When Being Flattened is a Good Thing
The moment I've been waiting for.
You made it! If you’ve been reading along for the last 14 parts, you are a real trouper. We finally come to what I think you may have been waiting for. How will it all turn out? Will I answer all of your questions? (Probably not.) If you don’t feel good after this one, I can’t help you!
If you’re here for the first time, probably best to start at the very beginning as the song goes…. I hope you’ll stick around and subscribe.
I just focused on Annie’s face sitting across in front of a window. It seemed the sun was beginning to set.
“Look at your stomach” she smiled, “the covers… they’re flat.”
I gazed downward. And there it was. The nothing I’d been dreaming of for years. Mount Everest had been flattened.
It was all over. It had really happened. It worked.
It was done. Finito.
Wait a minute. Is the sun…setting? What time is it?
It was about six (seven?) or so in the evening. Remember when Dr. Goodman said I should be out on a druggy cocktail or two by 3pm?
There were a few wrinkles. When the radiologist used the word histrionic to describe what was going on inside, evidently, he was not being dramatic, but was truly describing the turmoil within. Not within him. Within me. I’m not speaking spiritually here (though I have plans to get to that point another time). Physically speaking, it was, as the kids say, a hot, red hot, mess…the kind of mess that takes longer than 2.5 hours to clean up.
This kind of mess that took upwards of 6 – SIX – hours of surgery.
And two blood transfusions.
Because fibroids, especially angry grapefruit sized fibroids, bleed.
They “ooze” to quote Dr. Goodman.
And somewhere along the time line, I’d oozed out most of my own blood. And later, I’d oozed it out again.
The nurses had to come down once or twice to update Annie, always reassuring her, because when your daughter was supposed to be out an hour… two hours ago…you’ll need a little “heads up”.
That is why Dr. Goodman said before that he was fairly certain he could get them all out.
But after six hours of robotic surgery on the Star Trek gurney with Dr. Goodman at the Star Trek panel not using the spinning “thingy” to remove the offenders but painstakingly taking them apart and out through the little dash marks he’d made and one big dash at the bottom – by six hours and two blood transfusions later he had to stop, leaving a dime sized one or two to shrivel up and die inside.
Also, side note, that little dotted line of five small dash marks was not made just above my pelvis. (Because I like to be special.) For the fibroids had become a totalitarian regime occupying the northern regions of my upper stomach. So those dash marks (i.e. incisions) were made a mere inch below my lowest ribs.
But my stomach was F-L-A-T. Uterus intact. Well that’s not true. It was more, as Dr. Goodman so poetically described, looking like Swiss cheese at the moment. But it was in there none-the-less. Was I about to complain?
Hell to the no.
Unsurprisingly, I would be staying overnight in the hospital.
By the time I’d passed out on the way to the bathroom for the first time, that got me my hall pass for the second night’s stay in the hospital.
I’d lost a lot of blood. I was kind of pale. Actually I looked like the ghost of Christmas past.
I like to call it Boo Radley chic.
And I’d lost about seven pounds.
Maybe two of those pounds were the petrified pebbles within.
But I lived to tell the tale!
Some sweet things: The president (who was my teacher’s husband) came into my room to check on me that night or the next day. I don’t remember which. But I do remember him kissing me on the forehead. Which makes me kind of tear up thinking about it now.
Also it occurred to me that someone had arranged for a private room.
I would have been satisfied with the janitor’s utility closet for that flat stomach. But someone thought a little more about it.
Dr. Goodman came in, of course, and here is the stomach-turning thing – he showed me on his phone pictures of those warmongers! He showed me my (my?) fibroids. The one’s that were just inside my body! Blech!
I could barely look. They were all cleaned up. (Someone does that?) But not one of them - Not. One. – was smaller than a rather large lemon. He had them all lined up – ALL FOURTEEN OF THEM – like the von Trapp family children on a silver platter, from biggest offender to the tiniest little squeaking twit.
