#also if i ever need another surgery (which is a given) this will make intubation even harder than it already was with my limited neck ROM | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

phoenixyfriend · 3 years

Note

If you are doing them the soulmate fic starter 3 or 9 for rexwalker? I love all your star wars stuff so much

soulmate au prompts

3. the one where you and your soulmate have matching marks on your bodies. 9. the one where your soulmate’s last words to you are written on your body.

Featuring marginally-less-terrible Jango with more excuses than usual.

------

The Kaminoans hate soul marks.

Rex knows this from the day he knows to ask. The Nulls and Alphas don’t have any soul marks, just scars where there was once a promise. The eldest clones have records, at least, where the scientists had taken photos before beginning th surgeries, but the marks themselves are long gone.

Prime had found out about the removals and thrown a fit, raging so intensely that Nala Se had ended up intubated from the damage he’d dealt, and she hadn’t been the only one. Rex isn’t old enough to remember that, but Cody is, and he whispers the story in the dead of night more than once. Nobody likes Prime very much, except Boba, but that’s one of the few instances they can point to and say ‘he cares more than he likes to admit.’

It’s anathema on Mandalore, one brother claims, a light in his eyes that Rex hasn’t ever seen before. That’s what I heard him telling one of the aruetti trainers.

So is refusing your children so much as a name, another grouses, and the conversation dies an ugly little death. So is letting your children die just because you don’t think they’re good enough. So is turning your back from even letting them be part of your house, let alone part of your clan. Sounds like he cares more about our soul marks than he does for our lives.

Rex doesn’t know how to address that. He does get a personal visit from Prime, one day, gets asked to show his little marking to the man that is, in some ways, his father.

“Another one,” Jango Fett mutters to the trainer that came with him, the woman holding a datapad and ready to record whatever it is that they’re looking for. He passes a thumb over the marking, frowning. “A lightsaber, lit white, with pale blue halo, between a set of symbolic Jaig eyes. The eyes are dark blue, slightly desaturated. I think they’re meant to frame it like an exaggerated beskad crossguard.”

“Sir?” Rex asks.

“That makes six,” Jango says, still so quiet, and then shakes his head. “Thank you for showing me, 7567.”

“Rex,” he corrects, before he can second-guess himself. “I’m Rex.”

“Thank you, Rex.”

------

The rumors say that anyone with a lightsaber soul mark is going to have a jedi for a soulmate.

Rex isn’t sure how true that is, but he’s eager to find out.

Prime gets more erratic, more unpleasant at times and almost awkwardly nice at others. Rex meets the others who got Jedi soul marks. He’s the youngest, so far.

Jango tells them all to hide the markings, and to keep them secret. They’d already all known that much, that only batchmates should be told about soul marks. All the adults that should know already do, after all.

“Where’s your dad going?” Rex asks once, when Boba’s been handed over to Cody’s squad for looking after while Prime goes haring off on some trip that nobody gets to know about. Rex hangs out with Cody’s squad more than his own batch, it feels like, but that’s a whole thing that he’s not supposed to talk about since the late transfer to command track.

“Dunno,” Boba says, kicking his feet back and forth. “My soul mark came in. Something about it made him really angry, I think.”

Rex doesn’t ask to see it.

It’s not his place.

------

The Alpha batch is getting quieter, angrier, and end up in hushed conversations with Prime and some of the trainers so often that the rumors start up harder than before. Rex keeps his head down, because the Kaminoans get antsier when Jango does. Soul marks come up more often, and Rex gets called in to talk to the Alpha clones about his mark. He’s not supposed to, but Prime says it’s important, and Prime is in charge.

“Oh, is that all it took?” one of the Alphas sneers, and Prime shoots them a look that has Rex taking a few hasty steps back. The Alpha clone isn’t even fully grown yet, by natborn standards, but they don’t back down. “What, ready to stop being a dar’buir--”

“That’s enough,” Prime says, low and hard, and the Alpha clone rolls their eyes. “There’s a child here.”

“So now you care about that?”

Rex is escorted back to his rooms.

------

Decommissioning finally stops, for all that it requires Jango almost decapitating a Kaminoan, and someone Rex hopes he never sees again shows up.

(His memory is blurred. He’s sure the man was human, and tall. Elderly enough to have white hair, probably? A... there was fabric that swished when he turned, something dramatic, but...)

(He is not the only one that cannot remember.)

It takes years for anything else to come of it all... at least where the clones can see.

------

Rex is fully grown, as far as clones go. His aging is supposed to slow down to ‘natborn normal’ now, because he’s reached his full height and most of his brainpower, and he’s officially old enough to fight on the field if the war starts tomorrow.

It might.

“Hey, look up.”

Rex listens, and looks, and sees a natborn with Nala Se, pale skinned and with reddish hair, soaked to the bone. They wear robes, brown and heavy-looking. Even as he watches, another natborn jogs up from behind, also sodden and pale, but with darker hair that sticks up despite the water. A third joins them, a tad slower and more controlled; this one wears all white, and they--maybe she?-- are slight and small and poised in a way that Rex thinks might be how a natborn leader carries themselves, if they aren’t a soldier.

They pass on through the walkway, showing emotions that the Kaminoans can’t read and the clones absolutely can. None of it is... good.

“Shit,” someone mutters. “That was a Jedi.”

“Venn--”

“What if they don’t want us?”

------

Rex is called to Prime’s rooms.

He tries not to look at the wide eyes of the brothers he’s been gossiping with, just stands and pulls on his full kit. He hesitates at his bucket, but then pops it on and marches to what might be his doom. It’s probably not.

He hopes it’s not.

He knocks, and is let in by Boba, and sits down on the couch when Prime tells him to. He removes his helmet when asked. Boba hops up onto the couch between Rex and his father, and leans in against Rex’s side.

There’s a list on the table, one he recognizes, quickly writing out all the paired elements on the Jedi-Clone soul marks. Nobody who isn’t already involved in the project would know it. He spots the ‘yellow tickets’ that Bly got tattooed on his face recently, the ones he won’t claim are or aren’t related to his mark. He spots his own listing of Jaig eyes.

“Prime?”

His... progenitor, maybe, in this situation, looks at him, and holds up a hand. “You saw the list. You can guess why Rex is here.”

Oh. Prime’s using his name without prompting. That’s nice.

“I can’t read it,” the younger Jedi says, with something that might be a pout. Rex wants to roll his eyes, but his helmet is on the table. People would see.

“It’s in Mando’a,” the elder tells him, voice low, and then glances between Rex and the younger Jedi. “Fett, how did you know which one to call? I can guess some things, but--”

“I have a good eye. The hilts are all different. Only one matches.”

“I see.”

Rex fidgets, and tries not to wonder at... at... oh. The younger Jedi’s lightsaber hilt does match Rex’s soul mark.

Boba notices when Rex starts picking at his glove, pressing a finger right to the mark on his wrist, and frowns up at him. He grabs Rex’s hand to still it, and tries to ask a question with his eyebrows. He is mostly unsuccessful.

“Anakin,” the elder Jedi says. Rex still doesn’t know his name. “Your hand, please?”

“Why?”

“...you’ll understand in a minute,” the Jedi says, long-suffering in the way of the trainers who dealt with the youngest cadets. “Your hand. No, the other one.”

“Why do you need my hand?”

“Reasons, Anakin. You there, ah... Rex, was it?”

“Yessir.”

The Jedi flinches. “Right. I suppose I’ll have to get used to that... right, Rex, can you come here? I imagine you know what it is that I’m looking to compare.”

Rex has been taught to listen to Jedi, but he has no idea who he’s supposed to listen to here. The older Jedi is probably in charge, but Rex hasn’t been assigned to anyone yet, so isn’t Prime still technically the closest thing he has to a CO?

He glances at Prime, who just gestures for Rex to go ahead with it.

Rex pulls off a glove, pulls back his sleeve, and bares the symbol on his wrist for inspection.

The younger Jedi’s face morphs from confused irritation to surprise, and then... something Rex doesn’t want to analyze too closely. He’s not sure if it’s wonder or horror. He wasn’t aware the expressions could look so similar.

The Jedi--Anakin--pulls back his own sleeve, moves his wrist to Rex’s and watches as the marks glow faintly from the proximity.

“Looks like Fett was right,” the elder Jedi mutters. He doesn’t sound happy. He looks at the other natborn, the one Rex is pretty sure is a woman, and raises an eyebrow.

She shakes her head, eyes closed.

“You said there were others?” the elder Jedi prompts, and Prime nods. “We are no more open about our marks than most, but I can spot one, maybe two, that I can guess at. I’d need to see the actual markings to confirm, of course, and I imagine that wouldn’t be something anyone would be happy with.”

“The rest can happen naturally,” Prime dismisses. “This was just proof.”

“Not just proof, I hope,” the Jedi mutters. “I’m.. I have to call the Council.”

Rex sees the panic in Anakin’s face, and is seized by the urge to do something, anything, to fix it.

“Obi-Wan, you can’t let them--”

“Nobody’s going to separate you,” the elder Jedi says. Obi-Wan, apparently. “And there’s no ‘let,’ Anakin, they outrank me. Significantly. Right now, I’m concerned about the implications of this war, of multiple of these cloned soldiers that have been indoctrinated to fight for and serve the Jedi having soulmates among us, especially given that I have no idea how recently our wartime protocols on such things were updated. There is an entire army that is supposedly in our name, ordered by a man ten years dead.”

“Count Dooku is involved,” Prime says, dark and satisfied and petty. “Calling himself Darth Tyrannus. The Kaminoans mostly believe he is an isolated and reclusive Jedi Master that serves as their contact when Sifo-Dyas is unavailable.”

The Jedi named Obi-Wan closes his eyes and breathes deeply, and then stands. “Right. That’s... well, alright, I absolutely have to call the Council now.”

Prime smiles, pulling Boba into his side. Rex finds himself tugged down to sit where Obi-Wan had been a few moments earlier.

“Why are you telling us all this?” the natborn woman says. “This Count sounds like he hired you, did he not?”

“The project predated his involvement, but yes, he’s my supervisor, so to speak.” Prime smiles that same dark smile, runs a hand over Boba’s head and pointedly doesn’t look at Obi-Wan. That smile is... unpleasant. Rex doesn’t want to look at it, and so he looks down to the faint glow at his wrist instead. “Did you know, they told me the clones would be sub-sentient and halfway to droids? Not really people? That my DNA was for the bodies, but the minds would be little more than lines of code? Do you know how much they hated that I saw the evidence of their lies written into my children’s skin?”

Rex jolts, head whipping about and hand pulling away from his soulmate, staring at Prime, his mouth agape in a way a soldier’s shouldn’t but--but he’s--

Rex has never, ever heard the Prime refer to any of them except Boba as his child. His copies, his echoes, his clones, but not his children.

A hand curls into his, and he looks down to find Anakin’s lacing their fingers together. He looks up into a hopeful, unsure smile.

Anakin tilts his head and leans in, lips to Rex’s ear, and says, “When I told Obi-Wan he was like a father to me, he didn’t even know how to respond. Just made a bad joke about it and then pretended it didn’t happen. Is this the same?”

