A Country Rag Vintage Lines
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award-winning columnist and editor for thirty years
of the Page News and Courier, Luray, Virginia
Graphic: photo by Don Silvius, WV stone church
"Under the Knife"Once past middle age and heading into the golden years, a person tends to become more intimately involved with health issues. Even those who have maintained beneficial habits, such as proper eating and exercise, find that some parts of their bodies cease to function as well as they should. In my own case, “beneficial habits” took a back seat shortly after I started to work at age 21. Like many others, my life became a merry-go-round of long sedentary pressure-filled workdays alternated with brief periods of hyperactive and uncoordinated recreation and social activity. I loved my work in a deadline-sensitive environment and I relished the weekend fun of suburban and rural living.Unhealthy habits crept in. I smoked cigarettes, enjoyed late-night parties a bit too much, ate anything that was placed in front of me and considered pushing myself away from the table as a regular exercise routine. In addition, I selected the wrong genes from a genealogical line which included a remarkably high number of early deaths from heart, blood vessel and chronic digestive diseases. As I edged into late middle age, it should have come as no surprise that my body began to protest about the abuses heaped upon it. After a mild heart attack in my forties and quintuple heart bypass surgery in my late fifties, I made a remarkable recovery. With a few medications, my problems seemed under excellent control. Doctors commented on how well I was functioning and what a perfect success the surgery had been. I retired from my high-pressure job. I began a program of regular walking and exercise. My weight was under control even though I occasionally indulged my passion for steak and potatoes, a few beers and calorie-rich desserts. So I made it to age 60 with a bright outlook for continued moderately good health and a fulfilling retirement. Then came a small interruption. My digestive tract, battered by all those snack foods and burgers washed down with corrosive soft drinks, began to fight back. I developed a condition called diverticulosis, a fancy name for a common complaint of older people in which tiny projections from the inside walls of the intestines can impede the passage of partially digested food. It’s not a pleasant subject and it’s even less pleasant to undergo the flare-ups of the acute form of the disease, diverticulitis. Diverticulitis is something like having appendicitis in 12 places at the same time. It hurts and it makes you sick. Frequently, the only recourse to calming the acute infection is hospitalization to receive intravenous antibiotics. For me, it meant being very careful with my diet – no seeds, nuts, corn, popcorn or other potential irritants. Still, the acute episodes hit sporadically and, as time went by, more frequently. At last, my doctor said that surgery to remove the worst section of my intestine was the only possible permanent solution to this cycle of pain and illness. Caught in the middle of a particularly severe attack, I agreed and was shipped off to a specialist at the nearby University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville. One of the premier abdominal surgeons in the East outlined my options: I could skip surgery and take an increasing chance on a rupture of my intestines which often proved fatal or I could have surgery. “Oh, that’s easy,” I said. “I’ll have surgery.” Then the surgeon and two of his assistants began to outline the possible complications from surgery – bacterial and viral infections which could eat up my internal organs, temporary or permanent damage to my urinary tract and other essential body parts, a temporary or permanent colostomy and, in some cases, DEATH. Hmmm. Maybe I was a bit hasty here. Perhaps I should just take my chances on a slow, painful exit instead of being cut open and then suffering a slow, painful exit. But, after much reassurance by the surgeon and his competent-appearing cohorts, I signed the paper to allow them entry into the lower recesses of my battered old body. The surgery was scheduled. In retrospect, the worst part of the surgical procedure came before I ever got to the hospital – the 24-hour-long purging of every possible solid and liquid molecule from within the body. By the early morning hours surgery day, I felt there was nothing left of my digestive tract to be of any interest to anyone but a microbiologist. But soon they gave me some happy pills, stuck a needle in my spine and whisked me away to a black, dreamless place free of any sensation whatever. It seemed an instant before a nurse was saying, “Hello, there, you did just fine.” I was in the post-operative care room and, oddly, I felt no pain and no illness despite the fact that someone had just sliced me open like a ripe melon. I was hospitalized for four almost pleasant days, the last two of which were enlivened by a roommate who had the same operation and, surprise, was an old friend of mine dating back more than 25 years. The only unpleasant part was that I could have nothing to eat. Nothing. Ice chips. That’s nothing. To keep me entertained, the hospital provided an almost constant parade of nurses, doctors, interns, medical technicians, technologists, specialists and maintenance personnel. Sometimes they came alone and jabbed me with something. Sometimes they were in pairs and both of them jabbed me with something. And sometimes they were a group of eight or ten, all hovering around my bed listening as their leader pointed to me, exposed my lower body to their clinical stares and pulled back the dressings covering the area of incision. “Oh, that looks very good,” one of them would invariably say, indicating the surgical scar. The others would smile and nod in agreement. Because I couldn’t bend and had no access to a mirror, I had no idea what the incision looked like, but, judging by the glowing comments, I thought it must be a work of needlecraft art. My progress after surgery was excellent and soon I was able to be up to walk in the hallways with little assistance. Any pain that may have ensued was effectively reduced by a computer-controlled spinal nerve block. The fourth day after surgery, I returned home and for the first time had a chance to clearly see the incision which had drawn such complimentary “oohs” and “aahs” from the medical interns. AAAAaaaaauuuuugggghhh! The view that greeted me in the full-length mirror caused me to freeze in horror. A 17-inch raised red welt awkwardly pinned together by staples – staples, like those you hang posters with, mind you – curved in a zig-zag from just above my navel to a place I will delicately refer to as my lower abdomen – very lower abdomen. The Frankenstein monster, in his most garish movieland incarnation, never had a scar this ugly. What were those interns cooing about – the fact that none of my internal organs were exposed to the open air? After my initial shock subsided, though, I was just very grateful that the operation had been successful. Obviously, the surgeon and his assistants had performed a miraculous task – removing about a foot of my alimentary canal and piecing it back together so that it functioned better than it has for 15 years. So what’s a little scar? My wife removed the staples with, you guessed it, a staple remover and it looked somewhat better. Still, if I ever return to the beach, I’ll probably wear those voluminous swimtrunks like those you see modeled by 80-year-old retirees in Miami Beach.
April 2000RECOVERY NOTE: Earlier this month, John Waybright underwent hospitalization and a serious, successful operation at Charlottesville's University of Virginia Hospital from which he is recovering with the assistance of family and friends. Send well wishes to waybrite@shentel.net.
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Train station at Quicksburg, VA, around the turn of the century
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