kali is standoffish at best. But Ms. Bessie is as social as can be, and quickly takes over the social spaces opened up when Kini and Kali retreat into the shadows.
Both Meda and I were shocked this week to receive a photo of Bessie sitting on our bed. Not simply exploring the bedroom, but sitting on our bed!
So there are bright spots to our absence and the resulting shakeup of feline social relations.
Bessie enjoying our bed!
I’ve been exploring an unusual extreme of the culinary spectrum this week.
Immediately after my surgery on Monday, I was hooked up to IV ports In each arm that, as I uderstand, delivered pain control miedictions, antibiotics, fluids, and very basic nutrition.
I was not able to take any liquid or food by mouth for two days, until a tube inserted through my nose to my stomach was removed. Surprisingly, the tube didn’t cause me any other discomfort or inconvenience, but the food thing loomed large in my experience.
Today I learned it is called a Nasogastric Tube or NG tube. It can be used to send medication or whatever down into the stomach. In my case it was the reverse, serving as a drain sucking out digestive fluid, I think.
Then on Wednesday morning the tube was removed. I expected that there would be some procedure to do this, but it was more like quickly ripping off a bandage.
“One, two, three…” I heard the nurse say before he pulled that length of plastic tubing from my depths in one quick move. It reminded me of a scene from the movie “Alien” where baby monsters emerge from various parts of the body.
By this time, I had been without eating anything for 3-1/2 days, but now I was limited to a clear liquid-only diet. Clear beverages, clear broth, and liquids in disguise like Jello.
I ordered my first “meal” using a menu system on the large screen TV. When my tray was delivered, I picked up a spoon and ate a spoonful of orange jello.
The sensations—the cool jello, the taste on my tongue, the simple pleasure of something I would have typically dismissed—were overwhelming. It tasted like the best chef-produced meal of my life.
It reminded me of this scene from Oliver!
The liquid diet continued for two days. On Friday, I graduated to a pureed diet of foods reduced to a soft pudding-like or applesauce-like consistency.
Puréed carrots and turkey
“Astronaut food,” one friend suggested.“
Yum,” I mutter sarcastically.
The main items, turkey and carrots, had only the vaguest hint of what were supposedly the underlying foods.
Nothing tasted bad. It’s just that they were devoid of the appearance, texture, and smell that are integral to the experience of eating.
And now I’ve learned that my surgeon has directed that I stay on the puréed food diet for another 10 days until my follow-up exam, including just over a week after I’ve been discharged from the hospital.
So I’ll get some experience as a purée chef, taking my foods of choice, first using a blender or food processor to reduce them to a goo, and then putting them through a strainer to remove any offending larger bits that survive the process.
All this out of an abundance of caution in avoiding stressing any parts of my system after abdominal surgery.
I understand the need to go slow. That doesn’t make the prospect any more appealing.
Under the circumstances, I am extremely happy to be here in this UCSF hospital getting excellent care.
But here’s the thing. It reminds me that I must be one of the 5%, or 3%, or 1% of the population who have access to this kind of excellent care.
Our system concentrates health resources among those who already have lots of other social, political, and financial resources. To get here, it required excellent insurance, which Meda qualified for after working for the State of Hawaii for 50 years. It also required personal resources so we were able to get ourselves from Hawaii to San Francisco for the specialized care that they have been able to provide.
But there’s another thing that people don’t talk about. And that is that it often takes knowing somebody who knows somebody to get into an excellent system like this. Like so many other parts of life, it get’s down to who you know.
I called on an old friend who happened to have connections here at UCSF and one thing led to another, and I ended up using those connections to get into the system here. I can’t say for sure just how vital they were, but I think they were important in breaking through the. bureaucracy that screens incoming patients.
So that’s a big burden for regular people seeking healthcare without these layers of personal or family resources. We really do have to do something about it.