“...close enough,” Rex breathes out, because now isn’t the time to explain just how different a clone’s existence is from what they’ve seen in the holos meant to prepare them for interacting with civilians. That ‘family’ here has always been brothers, your squad and any brother that chooses to take you on, or a brother you choose to nurture, that the Alphas raise them more than Prime or the trainers do, that the older squads are who they turn to because the adults won’t help, that they don’t have parents, and they are discouraged from thinking of children in their futures.

(Protecting intellectual property, one of the scientists had mused. They’d made it very, very difficult for any of the clones to impregnate a partner. Not impossible, because to make it impossible was itself impossible, but... nearly so.)

“There’s millions of us,” Rex says instead. “He doesn’t... he doesn’t usually acknowledge most of us as his.”

Anakin’s face twists, already angry, and the glare he aims at Prime is ghastly. Rex might already be a little in love, just for that. The way Anakin’s fingers squeeze around his is nice, too.

Prime does not notice.

“Can I see the contract you say you signed?” the natborn woman says, and Prime eyes her. He nods, at length, weighing her worth and finding she measures up to whatever it is that he’s decided is necessary.

“Boba, go pack like we’re going on a hunt,” Prime says, pulling out a personal datapad and only dropping his gaze to find the right file. “We’ll probably be leaving tonight.”

“Okay, buir,” Boba says, sliding off the couch. “Am I telling the Alphas the thing you said?”

“No, I’ll handle that myself. You just pack.” He stands, nods to the natborn woman, and moves around the table. “Senator, I’ll sit with you, if you don’t mind. I imagine you and Knight Kenobi are the best suited to get this problem fixed.”

“And me?” Anakin demands.

“You,” Prime says, with a just a hint of condescending drawl. “have just met your soulmate. I assumed you’d want some privacy to get to know each other.”

Anakin flushes, a little angry and a lot embarrassed. It’s frighteningly cute. “I--I mean--I don’t--”

“The clones are mentally the ages they look, but do remember they’ve had practically no time to gain any sort of experience,” Prime says, already ignoring them in favor of pointing something out on the datapad to the senator. “Take advantage of any of my kids, and I’ll be the one hunting you down. I’m told I’m rather good at it.”

Anakin’s face does some acrobatics. Rex would pay more attention, but he can feel himself turning just as red.

“Rex, you know where the private meeting room is,” Prime says, and waves a hand in the direction of the tiny, tiny office that’s by the door. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Be nice,” the Senator hisses, smacking Prime’s arm.

“He’s ten.”

“...still.”

Rex just stands and pulls Anakin away to the little room before things can get worse.

They’re delayed when Obi-Wan asks what they’re doing from the kitchen he’s been using to get a spot of privacy, but then Anakin says “we’re just going to talk, Master,” and they get an aggrieved sigh and a response of “the clothes stay on, padawan, and you’ll need to finish up whatever conversation you have soon, there’s work to do and being a padawan only excuses you from so much.”

Rex backs into the meeting room, yanks Anakin in, and then decides to throw caution to the wind and just press their lips together.

Oh.

Okay.

He’s kissing back.

Lack of caution: good.

The mark at his wrist thrums, warm and comfortable, and Rex pulls away. He stifles the noise he wants to make, and when Anakin whines, small and soft but clearly disappointed, Rex offers him a small grin he knows would get him called ‘shy’ by his asshole older brothers.

“We probably should actually get to know each other,” Rex says. “I don’t even know your last name.”

“I... yeah, I don’t know yours either, unless it’s Fett.”

“It’s not. I don’t have one.”

Anakin’s face does another one of those ‘I’m angry for you’ twists that Rex is quickly coming to recognize, and then he sighs and falls into one of the chairs. “Okay. So. I don’t know much about the soldier life. Tell me about it.”

And he does.

#Rexwalker #Anakin Skywalker #Captain Rex #Jango Fett #Obi Wan Kenobi #Padme Amidala #Soulmate AU #Phoenix Posts #Phoenix Answers Memes #star wars

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transsergio · 3 years

Text

Emily's Top Surgery (Read on AO3)

Penemily / Gen / 4038 words

Emily has top surgery and their loving, perfect, beautiful girlfriend Penelope is their caretaker.

Notes: I refer to Emily as Penelope's girlfriend intentionally; Emily is a non-binary lesbian and in this particular story, is comfortable with the gendered term "girlfriend". However, if you see Emily referred to as she/her at any point, that's an editing mistake on my part and I mixed up their pronouns with Penelope's. I went through this a couple times to make sure I gendered them correctly, but one might have slipped through the cracks!

Also feels important to say that Dr. Dolan is a totally fictional doctor and not a reference to any real life surgeon

Surgery Day

Penelope has seen her team through too much already. Kidnappings, stab wounds, bullets – their jobs aren’t exactly arts and crafts. Yet, she thinks this might be the most nervous she has ever been. She’s been rapid-fire tapping her heel for the last hour and forty-five minutes, and trying to distract herself with her cell phone. Morgan texted a couple times to check in (once on behalf of Reid), but otherwise, radio silence. The few messages mean more than she can say; she is intimately familiar with how busy they are on a case. But she really wishes any of them were there to squeeze her hand right about now. She’d even take Strauss.

In the middle of Penelope’s billionth Candy Crush level, a doctor materializes in front of her. She startles and fumbles her phone trying to click it off. “Is it over? Can I see them now? How’d it go?”

As the doctor peels his surgical mask off, she sees he’s laughing at her. That’s good, right?

He says, “Everything went just fine, Ms. Garcia. Emily’s in the recovery room now, and we’ll let you back there about twenty minutes after they wake up. They’re going to be a little groggy and maybe nauseous. It all depends on how their body reacts to the anesthesia. They’ll most likely sleep for the rest of the day, but make sure to keep up with their medications, alright?”

Penelope nods fervently. “Absolutely, Dr. Dolan. Can do. Will do! And I’m sorry to ask this again but I really have to make sure, the whole operation was totally fine? Nothing went wrong? Everything…chopped off okay?”

The doctor stifles a chuckle. “Yes, Ms. Garcia. Everything went exactly as planned, no complications as of yet. We’ll see you tomorrow for Emily’s one day post-op appointment to check the surgery site and switch out the bandages for a binder, and then for their first week post-op. Okay?”

Penelope smiles back, still nodding along like Emily’s health depends on it.

The doctor shakes her hand and ducks back into the surgical ward, leaving Penelope to update the group chat.

“Emily’s out!!!!!! Doc says all good!!!!!! Will be with them soon 😍💖🥳”

She types almost as quickly as her heart is beating.

Penelope makes it through another few rounds of mobile games and desperately refreshing her Twitter feed before she risks checking the clock. It’s been half an hour. Shouldn’t Emily be awake by now? What if they never wake up? Could someone be permanently anesthetized? Reid would know. Maybe Penelope should call Reid. No, she can’t do that. They’re all off in Texas trying to catch a serial killer and she doesn’t need to distract them, not when they’re already down two team members. Kevin Lynch is pretty good, she hopes. She’s seen his work and it’s adequate. Nothing like the multi-tasking Penelope pulls off, but in the same ballpark. His boyfriend, Grant Anderson, vouched for him. It was unnecessary, and maybe Kevin shouldn’t have sent the person who got Elle shot to sing his praises, but at least they knew Grant. Kevin was a stranger from another department. A back-up.

“Penelope Garcia?” A nurse calls as she emerges from swinging double doors.

“Yes, right here!” Penelope chirps. She leaps to her feet and scurries over as quickly as her heels will allow.

The nurse walks her through the recovery ward and the steps to Emily’s post-op instructions. Emily has four different prescriptions already filled and two cannot be taken at the exact same time while one is an antibiotic and the other is just for nausea which they might not need and –

“This is all written down, right? Sorry, my head’s just like, woo, swimming right now,” Penelope says. Her eyes are wide and darting frantically between the curtained beds. She hates the fluorescent lights. Her skin is buzzing with all the sour electricity. The nurse assures her they’ll send them home with physical copies along with phone numbers in case of emergency.

They round the nurse’s station and finally, come to Emily. They’re shifting slightly in their bed, leaning forward and sipping at a dixie cup of water. They're groggy and slow, with the IV still in their arm. Penelope’s glad they don’t have a mirror – their bangs are scattered over their forehead in three wispy chunks, a way Penelope knows Emily hates.

“Hey sweetheart,” Penelope coos. She leans over the bed's plastic siding to kiss the top of Emily’s head, and run her fingers through their dark hair. Emily leans into the touch.

They croak, “Hey,” and cough to clear their throat, wincing all the while.

“That’d be because you were intubated,” the nurse says. “Take plenty of cough drops and you should feel much better.”

Penelope assures the nurse they will while Emily drifts in and out of focus.

“Did it work?” they ask.

“Did what, Em?”

“M’surgery.”

“Oh! Yeah, totally. You’ll see in a little bit. You’re just sleepy.”

“M’kay,” Emily says. Their head lolls back into their pillows as the muscles in their face tighten.

“Emily, what would you rate your pain out of ten?” the nurse asks, coming closer with her clipboard at the ready.

“Uh, five? Maybe six.”

Penelope looks to the nurse. “Is that bad? That sounds bad. I thought it wasn’t supposed to hurt right now.”

The nurse jots down a few notes before she answers. “It’s not unusual. We’ll up their pain killers before we remove the IV.”

Penelope plants herself firmly at Emily’s side in the meantime. They’ve redressed Emily in their own clothes, an oversized button-down and sweats. Well, Penelope assumes they put Emily’s bottoms back on. The blanket is still tucked tightly around their body like they’re some kind of soft, hot mummy. They stay like that for another fifteen minutes, Penelope working her nails through Emily’s scalp as they try to relax.

When Emily rates their pain at a four, then a three, Penelope helps the nurse settle them in a wheelchair. They roll a few feet into the hall before Emily claws for Penelope’s arm.

“Where’s the barf bag?” Penelope asks. She has her hand out and ready for the nurse to pass it over, and swings it into Emily’s face.

Emily, thankfully, does not puke. Their slow, steady breath crinkles the blue plastic bag, but all they fill it with is air. They keep a tight grip on the thing for safekeeping, even as they’re helped into the passenger’s seat of Penelope’s car.

“You ready to go home, lovebug?” Penelope keeps her voice low and sweet, like dark honey. Emily nods and Penelope grants her wish, starting the engine and turning out of the parking lot.

-❤-

One Day Post-Op

Penelope holds her breath as the nurse unwraps the medical bandages. She wonders if Em is doing the same. While she’s watching them, Emily’s eyes flit between her and the floor-length mirror fastened to the exam room wall.

The nurse is talking, and they’re both supposed to be listening, but who could expect them to? Emily has spent a couple grand (after insurance) and something like four years waiting for these next seconds. Penelope is just as invested, if not more, in Emily’s happiness. She’s not going to get the camera out, but wonders if she should just in case Emily cries.

Their eyes follow the final bandage as it unravels from Emily’s form.

And Emily’s mind goes quiet. They have two, deep red swoops where their chest used to bulge. Above and below, their body is nothing but smooth skin. They thought this would feel like shock. Like disbelief that they were finally here. Instead, it just feels right, as if this is the way it’s always been and some crappy daydream is over at last. They giggle, and Penelope glows like the sun has risen.

