Chapter 2

Christie pretended that her mother was absolutely right and her scheduled operations were more routine than emergency and she just needed to have the right attitude and all would come out just fine in the end.

The night before she was due to go to the hospital for the breast operation, she dreamed about Doctor Hammer cupping her “bad” breast in his surgeon’s hands and gently outlining the area to be removed with tender care. She was all in favor of his plan to carve out the tumor and save her breast giving her a better chance at romance in her prime humping years in college.

She knew she had a crush on the handsome doctor but felt certain he was all “girled up” with either a spouse or a girlfriend stashed away in a hideaway and taken out at night for his sexual pleasure.

Apparently, this operation would only be an overnight expedition with the more serious operation scheduled for the following month and that tumor was located inexplicably inside her unsuspected bladder with cellular stealth with no symptoms and caught only because of the cat-scan.

The doctor’s nurse had explained to her that the second operation was far more dangerous because they had to very careful of not damaging the bladder wall in removing it. If there were any traces of the cancer remaining after that operation, she would have to have some chemotherapy to make certain it would not come back again.

This visit to the hospital required a family member to be there to act as a caretaker in the post operation phase of the appointment. Her older brother Mike who was at home for the week with a lull in his work offered to drive her to the hospital and back and tend her in that 24 hour period right after the operation to make certain everything was in functional order.

Since this first operation was not involving any internal organs, there was less risk involved and it was more of a routine operation catching the cancer in an early stage and removing it before it spread to other parts of the body.

Diane was glad that her brother was accompanying her instead of her mother. She loved her mother dearly but she had a way of changing everything so it was all about her and nobody else no matter the problem or the gravity of the situation. Sometimes her eternal optimism drove her bananas with her narrow view of the world around her.

Mike was a salesman and he traveled for his company to several different states gathering orders for the factory located down by the river in their town. Their older brother had the same job but he got sent overseas on a military assignment and never made it home from his second tour of duty. They had a little shrine for him at home and sometimes when she passed it she shed a tear for his happy smile and sense of duty to serve his country above all else.

Now, she was all cleared for the operation and she was in the part of the hospital where the operating rooms were located. They told her that they would be giving her an anesthetic after she was transferred from the gurney to the operating table. It was the first time she had been operated on and it was strange to have them inflate the mattress under her body and simply slide her onto the table like she was floating on air.

After that things got blurred and she remembered that she woke up with Mike sitting in the chair next to her bed in the recovery room. Of course, he was on his cell phone playing some game or texting someone that he didn’t bother to talk to on the phone any longer because it was too confining and took too much time.

Diane looked down at her gown and she did her best to close it up in the back because she was certain part of her ass was hanging out for casual onlookers to view with amusement.

Mike looked up from his tablet and laughed at her.

“I wouldn’t worry about that, sis you show more than that at the beach with that thong you like to wear.”

Her mouth felt fuzzy and her brain was spinning in an odd pattern that was probably the effects of the anesthesia wearing off just like the nurse had explained before she did the pre-op examination.

“Mike, can you get me some water or some Sprite from that table over there.” She had to get something wet down her throat sooner rather than later.

The nurse, who was not the talkative type came in to take her blood pressure and check the area of the operation. Apparently everything was up to snuff because they got the nod that they could leave the ward in about thirty minutes.

The nurse gave her a liquid antibiotic and six pain pills to be consumed twice a day for the next three days. After that she would be reduced to Tylenol as part of their updated pain management project.

Diane felt no real pain and she was subdued on the ride home nodding off into never-never land for most of the trip. Mike was a good driver and she had no worries on that score but her mother was another story with her constant wanting to talk on the phone while she was driving and the way she talked back to the GPS system and even the radio like it was a two way communication device.

Once she was back in her own room, Diane felt completely relaxed and she started to worry about the more involved operation the following month. Doctor Hammer was talking to her about Lymph nodes and the fact that they were larger than they should be. It was all Greek to her and she listened but really didn’t understand a word he was saying. She had given him her verbal permission to do a biopsy scheduling appointment for six weeks after the Bladder operation was finished. She was beginning to be overwhelmed with all the different parts of the body the cancer could go to and she hoped they wouldn’t find anything else before they could fix what they had already discovered.