He was so proud.
Well I guess I would be too. And he should have been!
But I couldn’t look. I mean some people have the strength to face their attackers on the day of judgement and some simply need to walk away after living with them for too long. The memory is enough. I felt affinity with the latter.
But now… I mean, right now, I wish I could attach a photo of those von Trapps. (And maybe not. Ick.)
A few other little hospital items. Nurses will forever hold the highest of rankings in my heart. Especially that one huge gentle giant who caught me when I passed out. And then there are the ones who simply exude a spiritual calling as they care for you.
They added so much angelic sparkle (and grit) to the miracle that had happened. Indeed, they were very much an integral part of the whole.
I walked out of there.
I walked up the long flight of stairs to my apartment.
I was back to work in three weeks. Yes, singing. Yes, sitting and standing. All of it. (The first week I needed some help lifting instruments.)
And here’s the most interesting icing too…
Apparently, because I just roll this way, my whole “situation” made some sort of medical history. So the hospital decided to document it.
In a film.
Are you kidding me???
So out of all this – I’m given a film to star in. (And if you read The Agent of Change where this all began you’ll see why God has a sense of humor.) I mean that’s just funny. Oh look… God made a little joke. Tee hee.
Dr. Goodman’s team filmed a twenty-minute documentary about my story and how robotic surgery was the only way I could have been freed the way I had been. This was taken shortly after filming.
I searched high and low in the bowels of the old 2011 Dell Inspiron that only took about 15 minutes to boot up (and another 10 minutes per file) to find a picture I KNOW I have of my tummy right before surgery. But alas, some things are meant to be forgotten.1
But here’s a great pic of me and that blue cowboy hat driving back to NYC. (Something I swore I’d never do.)
Oh, and speaking of the new flat tummy. (Here’s a quick reminder of what it used to look like.) Also, when you compare pictures I look like I got younger. That’s what joy will do for you.
For years (and still today) I RELISH MY FLABBY TUMMY.
Do you know what that flab means to me?
Freedom!
I never never never complain about my stomach not being taught or muscular. I don’t care a whip.
Because I have been to hell and back. (And lived to tell the tale.)
And for me to complain one teat about my tummy would be a slap in my Creator’s face.
Hell to the no.
So I grab that skin and I give a squish and a mush and I howl!
AROOOOOOOOHHHHH!! OOH OOH ARROOH! THANK YOUUUUUUU!!
Thank you for my flat flab!
And finally, this $80,000 surgery, when all was said and done (and the anesthesiologist was paid) cost…
Drum roll please….
$1,786.32.
Let’s have a round of applause for the Big Guy Upstairs, folks!
God can do anything. A – knee – thing. (wink wink…get it?)
About a week later, the results came back from the biopsy. All negatory for cancerous cells. I always felt that was the case. But getting the firm answer was another big exhale all of us.
It occurs to me that many were praying for me. I found out much later that so many more than I knew were praying for me. The troops had been rallied on my behalf.
By June, I was confirmed in the Catholic church with friends and family attending that surprised me. By late August, I had moved back to New York City (Never say never).
And on September 6th, I married the man… yes, oh, yes…
Of my - literal - dreams.
And …
I’m gonna say it…
I’m gonna do it…
(“Don’t, Fleur, don’t do it…!”)
I’m gonna…
Flatly put:
They lived happily ever after.
The beginning.
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Corinthians 5:17
Wow You did it! You made it. You accompanied me on this journey telling the tale of this oh so special story about healing, conversion, love and renewal. I know there’s so much in the “in-betweens” to tell that I may have left out. But I hope you’ll ask! I have a plan about something I want to write to swirl this all up in a special story. But while I’m thinking on that, I have to ask you want you’d like to hear next so please vote!
Loved it! Congratulations!🎉
You are amazing. This story was so well told. I was really tempted to click podcast on the poll just because I'd love to hear your voice tell the story as well. Do that and the one off stories! xxooox Love you my friend.