“Wow,” Penelope says, soft. She’s wrenched with admiration.

The nurse is smiling in the corner. She takes out a roll of Steri-Strips and measures them against Emily’s new scars. Scars! Emily finally has scars!

“Now the bruising should lessen in the next three to four weeks,” the nurse says. Oh, bruising. Emily almost hadn’t noticed. Their body is splotched with patches of yellow, green, and purple as if it’s trying to camouflage itself, but Emily’s not hiding from anything anymore.

They’re given more practical information, like how often Emily should be walking to avoid blood clots, how high they should lift their arms, how much they should be carrying – most of which tells them to stay reclined, arms down, to sleep as much as possible, but get in ten minutes of walking every few hours. Penelope hears more of this than Emily does, and again, they’re given written instructions just in case.

Emily takes one last look before the compression vest goes on. This will be the most uncomfortable part of the process, thank god. Emily chose a surgeon who used a tighter suture method rather than the typical drains intentionally. Still, the fit of the binder is exciting. Emily’s never had something lie flat on them before. Their body now falls in one fluid line without anything, even nipples, to interrupt.

“Em?”

Emily snaps to Penelope, who is standing and holding the door for them.

“Oh, right,” Emily says with half a laugh and a daze in their eyes. They thank the nurse, and the receptionist, and a passing surgeon that isn’t even Emily’s on the way out. This is the most gratitude Emily’s ever contained in their life, and they need to flush it through their system.

“And especially you,” Emily gushes as Penelope helps buckle their seatbelt. “You’re amazing. I can’t believe you’re taking time off for me, or that you’re not stir crazy already. Thank you.”

Penelope grins like she might burst, and can’t answer just yet. She gets them safely onto the highway for home first. “Of course I’m here for you, dumb-dumb! Not only because you literally can’t do anything for yourself right now, or because the hospital said you couldn’t have the surgery without having a caretaker, but, well – okay, maybe half for those reasons too. But because I love you. I’m so happy for you, and how happy you’re going to be, and that this is so good for you. I love you so much.” Penelope sniffles.

“Maybe you should have said all that before we left?” Emily asks. “You’re gonna cry the whole drive back, babe.”

Penelope swats at them. “I know, I know! But you’re on a strict schedule, my lovely angel, and you need your meds in like, thirty minutes.”

Emily laughs and catches Penelope’s hand in their own. They squeeze it tightly and press their lips to Penelope’s fingers. Emily only releases when Penelope tugs their grip toward the steering wheel.

“Next stop, Recoveryville,” Pen jokes.

-❤-

Five Days Post-Op

Emily is more or less comfortably laid on their couch. They have an arsenal of pillows stationed behind them, under their arms, and at the bend of their knees, and Penelope’s militant care routine keeping them afloat. For the last four days, they’ve done nothing but watch French art films together, eat ice cream, and order takeout. It’s been a nice break, Emily realizes. One they didn’t know they needed.

Penelope emerges from the kitchen with a bag of Doritos and a bright blue DVD in her hands.

“This looks like a bribe,” Emily says with a wry smile.

“That’s because it is. I am in no place to object to your choice of movies, especially after I promised I wouldn’t make fun of the accents anymore. But I was sorta hoping this would be a good opportunity to manhandle you into watching a real classic.” Penelope blocks the television in her pink pajama pants and Emily’s Yale hoodie. Penelope is well aware that Emily loves when she wears their clothes; she has to be doing this on purpose. And it’s working.

Emily bobs their head from side to side, considering the offer. “Alright, shoot. I’m willing to cut you a deal.”

Penelope slaps the movie cover over her face. Mamma Mia! (2008) Dir. Phyllida Lloyd.

“Oh, god.”

And Penelope reemerges, scowling. “Hey! I didn’t complain when you made me watch that sad movie about the woman with the dead family. This time, no one’s dead! And they’re in Greece! Okay, admittedly no one wants to hear Pierce Brosnan sing, but if you ignore him and focus on Meryl Streep the movie gets a lot better!”

This is not the first time Emily has heard argument on behalf of Mamma Mia! and it likely isn’t the last, either. Movie night in the Garcia-Prentiss household is in a state of constant debate and usually decided by a fair and unbiased coin toss. Emily considers it a miracle that Penelope’s lasted this long without putting up a fight, and considers it part of her generosity as their caretaker.

Emily scooches themself into a more upright position. “Trois coleurs: Bleu is a beautiful movie and you said you liked it, first of all. And I thought we were watching my movies because I’m the one healing.”

Penelope hesitates. “…Yes, but I may have also been doing a little eensy weensy bit of work at the same time because they’re also like, really slow and boring and Kevin needed the tiniest, tiniest bit of help on the Texas case.”

“Traitor!” Emily is aghast. “What about the deal?”

The deal, of course, was the promise they made each other after their third movie night. Emily was texting throughout The Muppets Take Manhattan and not entirely invested in Kermit and Miss Piggy’s wedding. Penelope was hurt, Emily was confused, and didn’t fully get it until Penelope fell asleep twenty minutes into Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle. From that point on, they agreed to compromise more on movie selection and to pay undivided attention to the films they did pick.

“You passed out! I thought the deal was void if you weren’t awake during your own movie!” Penelope said.

“Why didn't you wake me up?” Emily argued.

“Oh, yeah, I’m going to wake up the person who just had surgery so they can pay attention to the third sad foreign movie of the day. You need your rest, and Kevin has maybe half of my inimitable skills!” Penelope’s words were jumbling together as she went up an octave. “I know I’m on vacation but the team needed help and I didn’t want to abandon them with some computer monkey who doesn’t know the first thing about my system, much less the way the team works, and isn’t even a regular assist on cases like me and—”

Penelope is cut off by three short raps at their front door. A welcome escape.

“Pen!” Emily calls after her. “We’re not done here!”

“I think we are!” Penelope shouts back. She passes down the hall and peers through the peep hole, though, she really doesn’t need to. She recognizes the voices on the other side.

“We’re not too early, are we?”

“It’s two in the afternoon, genius.”

“I mean in days since Emily’s operation. They might not be up to company.”

“Then we’ll say hi to baby girl and head out, no big deal.”

Penelope swings the door wide open. “Definitely say hi to me, definitely do that!”

Morgan and Reid stand in their building’s hallway, Derek carrying bags of Chinese food, and Spencer juggling some sort of gift basket. Their eyes are tired and Derek’s stubble is looking rougher than usual, but they perk up in the light of their friend.

“Hey, there she is,” Morgan says. He comes in for a tight hug as he and Reid crowd themselves inside. “How’s everyone holdin’ up?”

“Peachy keen,” Penelope says. She squeezes Derek’s shoulder and leads them back to Emily by Reid’s hand. “Look who missed their favorite co-workers!”

“Hey, guys,” Emily says. Their heart warms at the sight of them. “What’re you doing here?”

“Now how’s that any way to greet a friend?” Morgan laughs. He lowers their takeout food to the coffee table and dives onto the couch beside Emily. “You been good to Garcia so far, or do we have to put the hurt on you?” He playfully punches Emily in their arm, and they cower in mock pain.

“Hey, no roughhousing!” Penelope scolds. “If anyone pulls any sort of muscle in the next twenty minutes, you’re all in timeout.”

Emily and Derek snicker in their seats and launch into the most recent case details. It’s a lot of the gory, icky stuff that Penelope doesn’t want to know unless she’s in her bat cave, so she takes Spencer and his basket into the kitchen.

“Doritos, huh?” he notices the bag Penelope drops on the counter. “You were trying to get something from them?”

Penelope answers with her head stuck in the fridge as she paws to the back for Spencer’s La Croix. “I may have wanted to watch one of my movies today, and I may have offered chips in payment.” She fishes a couple cans of LimonCello out, and huffs. “So what’s all this?”

“It’s from JJ. She wanted to come herself but didn’t think bringing Henry over was the best idea,” Spencer explains. He holds his drink gingerly with both hands and peers into the basket. It looks a lot like the one Penelope used for JJ’s baby shower, and is also definitely the same basket. Inside are a few bags of beef jerky, chocolate, a backscratcher with a little pink hand at its end, and an airline neck pillow with the Texas flag patterned over it.

“Awe. I’m definitely baking her cookies,” Penelope says. She leans back against the counter and eyes Spencer up and down. “Tough case?”

Spencer shifts from side to side and looks into the dark pit of his La Croix can. “Not much worse than usual. It was just… long. And Emily would’ve been a big help. None of us speak Spanish.”

“But you didn’t want to call right now,” Penelope guesses. “It’s all over though, right? All good? Everything wrapped up with a bow for good luck?”

Spencer nods and purses his lips. He looks over his shoulder to the living room, where Derek is describing something with his hands and Emily watches, wide-eyed and entertained. Spencer says, more to himself than Penelope, “It’s always good to be home.”

-❤-

Two Weeks Post-Op

“Emily Elizabeth Prentiss!”

Emily freezes with one arm reaching desperately above doctor-recommended height, and another gripping the cabinet door like their life depends on it. They press their forehead into the shelf, groaning, “That’s not my middle name.”

“I can make up whatever name I want! You know what Dr. Dolan said, and this is so far out of bounds!” Penelope stands in the kitchen threshold with her hands on her hips. She sighs and tugs Emily away from the cereal cabinet by their waist. When their arms are safely lowered to their sides, Penelope puts on her serious face, with her seriously furrowed eyebrows, and her serious frown on her lips. She asks, “Do you, like, want to injure yourself? Is this your new favorite hobby?”

Emily is petulant. “No, I want breakfast, and it’s on the third shelf. Let’s just pretend you got it for me, okay?”

Penelope grumbles her frustrations under her breath as she pulls down the family size box of Lucky Charms. She flurries around the space until she’s collected a bowl and spoon and settled them on the other side of the kitchen counter, where a bar stool and carton of milk wait for Emily.

“Sit,” Penelope orders. Emily complies with a glint in their eyes.

“Thank you,” they say, saturating their words with genuine love.

“Oh, stuff it.” Penelope pecks a kiss to their cheek regardless. She tries not to think about how cute Emily is when they’re smug, but it’s a losing battle. The way their nose scrunches, the smirk; not helping. Instead, Penelope picks a smidgeon of a fight.

“Your hair is greasy.”

And Emily’s face falls flat and exasperated. They let their spoon rest in the pool of marshmallows. “Can we do this after I eat?”

“Oh, lovebug. Absolutely not,” Penelope smiles knowingly. “You haven’t washed it in like, four days, which tells me that it’s not as easy as you said it was. Y’know, I was wondering who said washing your own hair was too much work immediately after having an operation? It would have to be someone super smart and beautiful and funny and—”

“It was you, Penelope. We all know it was you.”

“Funny; it was, wasn’t it?”

But Penelope lets them finish their cereal. She was about to eat her own Eggo waffles, after all. Once the dishes are rinsed and in the washer, she marches Emily straight into their bathroom. The tub thankfully doesn’t share a wall with the toilet, making it easier for Emily to scoot in next to the faucet. Penelope folds Emily’s towel (the towel that is dark purple, and not spring green, which Penelope keeps carefully out of the splash zone) (unlike Emily, who does not mind if their towel is damp long after it should be dry, and probably growing some type of mold) (okay, it’s not growing mold, but Penelope insists that it will eventually become mold-ridden if Emily doesn’t start hanging it up more consistently) along the side of the tub. Emily fits the towel under their neck, and Penelope guides them into position.

“Your hair is so thick,” Penelope comments.

Emily says, “You tell me that once a week.”

“Because it is. Now close your eyes.”

Penelope detaches the removable showerhead and lets the water warm her hand. When it’s a comfortable temperature, she douses Emily’s head. She maneuvers carefully around Emily’s forehead to avoid hitting their face, though Emily’s eyelids flutter when they worry the stream is near. Penelope thinks with their long eyelashes, they look like butterflies about to take flight.

She works the shampoo in with a gentle, but thorough touch. It’s when she rubs the lather into Emily’s scalp that Emily lets a soft moan break, and Penelope smiles. She takes pride in her work, whether she’s at her desk or in her soapy bathroom.

The shampoo swirls down the drain as Penelope rinses Emily free. Emily opens their eyes and tries to sit up, but Penelope pins their shoulders to the tub.

“Hold on! I haven’t conditioned yet.”

“Isn’t shampoo enough? We’re going to be here again in three days. It’s a hassle.”

Penelope does not think so. For the low price of two-thousand dollars and the risk of post-op complications, Penelope’s seen her girlfriend relax for the first time in, maybe ever. She’s going to drag it out as long as she can. Which, for right now, means dumping a handful of conditioner into her palm and rubbing it through the tips of Emily’s hair.

The final rinse is cleansing, like the weight falls from Emily’s shoulders. Penelope swipes the towel from Emily’s neck and cocoons their hair inside. She manages to keep their shirt dry, for the most part. Emily sits up with a pain in their shoulders, and does their best to hide it.

“What’s wrong?” Penelope prompts. Their best is not nearly good enough, not when Penelope has the analytical eye of someone who loves them. Penelope plants Emily on their shared bed for the first time since their surgery, already grateful to have a little of Emily’s smell in the room again. She sits behind them and overlaps their legs with hers. Penelope digs into the knots wound through their back as if she's torturing for information.

“It’s almost like you have a stressful job or something,” Penelope says.

Emily snorts. “Yeah, something like that.”

Penelope massages her way down until Emily feels looser under her fingers. She leans her head into the crook of Emily’s shoulder and presses a kiss to their skin. “We could ask for more time off,” she offers.

Emily slouches against Penelope’s body. “We could. But we have to go back at some point.”

“Let’s pretend we don’t.”

Emily exhales. “Sounds good to me.”

#penemily #penelope garcia #emily prentiss #criminal minds #penemily fic #text #mine #cm

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iamjhosel · 3 years

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BAGONG YUGTO. New Chapter. This is Hope SG Filipino's 24th Anniversary theme. And while I just marked my 7th year with Hope this January, and now I am on my journey to 8 years, which is also the number for "new beginnings", I have been asking myself, what does this mean to me personally? What is my Bagong Yugto? "Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert." ~Isaiah 43:19 BAGONG YUGTO: A NEW FIRE Early this year, my core team member lost her job and had to go back to the Philippines. And so all the more I had to stretch myself, empower the life group and lean more on His leading - not mine but by His Spirit. This is still a work in progress but I claim new wineskin, new core team members, who would be on fire for God, and then eventually as we enlarge ourselves, fruitfulness will follow.

I pray that God continue to work in us, individually and as a life group, so that all the more we can experience how good, how loving and how faithful our God is! In the same way, the Lord has been stretching us in the ministry for the past year amidst this pandemic. He has done great things in the ministry and in how He is using social media as His platform. Day by day, we are learning and exploring new things on how we can make Him known all over the globe with this ministry He has blessed us with. I am just blessed and humbled to serve Him with all my heart, mind and soul, both in the ministry and in the life group. He is my fire! And all these is by Him and for Him! BAGONG YUGTO: A NEW PERSPECTIVE The past few weeks before the conference, I've been thinking a lot. I've been asking God what's His plan for my life. What's next for me? Should I move to the States too, when one by one my ward friends are leaving for US and a family friend's actually offering to help me should I decide to move. Besides, US was the original plan. Singapore was supposed to be just a detour. Almost 10 years after, I am still here. Plus that infamous question: Will I ever have my own family too? So, I was really praying that in the conference, I will receive a word from God or a clear direction where He wants me to go. The answer came fast. On the first day during worship, I heard it loud and clear:

And all throughout the conference, I was just reminded over and over again. God is faithful, so be faithful. Keep sowing. Keep planting. Keep reaching out. Keep loving. And He will take care of the rest. Besides, He never told me to move. It was just me. You see, comparison triggers jealousy and so never compare your life to others because God has His own story for you and me. Look unto Jesus. Fix your gaze and thoughts upon Him. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." ~Matthew 6:25-34 BAGONG YUGTO: A NEW HEART The first half of the year has been very painful for our family. I praise God that He has blessed me with a very loving and closely knitted family, and so the sudden loss of two of my Uncles in Papa's side, both I am close with, has left us bewildered, broken and very hurt. Early in April, Tito Erick, Papa's youngest brother, was hospitalized for COVID. In just a few days, he was transferred to the ICU because his oxygen level wasn't picking up and his biomarkers were all deranged. His wife, Tita Mitch, was then quarantined on another facility. Everyday we would all do video calls to check on Tita Mitch and get updates on Tito Erick. We would always encourage everyone in the family to keep on pressing on in prayer and keep believing that these too shall pass. That we've been through so much in the family before and we would be able to withstand all of these. I knew that God is a good God and He will never forsake us. I was anticipating that this will be our family's testimony of healing. But then one night, as if in a movie, there was a plot twist. Uncle Ahwee, Tita Shei's husband had a heart attack. He was pronounced dead on arrival. We were dumbfounded. I couldn't understand why all of these is happening, all together, at the same time. It felt like a dejavu. It felt like we were in 2014 all over again when Papa had an accident and he needed to go for a surgery and the next day Lolo Ama, Papa's father, passed away because of cancer. I questioned God why do our family had to experience all these pain again. Did I not pray enough for Him to hear my prayers? There were so many thoughts running on my head but we had to press on for Tito Erick. To still believe and keep praying that he will be healed. We kept Uncle Awhee's passing from Tito Erick. We even blocked him on Facebook so he won't see any post on Uncle Awhee's sudden death. During Uncle Awhee's wake, we were just amazed on how God poured out His love and provision through the help of the many people who loved Uncle Ahwee. Tito Erick's condition then was getting better. He regained some strength, enough to reply to us in our family's group chat. Every morning he would send some selfies to us to let us know that he is getting better. He found out about Uncle Awhee's passing when he saw a post from his high school batch mate but thank God during that time he was already able to take all the news in.

He then had a reswab and we were hoping that if it turned out to be negative, he will be transferred to a regular room. But the next day before dawn, on Lolo Ama's birthday, Tito Erick's oxygen levels dropped which then required him to be intubated. After two hours of being in critical condition, his heart stopped beating. The doctors tried to revive him but to no avail. It was so painful seeing his body lifeless through a video call. The whole day we were on iyak-tulala-iyak-tulala mode. We were so devastated. It felt like the enemy knew exactly where to attack me, that it found my Achilles heel, and it is succeeding. I already had thoughts of giving up and turning away from serving Him. He must have been punishing me for not being bold enough to do more for Him. But then I never heard my family questioned God. Yes, they couldn't understand why all these are happening, but they never once turned away from God. I thought I have the strongest faith, but theirs were stronger. God is still good, because despite of all what happened, He has made everyone in the family stronger in faith. He has reminded us how He has blessed us with a family that is so full of love, and that we are loved not just by Him but by the people that He has surrounded us with. I praise God for my spiritual family, ministry and friends who have helped me to stand when I couldn't, reminded me that I am not alone, and that God sees our pain and He is the only one who can turn it to joy. This wasn't the testimony I was hoping to share but God's thoughts are higher than mine. He has a different healing testimony He wanted me to share, not just for me, but for the whole family. Healing does not come in an instant. And until now, we are all still healing, slowly, taking it day by day. There are days that I still find myself dazed as if everything was just a dream. And same goes for them in the Philippines, in and out of loneliness and what ifs. But praise God we have each other to constantly remind ourselves that God is a good God and in Him, our broken hearts can be made whole again. As God promised in Revelations 21:5, "Behold, I make all things new," He is giving us a new heart. He is renewing our spirits day by day. He is making us lean more on Him, trust Him that all these are for our good, and draw closer and closer unto Him. He is our refuge and strength. At the end of day, He is a sovereign God. I may not have control on everything but He has. And He has me and my family on the palm of His hands. Here's a spontaneous song when I was pouring and crying myself out to God. It is only in His presence that we can find healing.

THERE IS MORE. Every year, I would always have a bible verse declaration for myself and just before 2021 entered, instead of a verse, He gave me a whole chapter, Ezekiel 47. And it dawned on me, how it is unfolding before my eyes, that all these things that has happened on the first half of the year is teaching me and molding me to lean more and more on Him so I could go deeper and deeper into my relationship with Him. I look forward that after everything, I will receive my inheritance! That all these is for my good and a preparation for what is ahead. This is a beginning of a new chapter of my life and my walk with Him! What a great and loving God He is and I will forever praise Him with my life! Oh praise and glory be upon Him, the King of kings, Lord of lords, Lover of my Soul, my Lord and Saviour, Jesus! "As the man went eastward with a measuring line in his hand, he measured off a thousand cubits and then led me through water that was ankle-deep. He measured off another thousand cubits and led me through water that was knee-deep. He measured off another thousand and led me through water that was up to the waist. He measured off another thousand, but now it was a river that I could not cross, because the water had risen and was deep enough to swim in—a river that no one could cross. He asked me, “Son of man, do you see this?” "Then He led me back to the bank of the river. When I arrived there, I saw a great number of trees on each side of the river. He said to me, “This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, where it enters the Dead Sea. When it empties into the sea, the salty water there becomes fresh. Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live. Fishermen will stand along the shore; from En Gedi to En Eglaim there will be places for spreading nets. The fish will be of many kinds—like the fish of the Mediterranean Sea. But the swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they will be left for salt. Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.” ~Ezekiel 47:3-12

#bagongyugto #newbeginnings #healing #newheart #newfire #new perspective

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cewfreeland · 4 years

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Life in the COVID-19 epicenter

We’re on day 14 of staying at home to do our part to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, COVID-19. Everything considered we are doing so well. We’re a family with two teenagers who are finding joy in spending time with each other again. Brian and I alternate between depression and gratitude. Fortunately, we never seem to be in the depression part at the same time. That comes from being so different and also knowing when the other one is starting to spiral into the dark place. The other one rallies - reaches out through the unknown and finds a spark of joy to bring the other one out of the blue fog.

One of my closest NY friends is recovering from a diagnosed case of COVID-19. He proactively reached out to me this morning to tell me he made it through the night since I have been bugging him every day to see if he was still in his apartment or had needed to get the urgent care that we hear our neighbors needing from the sirens wailing. Another close friend in NY lost her sense of smell and taste but seems to have come out unscathed other than those two symptoms. I keep wondering if my short bout with fever/chills/cough/fatigue/shortness of breath/diarrhea in early March was COVID-19, followed by the kids having raging headaches several days after my illness. Brian was in DC for most of my illness so I don’t think he got it. An antibody test cannot come soon enough.

Brian and I both have a remarkable amount of guilt. I think his guilt is centered on the fact that he is still employed while so many other artists and art workers are not. He also sees his industry hemorrhaging and with no end in sight. We watched the depression inspired film Cradle Will Rock about the Workers Progress Administration and the Federal Theater Project last night. He is optimistic that something that transformative will come out of this crisis. I have faith that he can be a part of this recovery.

As for me, the bright side is that people understand what public health is now! The downside is that I feel like I can’t help. My grad school group chat has a really stark view of what healthcare workers are facing. One classmate has had his surgical residency all but halted and transitioned to emergency surgery. Two pregnant classmates are still caring for patients - one in pediatric ICU (where she’s not seeing many kids, thankfully) and the other a radiologist (who is volunteering in other ways to relieve the pressure on her colleagues). Another classmate also lost a sense of taste and smell and was back at work 5 days later. She is an OB/GYN and is only delivering COVID-19 positive patients out of fear that she may still be contagious. Still another classmate is a pulmonary critical care physician who has not said much for a while, no doubt because he’s working non-stop. An anesthesiologist at Emory has become a media darling and we all cheer her on when we catch an op-ed in the NYT featuring her or catch her on CNN or MSNBC. I so wish we were celebrating Michelle’s sudden rise to fame for different reasons - her victory as a candidate for the Georgia State Senate, fighting for women’s rights, achieving better healthcare for her constituents. Unfortunately, she’s telling a sadder story right now - the reality of intubating COVID-19 patients as they struggle to breathe - giving them a shot to recover. That every breath the patient makes while she’s doing her work could be exposing her to the virus, and therefore her family, as well as the other healthcare workers.

One classmate is part of the leadership team for the emergency department for one of the big NYC/Long Island hospital systems and she has been working to set up alternative entrances for urgent cases across their 19 hospitals. A physical therapist is transitioning her entire team from out-patient settings into in-patient settings. She and her colleagues are all being exposed every single day. One day, she’s with a patient with suspected COVID-19 status but not confirmed, the next she hears what she already knew about the status. And this happens each and every day. They sound weary and calm. The reality of what we hear on the news made even more terrifying by their accounts. They are not dramatic, they are not overstating. They don’t have the time or the energy to add to the fury. They are simply doing their jobs and the daunting incline on the graph of predicted patients forming ahead of them is simply something for them to climb - one day and one patient at a time.

And I am working from home - not doing anything glamorous like I might have done if my life had not taken the detour it did 2 1/2 years ago. I am conflicted about how I feel about that. Since grad school ended, I have felt aimless - working full-time has felt very “lame.” I’ve dabbled with consulting, exploring getting my PhD, starting my own business. Being “still” is hard for me. And not being part of the central communications team at this time is hard as well. I am grateful to have moved on from that life and role - I feel like my work is more meaningful now - but there is an element of wanting to be in the drama. But I also think this is a lesson for me - to become comfortable with the long game rather than filling up space with busywork and crises.

What I am doing is managing my team who has been thrown into unfamiliar territory. We hired these smart, courageous, and caring people to talk with people all day, every day. And now, they’re at home, having to rely on the phone to connect with our 10,000 participants in the hopes that we didn’t catch them at a bad time. The worry is that maybe someone in their home is unwell and calling about research is not exactly on their minds. Or, perhaps they’ve lost their job and are worried about paying rent on April 1st, and May 1st, and June 1st. The good news is our team is brave and smart and empathetic and they may be just the ear that person needs at that moment. And medical research is something that more people understand now. They get how important it is to contribute to the cause. I started sending out little prompts each day to encourage communication, maybe a little humor, and at least some sense of community. Ironically, I worry more during my sleep about what “prompt” to send them than other things. On Thursday, my prompt was “share your favorite coronavirus meme.” I sent out one about the Breakfast Club but quickly realized that I was only one of a handful of Gen Xers in the chat and many had not grown up in the U.S. and didn’t appreciate the humor. Epic fail.

There has been discussion of doing testing on the blood samples given by participants collected in December, January, February and March (until we suspended enrollments) to see if we can see a true understanding of the incidence of the virus in populations across the country. That is VERY exciting to be a part of that possibility - to understand the DENOMINATOR in a more scientific and controlled way. Additionally, there is some talk of running antibody testing on participants going forward. We have the infrastructure to do that and it would undoubtedly help the individual and the scientific community in ways we can’t even imagine.

- - -

Brian has brought remarkable order to our unusual new existence. He has all of us up and doing our morning things as well as adding a few new rituals that are starting to feel normal. In addition to getting dressed, making beds, eating breakfast, he also has us taking our temperatures and taking an allergy pill Having allergy symptoms while we’re all very aware that any cough or headache could be a sign of infection is not an option. His parents sent us an extra stash of Zyrtec since we couldn’t get it at our local pharmacy. Amazon is running slow - for which I have no anger about - but it does mean that we are tied to what our local shops have on hand.

Last week, we heard this woman from the Upper West Side comment on the local news that people were acting like it’s Little House on the Prarie. “People are making soup. They’re eating leftovers.” Lillian’s response was “That is what normal people do.” But our lives are different. I have found my gatherer urge go into hyperdrive. Maybe it’s because Lillian is so picky or maybe because having what everyone wants at the exact time they want it is a way that I am feeling a sense of control over this insane time. We were almost out of flour, and I became obsessed with getting some. Our regular mail shipment of toilet paper is running low (as in we have about 10 rolls left) and our provider is saying it will be another few weeks before they’re back in stock. I feel this chronic fear that we’re going to run out of Lillian’s macaroni and cheese, the one thing she will consistently eat, and feel this pull to out and get her more. I became obsessed with getting hotdog buns - and we don’t even eat hotdogs normally - but when I found them in stock, I bought two bags. I understand that hoarding is a bad thing, but I cannot deny the anxiety this situation has brought out in me and manifesting in wanting too many hot dog buns.

Probably the best personal thing that I’ve done during the past two weeks is that I’m on a quest to achieve my long-term dream of being a runner. I’ve started “Couch to 5K” too many times over the past several years to count. I just started week 2 - I did week 1 two weeks in a row - so I’m finally moving forward further than I’ve ever gone. It feels like my lungs are getting stronger and my sense of accomplishment is getting satisfied. I find great joy in being in the gorgeous Fort Tryon Park, staying away from my neighbors, knowing that I’m investing in myself and my community even if it’s one lonely step at a time.

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etc-greys · 6 years

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Season 14 Episode 8: Out of Nowhere

Songs of the Episode:

You’re Dreaming by Wolf Parade

Synopsis:

It’s the big one, it’s the Season 14 Mid-Season Finale! I don’t know if I can wait until the Jan 18th! Anywho, let’s dive in...

The episode opens with a shirtless Ben prepping for the fire academy. Meanwhile Mer is getting interviewed after winning the Harper Avery, to which she’s unimpressed and feels a bit tortured with their questions. JO GOT CHIEF RESIDENT!! As she practices the speech she plans to give her interns with Alex, she is trying to embody her inner Bailey (aka trying to be scary), but he comically admits that unfortunately she’s not scary. They’re interrupted by the sound of Deluca and Sam in the on call room, something that has been happening a lot recently (bow-chicka-wow-wow).

Carina, Owen, and Arizona are all crammed in the elevator together, and April, who is quiet in the back, represents all of us watching when she points out how awkward it is. Bailey wants to pawn off the surgical contest bestowed to her by Jackson to Webber because she wants to stay in the game, but he rejects her for the same reason. He then only agrees to do it if he can know who the donor is, to which she rebuts that he owes her (for allowing Ben to use his time as a firefighter to be the equivalent of a fellowship, since he will be working in the medic program) and he finally agrees to (but it’s only temporary).

The intern working with Maggie makes an inappropriate comment to the patient about waiting too long to come in, to which Jackson shuts down instantly. Their patient has an extremely awkward interaction with his visitor, making their relationship really hard to read.

Mer’s working with Glasses and their patient makes a joke that he takes literally. Jolex is working a case together! Their patient is a young boy who had a stroke recently. He’s super smart and is up to date on his case, he then comically informs Jolex that his mom has a crush on Karev, and almost as if on cue she walks in. As they leave Jo teases Alex, and he teases back that that’s why he got into pediatrics, for the moms lol. Jackson and Maggie try to figure out their patient and his visitor's relationship, when the woman comes to get them since her father’s not breathing (so now we know he’s the dad). As they are trying to intubate him, the monitor begins to wig out.

In the pit, every patient begins to code, but on closer examination, it’s revealed that they are all fine. Unfortunately one guy found out a little too late, as one of the interns shocked him out of his nice nap (girl ABC’s, or even CAB you check the airway breathing circulation or circulation airway breathing, either way you check that first before you shock someone)!

Owen tells his intern to calm the patients down, because clearly there is a technical difficulty, and what starts off as a comforting message turns south as she begins to get nervous herself.

Mer’s patient is quite nervous for her first ever hospital procedure, but Grey reassures her that she will be fine. Jolex’s patient is experiencing another headache, which could be an indication of another stroke. They go to look at his chart, but the screen is locked. Bailey and Arizona are trying to get into her medical records, when the IT tech comes to help. Then a message pops up on the screen, they’ve been hacked and their medical records and systems are being held for ransom. If they don’t pay, the records will be destroyed endangering hundreds of lives. Bailey speaks with some of the attendings trying to figure out how they are going to handle the situation. At first she yells at IT about the ineffective cyber security seminar, but he informs her that it wasn’t until this coming week (pointing out the irony of the situation). As she tells all the attendings to remain calm and to try not to worry the patients, the FBI walks in, stealing her thunder.

Webber switches everyone to paper charts, and orders everyone to take manual vitals. Maggie and Jackson’s patient is in critical condition and we find out that the daughter is estranged (hence the awkwardness). Mer is in the middle of her surgery when she finds out about the hacking, but they are still able to continue because the monitors in the OR have not been fully compromised yet. Glasses reminds us all of how wonderful technology is because of it allows innovation, but how it is also a dependency that can be crippling at times like this. But Mer is worried that the power could leave her patient in a compromising position, so she contemplates switching to a more invasive procedure to reduce complications if the technology crashes or if she should just continue and try to be as efficient as possible (she chooses the latter).

Carina is awarded OB privileges so that she can help given the hospital is currently understaffed and under cyber attack. Arizona and Carina arrive to the pit for a patient who decided that delivering her baby at home was no longer a satisfying option. She’d prefer to have an epidural and be attached to all machines available (which could be problematic). Carina expresses her excitement over her first patient at Grey Sloan, to which the mother becomes panicked.

Everyone is in line for the only working CT machine, and Owen tries to convey his authority so that he can be pumped up to the front. Karev defends his patient and Owen backs down! Bailey and Webber talk to the FBI and try to figure out a solution. They recall how another hospital handled a similar situation, where they said they defeated them, but off the record the other hospital had paid the ransom. When Webber offers to pay the ransom, seeing how it was only around 5,000 bitcoin, it turns out the conversion is equivalent to 20 million dollars. A fee that he, nor most people can afford. Then Bailey realizes that the surgical contest drew so much attention to Grey Sloan, that hackers figured that the hospital could afford a hefty ransom. Bailey recruits Avery to help since he has the funds to pay the ransom, while still maintaining her promise of keeping the donor of the competition anonymous. He gives her the go ahead, but the FBI official stops her in her tracks. He warns her of the global consequences involved if the hospital pays that amount of money. If they hackers get the money, then they would be motivated to go after every hospital endangering millions of lives. Jackson backs Bailey 100 percent and tells her to give him a call whenever she needs him. Bailey offers to give the FBI a little more time.

Jackson and Maggie decide to transfer their patient. Carina enlists Arizona for her motherly touch and expertise with the expectant mother. Webber informs Kepner, who needs a CT for her patient, that the line is backed up and it will be at least an hour wait. Pressed for time, she stresses for options when Webber suggests an old school trick. On request of a newspaper, the millennial teenagers offer up the newspaper app, but Kepner comes to the rescue as she grabs a real newspaper. He shows them that if you can read the newspaper through the pink tinted IV bag, then the bleeding in the abdomen has not reached critical levels and that the patient should be okay for now.

Jolex’s patient is stable and his CT was clear, so they reassure his mom. Amelia reveals to Alex that in fact he’s likely to have another stroke in the next 24 hours. Jo comes running with their patients night nurse that she’s tracked down, who should know if he received vitamin K the previous night. Unfortunately, he’s not the right nurse, but Jo quickly finds out that whoever the one that night/early morning, was there when Doc McStuffins was on. They figure out who the nurse was, but now are tasked with finding her, even though they have no means of contacting her. They need to know if the patient was given vitamin K or not because that will determine what medication he gets, and if they don’t give him the right medication he could have a severe stroke.

Webber is in his glory, schooling everyone on how it was done back when there was limited technology. He helps Deluca place a patient in trendelenburg position to help slow down his breathing and heart rate. As Owen finally gets to CT, the hospital loses power. Mer is forced to switch to the more invasive procedure and sends a very nervous Glasses to get more blood.

Jackson and Maggie are set to transfer their patient. Jackson opens up to Maggie while they ride the elevator and they find out that they used to go to the same pool growing up in Boston.

Jo interrogates the nurse in an attempt to help her patient, but is being slightly brushed off. Glasses cannot access the blood bank, since the codes/basically-anything-automated is still under attack. Jo finally gets the information she needs and sprints to find the nurse. Jolex’s patient is getting sicker, he literally feels like he’s gonna die. Arizona and Carina’s patient is on the (slow) waddle. But it turns out she’s crowning. Now her patient is extremely scared, but Arizona gives her the best/realest pep talk. Then with her newfound strength, she literally delivers her baby standing up in the hallway leaning on a gurney. Carina feels she’s screwed up with her first patient at Grey Sloan, but Arizona comforts her. Carina then admits that she misses her and Arizona feels the same way! Turns out Carina is super casual with Owen, which opens up the doors for her and Arizona. Speeding past them during their nice moment, Jo sprints to find her patients nurse.

Amelia and Karev are faced with the tough decision, whether or not to give him a blood thinner, even if they don’t know for certain if he had his vitamin K. Mer is furious with Glasses for not receiving the blood. Mer comes up with a solution to her blood shortage, she hooks up Glasses to an IV and does a direct donation to her patient. On the helicopter, Jackson and Maggie subtly show how they feel about each other until they hit terrible turbulence. He grabs her hand to show his support and they start to scratch the surface of their feeling when: their patients LVAD flies loose and BLOOD BEGINS TO SPURT OUT EVERYWHERE. Jackson was the brave soul to fix it. Owen tells Bailey that they need to start evacuating patients, when Bailey puts her medical career and license on the line defending her hospital and patients to the FBI officer. She contacts Jackson to pay the ransom, but his phone is stuck in the blood on the plane and he’s distracted in his efforts to comfort Maggie. Jo finally finds the right nurse, who warns them not to give her patient heparin. She sprints to tell Alex, but he’s already beginning to inject him (with what is presumed to be heparin)!! The screen then jumps back to Jo in the elevator trying to call Alex, but the call won’t go through. (Let the record show that it’s at this point that I started to scream at my tv. Why you might ask, well because she has her back turned to the elevator doors, there’s less than a minute left and I know that something terrible always happens in elevators. Not to mention cliffhangers thrive in the the last minute of a mid-season finale. I knew the devil would emerge, and boy was I mad to be right!) As she turns around after texting Alex “NO HEPARIN,” she looks up to the sound of Paul saying, “Hey Brooke, oh wait it, it’s Jo now right?” We then see Jo in a haze as she’s met face to face with her abusive sickly smiling husband, followed by the black and write Grey’s Anatomy end title.

A Few Additional Thoughts:

I’M SHAKEN! I cannot believe it! I’m in shock, even though I knew he would reappear and that it makes total sense for him to return just as we must break. I can’t even imagine what she must feel like. While I’m looking forward to the way in which they tell this story and it’s importance, I’m just so heartbroken that she must relive her past. I hope everything works out well for her. I truly believe that the mid-season premiere is going to be a Jo centric episode. I think they are going to dive into her past and shed some light on the PTSD that can be accompanied with domestic abuse. I also think it's going to reflect on her time with Alex and the life she’s built for herself. I’m excited to learn more about her character and interested to see how Alex is there for her.

This episode was bananas! I mean are they going to pay the ransom? Will the hackers back down? Will Bailey be able to wire the money? Will Alex get Jo’s text in time? Will they be able to reverse the medication if they end up giving it? Will their patient die? What will Jo say? What will Paul say? Is Jo in immediate danger? What’s in store for her? What will Alex do when he finds out? How will he find out? Will Mer’s patient live? Will Glasses’ blood be enough to sustain the women through her surgery? Will Jackson and Maggie’s patient live given the sufficient blood loss? Why didn’t Maggie stop screaming as all the blood was spurting (I know she was terrified, but don’t scream when all that blood is spurting girl!)? What’s in store for their relationship? SO MANY QUESTIONS AND SO MUCH TIME UNTIL JAN 18!

But we Grey’s Anatomy fans are built for this!

#grey's anatomy #mid season finale #jolex #jaggie

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hangonimevolving · 4 years

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Beyond the beyond.

It has been a season of heartache and life lessons around here.

My last post was about my dad’s coronary bypass surgery, which obviously was a very nerve-wracking and sobering experience for our entire family. I am happy to report that today, about 7 weeks post-surgery, my father is doing well, is getting better and stronger each day, and has even returned to his work, which he loves and which keeps him going in life. I am grateful for this.

But amidst my dad’s recovery from a life-altering illness and surgery, my family has experienced another shock and heartbreaking loss.

On October 2nd, less than 3 weeks following my dad’s discharge from the hospital, my beloved uncle Marley was rushed to the hospital for difficulty breathing. I wrote about Marley in my last post, and how prior to my dad’s heart attack and hospitalization, I was actually more worried about him because he has been in declining health for some years, and was looking pretty frail when I last spent significant time with him in August. During my visit home in September to help my dad recuperate, I spent many days with Marley, who was instrumental in helping my mother get my dad to the ER when he initially showed signs of illness, and helped connect my dad with the cardiologist and the vascular surgeon who would eventually see him through his LAD stunting and bypass procedures. Marley was there to support my mom through it all emotionally, and to provide a listening ear and his own professional connections when needed, as well as important doses of humor and good spirits whenever they were warranted. So it was a huge punch in the gut to hear that after all the kind and generous help he’d given us in a time of need, that he was now suffering with shortness of breath and needed to go to the hospital.

Marley was admitted to the ICU immediately and put on a CPAP machine to help him try and breathe more effectively, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough to help him, and it soon became clear that he’d need to be intubated and put on a ventilator. He, his wife and daughters, as well as my mom were all present throughout these medical decisions and conversations, and it was a heartbreakingly emotional experience because it was fairly clear that if he were to go on the ventilator, there was a real possibility he’d never come off of it. Marley has suffered for many years from interstitial lung disease, and was now being diagnosed with some sort of pneumonia or infection that was making his scarred and damaged lungs even more ineffective at breathing.

About 24 hours after his admission, Marley was sedated and tubed, and placed on the vent. Thankfully, his wife and younger daughter (both physicians and residents of New Orleans) were at his side throughout, and his elder daughter (a psychologist) was able to fly down from Washington DC to see and speak with her father before he was tubed. Everyone was beside themselves, but they knew the only chance he had for recovery was to be intubated and put on mechanical ventilation, so that his body could conserve energy to try and fight the infection and recover.

Days went by, and sadly, Marley did not show enough signs of improvement to be taken off the vent. About a week later, another blow came - Marley suffered a stroke on the right side of his brain, which while not disastrous since he is right-handed/left-brained, was still a significant blow. His left leg and arm were knocked out, unable to move, and it was clear that he would only have a chance of recovery of his leg if he were to heal completely from the lung issues and then engage in a rigorous course of rehab. But that wasn’t happening. The average length of time that a patient can be intubated and ventilated is about 10-14 days, and the window was soon approaching where decisions would be made. The family considered placement of a tracheostomy which would entail a more permanent tube inserted directly to his windpipe from his neck, which would allow for the removal of the tube in his mouth. He would remain on the ventilator machine this way. But in doing this, he would also have to get a PEG to allow him to receive nutrition; he would not be able to consume food by mouth. The risks and effects on quality of life of these different procedures and medical accoutrement are considerable. Just when all of these options were being considered, Marley found a way to communicate, even while intubated and ventilated. He made it clear to the family that he did not want to live any longer under these conditions.

Hearing him express this sentiment was like a knife through the heart - but we all understood his feelings as well. Marley is himself an experienced physician, a world-renowned expert on Parkinson’s disease with over 50 years of time caring for patients, and he knew exactly what he was talking about. The way he lived his life, the joy and spirit that he always exuded, and the humor and cheer that he spread around him came with a very incisive, often irreverent honesty about his opinions on things. On MANY, many occasions, he had shared with me and everyone close to him that he would never want to live under such circumstances. So we all knew that he wasn’t making this decision in the spur of the moment or under duress; this was truly the way he felt.

The entire family literally flew to his side the day after he made his wishes clear. Every single one of us, his nieces and nephews, traveled from around the country to visit Marley in the ICU and say our goodbyes to him. It was pretty much the most gut-wrenching thing I’ve ever endured - but there was no way we could NOT go. He saw each and every one of us, communicated with us with his eyes and mouthing words, held our hands, and we lavished him with hugs and kisses, hand squeezes, and lots of loving words. For my part, I took a 6 am flight on Saturday, October 11 and Lyfted it with my sister directly to the hospital, spent a few hours with him, then Lyfted it back in time for a 9:45 pm flight home to Florida. It was quite a day.

Marley was extubated at 10 am on Sunday, October 13, 2019. He died around 7 pm, surrounded by his wife and daughters, and made comfortable by a wonderful team of palliative care physicians and professionals.

Around that same time, in Miami, Dr. Spouse and the kids encouraged me to take a walk outside, where we were greeted with this sight.

Marley was cremated on Friday, October 18, and a number of rituals and ceremonies were performed by his wife, daughters, and my uncle R, in accordance with Hindu tradition. I was not able to be present for these events, but later that evening, Dr. Spouse, the kids and I all flew into New Orleans for the weekend.

The memorial service was held on Saturday, October 19, and I don't know exactly how many people were in attendance, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was a few hundred. He was so loved, and by so many - members of the family, the Indian community of New Orleans and other parts of the country, his community of colleagues and friends locally, and dozens of patients from his Parkinson’s support groups all came to pay their respects and offer their condolences to us all. It was a bittersweet experience, to see how many folks shared our grief.

My aunt and cousins asked me to be the MC of the memorial service, and I don’t think I will ever be so deeply honored in my life as I was, to perform this duty in my uncle’s memory.

We arranged for the kids to be watched at my parents’ house in New Orleans during the memorial - my two kids along with my sister Rithers’ kids H2O and NiNi,, and my cousin Neets’ daughters S and M. Later that evening, Marley’s wife, my aunt Shreeks, hosted the entire family at a gathering at her house, where an Indian community member and friend who owns several restaurants in the city had generously donated dinner for us all. Shreeks and her daughters had requested that each of us come to the dinner prepared with a few funny and lighthearted videos of our kids, so we could have a short and hilarious film festival after dinner to help lighten our spirits and take our minds off of our grief for a few minutes. It was a poignant gathering - the last time we’d all been together was back in August, only a few short weeks earlier, for Marley and Shreeks’ 50th anniversary party. It was hard to believe that we were now sitting there without him. But we did our best to enjoy each others’ company and carry on with our family traditions of joking and laughing together - I think we all can agree that its what he would have wanted.

In Hindu ritual tradition, the thirteenth day after a person’s death is highly significant, and a number of important rituals take place on this day to honor the person’s journey from a member of the living family, to the installation of that person in the panoply of ancestors that watches over the family as guardians and protectors. I wasn’t able to be present in New Orleans for this day, Friday, the 25th of October, but it was at the forefront of my mind when I went to bed the night before, and it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up. As soon as my eyes opened on this morning, I was aware of the fact that the sun had already risen, yet it was raining heavily. I jumped out of bed and ran to the double doors in my bedroom that open up to my backyard, with its pool deck overlooking the lake behind our house. And I was greeted with this sight:

All these rainbows. I’ve never seen so many, in such vibrant color, in such a short time. But here they are. Each time I see one, I think three things:

1) Oh, how beautiful.

2) I’m going to miss Marley.

3) Man - there he goes again, championing the liberal agenda. You do you, Marley! Love ya! :) (Marley was a bleeding heart liberal, a registered Democrat, and a kindred political spirit and role model to me)

Of course, the fourth and most poignant thought I have, and one that I hope is true - I imagine that Marley is being greeted in the Heavens by his parents, my grandfather and grandmother, and his sister JM, who tragically died in 1973 at the age of 24 during childbirth. My grandmother and JM were both avid producers of kolams and rangolis - the South Indian artistic tradition of decorating the home’s threshold with colorful rice flour patterns, as a means of welcoming people into the house. I imagine them both in the heavens, making spectacular kolams to welcome Marley home.

My aunt had asked me to help find a meaningful passage or excerpt from the Buddhist to be read at the memorial service. Although ultimately, the decision was made to read another excerpt, this one had really spoken to me about Marley.

selected excerpts from the Buddhist “Dhammapada”, book 26: The True Master

Wanting nothing With all your heart Stop the stream. When the world dissolves Everything becomes clear. Go beyond This way or that way, To the farther shore Where the world dissolves And everything becomes clear. Beyond this shore And the farthest shore, Beyond the beyond, Where there is no beginning, No end. Without fear, go. Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work, with mastery.

...

Like water on the leaf of a lotus flower Or a mustard seed on the point of a needle, He does not cling. For he has reached the end of sorrow And has laid down his burden.

...

He wants nothing from this world And nothing from the next. He is free. Desiring nothing, doubting nothing, Beyond judgment and sorrow And the pleasures of the senses, He has moved beyond time. He is pure and free. ... Desire has left him, Never to return. Sorrow has left him, Never to return. He is calm. In him the seed of renewing life Has been consumed. He has conquered all the inner worlds. ... In him there is no yesterday, No tomorrow, No today. Possessing nothing, Wanting nothing. He is full of power. Fearless, wise, exalted. He has vanquished all things. He sees by virtue of his purity. ... He has come to the end of the way. All that he had to do, he has done. And now he is one.

I am writing a longer and more personal essay about what Marley has meant to me throughout my life. It is filled with memories and episodes involving him from throughout my childhood, adolescence and adulthood, and really speaks to his wit, sensitivity, humor, intelligence, and trust that he had in me, and all his nieces and nephews, at a time when men of his generation and from his background were not necessarily known for their ability to engage with kids in an emotionally intelligent capacity like this. I will definitely post the essay here, but I am going to try and get it published online somewhere else that might have more reach to speak to those who have been touched by Marley’s life. I will update about this.

But for now, here are a smattering of pictures of Marley from the last few years - walking me down the aisle at my wedding along with his brother, my other uncle R. Holding 3-month-old Vev. Engaging both my kids with funny monkey videos on his iPhone just last summer. Together with his siblings - my mom Ajima/VJ, my uncle R and my aunt VT. Goofing around with my grandma, his mom J, before my cousin’s wedding a few years ago. I imagine the two of them sitting on a sofa together somewhere up in Heaven, joking around and laughing, the Saints game probably on in the background. At least, I hope so.

Marley - I am going to miss you so very much. I am not sure how we are going to go on without you. You were my uncle, and like another father to me - but you were also my mentor, cheerleader, comedic guru, and friend. I will love you forever.

#family #loss

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gaiatheorist · 6 years

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Blind faith.

(I’m smirking at that play on words, but my left eye is already ‘going’, it remains to be seen, or not-seen whether I’ll be able to see anything at all on the left side soon enough. It’s annoying, but I can work around it by turning my head, and not moving around any more than I need to, having one eye ‘gone’ buggers your depth/spatial perception.)

The NHS is celebrating its 70th ‘birthday’. Inception date, I suppose, and I genuinely doubt there’s much celebrating happening. Someone has posted a link from a BBC Radio programme asking ‘Is the NHS a new religion?’ I was going to say I hadn’t read it, but it’s radio, I haven’t listened to it. My immediate thought? “Is it bollocks!”, I then tangent-bounced through various “Religion is bullshit!” opinions, before remembering that I do have a religion of sorts. THEN I remembered all of the people I wanted to punch after my brain haemorrhage, for telling me I was ‘lucky’ and ‘a miracle’, and ‘must have a guardian angel.’

Semantics, but words are my thing. I wasn’t ‘lucky’, I was a statistical anomaly, the type/grade of haemorrhage I’d had has a statistical mortality rate of between 80 and 90%. The 10-20% of us that ‘wake up’ don’t all immediately shout ‘Hallelujah!’, and claim that we have ‘seen the light’, because a lot of us can’t speak, or see. The dancing in the church aisles has to wait, too. I can mostly walk and talk now. Sometimes I walk into things, sometimes I fall over, and sometimes I assess the risk of walking, and decide to stay sitting down, to avoid significant injury to myself. I can talk in relatively short bursts, until my concentration starts to fog, and I start word-slipping, or babbling absolute jumble. I repeat myself A LOT, and I quite often think I’ve told people things when I’d actually just THOUGHT ‘remember to tell...’ I am in varying degrees of pain at all times, and have only just started accessing prescription analgesics, after three years of gritting my teeth and ‘getting on with it’ through the pain haze. Lucky? I’m alive.

I’m not ‘a miracle’, I’m a stubborn bastard. That obstinate streak could have killed me. When the aneurysm ruptured, when I felt the irregularity in one of the arteries in my brain burst, and was struck down by the most blinding, indescribable pain I have ever experienced, I played it down. I told the friend who was with me that I thought it was a migraine, and then tried not to vomit in my office bin, because I didn’t want to put a dampener on his weekend. I told the ex I needed to sleep, and, when I woke up, and vomited in my son’s bedroom, it wasn’t a ‘miracle’ that he woke the ex, it was his judgement that there was something seriously wrong with me. There was, the rupture was pumping blood into my skull, which is a closed unit as far as circulation goes, my brain was being crushed. It might have been a minor miracle that the ex got out of bed, but that’s just me being bitchy. It wasn’t ‘a miracle’ that the ambulance was eventually sent, or that the ambulance crew eventually agreed to take me to hospital, that was a clinical decision based on my presentation, they didn’t have scanner-eyes, they couldn’t see what was happening. My ‘Glasgow Coma Scale’ rating was around 7 on admission to hospital, I had very basic muscle-response, virtually no eye-response, and was non-verbal, and unresponsive to verbal commands. At that point, I was probably ‘dying’, there wasn’t much of me ‘in there.’

Another not-miracle was the clinical decision to send me to another hospital, rather than write-off the drooling, cross-eyed lump that I was at that point in time. The surgeries that saved me weren’t miraculous, they were examples of skill and judgement by the medical staff. (On a Saturday morning, I’ll add, for the type of politician who likes to infer that the NHS is a Monday-Friday 9-5 institution.) I don’t have a time-line for the surgeries, the first one was similar to something from a horror film, the second more of a futuristic science fiction thing. Intubated and anaesthetised, the surgeons shaved a chunk of my hair away, used a bone-saw to make a groove-incision in my skull, and a drill to make a small hole. That’s not the goriest bit. Then, they very carefully punctured the membrane that stops your brain chaffing against your skull ‘subarachnoid membrane’, I think, and it probably made a right old mess, with the blood, and cerebrospinal fluid that was causing the hydrocephalus. Membrane punctured, they laid some sort of plastic tubing from the large incision at the front of my skull to the small drill-hole at the back. (I’m sorry, I should have asked if you wanted a sick-bag.) Plastic tubing, along the surface of my brain, poking out of the hole in the back, and draining the STINKING accumulated fluids out of the water-bomb that had been my brain-sac, into a plastic bag on one of those IV-stand doofers. High-end trepanning, isn’t it? It wasn’t ‘a miracle’ that they didn’t slip with the drill, or the bone-saw, it was technological advances in imaging, that meant they knew how deep to go. It wasn’t ‘a miracle’ that the bit of tubing IN MY SKULL didn’t track bacteria or infections into my brain, it was scrupulous attention to cleanliness and infection control. ‘Drain infection’ is a real thing, I’m glad I didn’t Google that phrase until afterwards. That was the horror film bit.

What they did next was amazing, a marvel of technology and medical expertise combined, but it STILL wasn’t a miracle, it was ‘hard’ technological science, combined with knowledge, and centuries of medical developments. Also very steady hands. Having drained off the fluids that were physically crushing my brain, it was assessed that the bleeding was coming from a ruptured aneurysm on my Anterior Communicating Artery. Imaging also noted two other aneurysms in there, but science is logical-rational, they weren’t urgent or life threatening, the ruptured one was. Linear-logical-analytical, although my ex and son had been taken into one of the quiet side rooms, and told I might not ‘pull through’, and I wouldn’t be ‘the same’ if I did, the risks of the surgery were minimal, compared to the battering my brain had already given itself, they weren’t going to make me any worse. I can’t even find the scar from that surgery. An incision was made in my groin, over the femoral artery, and a surgeon guided wires and cameras and all manner of improbable machinery into my brain. Science knows that the human body builds scar tissue around foreign bodies it can’t eject, so, that’s what the surgeon did, he fired multiple tiny platinum coils into the burst aneurysm, to encourage scarring. (Don’t weigh my head in at Cash Converters, I assure you it’s worth more to me, and I bite.) A ‘miracle’? No, science and technology.

‘You must have a guardian angel!’ No, just no. My survival, and subsequent ‘recovery’, although impossible without the NHS intervention at point of need, were all down to me. There’s no delusion of grandeur about that, it was a life-altering medical emergency, with a statistical mortality rate averaging 85%. Most people don’t survive at all, and the majority who do don’t go back to work six weeks later. The NHS is strained beyond breaking point, I wasn’t ‘discharged’ from hospital, because there wasn’t a doctor on the ward, so nobody told me what I was, or wasn’t ‘allowed’ to do. Two weeks after my brain leaked, and my head was hacked into, I just sort of wandered out of the hospital, because the ex was whining about being bored of waiting. Everything after that first two weeks was me, because when I eventually had my rehab clinic appointment, I was an absolute horror, and told the poor woman that I WAS going back to work, that I WASN’T going to ‘be looked after’, or ‘make colour-coded charts for household chores.’ Yeah, I misjudged how ‘better’ I was going to get. My bad.

Despite having ‘a religion’, I’m not a big fan of the organised mainstream religions. I was raised Catholic during my formative years, and I never quite managed to step out of the ‘Shit, I’m going to get caught!’ guilt-trip, into the ‘if I do get caught, I’ll just atone, and it will be fine.’ I didn’t ‘put my faith in God’ after the haemorrhage, I trusted the medical staff to do the best they could, and hoped my body would eventually repair itself.

My religion. A couple of hundred years ago, I would have been burned for it, you get the drift. I’m a throw-back, a glitch in the system, because I understand most of how the human body works, based on science, but I can also pinch a bit of a plant between my fingers, and tell you, from the smell, what medicinal value it would have. It works, my son has been prescribed pharmaceutical drugs twice in his entire life, and I’ve successfully treated animals with herbs and aromatherapy oils, you can’t argue placebo-effect on that. I’m that weird old woman, living mostly alone, except I’m not in a tumble-down shack in the woods, I’m in a detached house in a cul-de-sac just off the main road, couldn’t tell you if my right-hand neighbours have two children or three, and today was the first time I ever spoke to the lady-neighbour on that side. ��

Here’s the old cross-over between medicine and religion, that old woman in the woods would have been feared and revered, but, with the emergence of science and medicine, that link was lost. I genuinely don’t believe that the ‘pray for...’ Facebook posters have given any thought to the immense unlikelihood of a collective consciousness having any impact on a dog with ham on its face, or whatever they’re babbling about now. I think it’s just a ‘thing’ that’s stuck. We don’t believe that our soul is going to fly out of our nostrils when we sneeze, that’s just snot, but we still say “Bless you.” The ‘thoughts and prayers’ phenomenon drives me insane, I think it’s just as much of a reflex-nothing as ‘bless you.’

I don’t think that the people mouth-barbling, or typing that nurses are ‘angels’ are drawing any real correlation between over-worked, under-paid humans doing phenomenally difficult work, and cherubim and seraphim, they’re just weightless words. There has been a shift, with the advent of the internet, and the increasingly litigious nature of society. The ‘man in the white coat’ is no longer as respected or revered, because we all have Dr Google now, and can look up our symptoms, disregard the first result that says we’re clinically dead, and stomp into our GP’s surgery to tell them what’s wrong with us, and what we want doing about it. (If we haven’t actually died during the 4 week wait for the next convenient appointment.)

My ex father-in-law had prostate cancer. He’s all clear now because he ‘went on the computer’, and looked up emergent techniques available locally. This is a man approaching 80 years of age now, who always followed his doctors instructions to the letter. To the extent that, when I queried whether he should STILL be ‘on tablets’ for his ‘bad toe’, he shushed me, as the doctor hadn’t discontinued his prescription. I can’t remember what the medication was, but it wasn’t intended for long-term use, and accumulated in his liver and kidneys, causing significant damage requiring surgery. From a man who wouldn’t question his doctor, he became a man who would. (Still paid no attention to me, I was just ‘a girl’, not a doctor or nurse...)

It’s not all good, because the NHS has limited funding, and, if we all demand everything we’ve seen on the internet, and the poor over-stretched GPs are concerned about legal action, we will screw it into the ground. Free at point of use is what we’re used to, but that Gods-like obedience to whatever our doctor says is slipping away. (I know, I’ll only see one of the three doctors at my surgery, because the other two are fond of ‘everybody gets that’, and ‘you survived, what more do you want?’ The third one listens and responds, he doesn’t just dismiss, and THAT is the relationship I need.)

Doctors are not Gods, we do not worship them. We respect them, but we do not revere them as our spirit-guides, and we know they can’t hex us. The NHS is ‘a Godsend’, in the loosest sense, thousands, if not millions of us would be dead without it, but to ask if it is ‘a religion’ is the silliest of wordplay. People who say ‘Thank God!’ generally aren’t, and people who do ‘Thank Gods’ generally don’t bandy the phrase about, lest it lose weight, a Djinn only gives a fixed number of wishes, after all, and there’s a price to pay.

I’ve been tapping away at this, in fits and starts all day. I am thankful for the functionality that the NHS managed to save, and I’m wary of the way that the government is asset-stripping and disassembling it. For 70 years, the UK has had free medical care at point of need, and, this week, almost 20 ‘non-urgent’ surgical procedures were removed from the available catalogue of things we’ve always had access to. This anniversary will see many of us reflect on life-saving, and life-preserving procedures, care and compassion. It will also see many people reflecting on why they had to leave the NHS as an employer, lack of funding and cohesive support mechanisms mean that the system can no longer function as it was intended. Is it a religion? I don’t believe so. Is it fundamentally a compassionate and humane service, intended to preserve and prolong life? Almost certainly, for now. Our ‘Christian’ Prime Minister would do well to acknowledge that.

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ashyrose-blog · 7 years

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Rant I guess

This past month or so hasn’t been too bad. James was here for the most part which was nice because the most time we’d ever spent together was eight days so it was nice to have him here for longer. He was here the day I passed my driving test which was nice, I’m glad he was here to share that day with me. We also managed to escape for a few days to Swansea to see my family. It was a well-needed break but after recent events, I’m already feeling like I need another one.

The day after James and I got back from Swansea Deo messaged me and said, Oscar had hurt his eye. I asked him how it had happened and he said that the twins step brother was swinging around a HDMI cable and it hit Oscar in the eye. He said he was going to A&E and when I asked him if he wanted me to go there he said no, he was fine. So I stayed at home awaiting news. It was not good news. Oscar had a hole in his cornea that would require emergency surgery under general anaesthetic to repair, at this point I started worrying but Deo having the biggest ego under the sun didn’t give me any more information so I didn’t have a clue what was going on all I knew was that Oscar needed surgery tomorrow and we had to be at the hospital for 9AM. I hardly slept that night.

We met the next morning and went to clinic 3 to meet Miss Allen the consultant who had a look at Oscar's eye and said that his iris was now coming out of the hole to stop the eye from watering and during surgery they would need to push the iris back through and repair the hole. She told us that Oscar was on the emergency theatre list but the list was quite full so we could be in for quite a wait. She told us to give Oscar some food because he had been Nil-by-mouth since midnight and whilst in the line to get him some porridge Miss Allen phoned me and told us not to let him eat or drink because there may be a theatre slot that morning, much to Oscar’s disappointment we headed back up to clinic 3 to await further instructions. We were soon taken to the paediatric day surgery ward to find out when Oscar would be going down. It started getting later and later and we still hadn’t heard anything and the nurse who was looking after us came and told us that Oscar could eat and drink but be Nil-by-mouth again from 1pm, this was at 12:45! So we rushed down to the concourse to get him some food and to be fair to him he didn’t eat a lot, only a Cheese String and some Dairlea Dunkers, this is the boy who normally eats like a horse so I think he was a bit nervous. Once we had returned to the ward Oscar and Deo went to play in the play room and I stayed and chilled in the bed because I was already absolutely knackered and I needed my strength to be there for Oscar so I didn’t want to waste what little energy I did have playing because I knew I’d need it later. While they were in the play room the surgeon came round and said he’s really keen to get Oscar to theatre within the next 40 minutes to an hour! He’d only just eaten and when I told the surgeon this he said he’d have to talk with the anesthetist and shortly after came back and said that the anesthetist said no, and we were more likely looking at about 6/7pm for surgery now. It had already been a long day and Oscar came and got into bed and watched some TV and fell asleep. While he was asleep someone came round to put a little cannula in his tiny little hand, the brave boy was half asleep and didn’t even flinch. I, personally would have screamed the place down.

Roughly half an hour later two members of the theatre support team came to take us down to theatre, I started to get emotional at this point, I’d been dreading it all day and now it was here. The thought of him having to be put to sleep and having to be intubated had been playing on my mind all day, I’ve seen people intubated before and it’s not nice and the thought of my boy having a tube down his throat to breathe for him sent shivers down my spine. The anaesthetic room was so overwhelming, it was absolutely freezing in there too. They got Oscar into a gown and made sure he was high enough up in the bed. I made the mistake of looking at what was in the anesthetist's tray and I saw the big metal hook thing they look down the airway with, then I heard the word intubation and started shaking. They then started preparing to put my little boy to sleep. They put a mask over his face and injected a white fluid into his cannula. Just before they injected the white stuff into his cannula he sat up suddenly and said he needed the toilet, this is a nervous trait of his and it broke my heart to know he was scared. He was asleep within seconds and I broke down. I just wanted to cuddle him until he woke up but a lady led us out and showed us down to recovery where we would be able to see Oscar once he was out of theatre. I could still see my tiny boy through the window and tried to stay and watch but the lady pushed me away.

In recovery we were given a pager and were told that as soon as Oscar arrives in recovery they would page us so we could go and see him. The surgeon said the procedure should take up to 40 minutes, so we had to try and entertain ourselves while Oscar was in theatre, easier said than done! We went and got some food and then went back to the ward to wait. It was agonising, each minute felt like an hour and I felt sick. I just about managed to stomach some crisps because I hadn’t eaten all day and didn’t want to make myself poorly when I needed to be there for Oscar. I kept looking at the time on my phone and looking at the pager willing it to go off. Oscar went into theatre at 5:15 and it was soon 6pm, then 6:15, then 6:20. He should have been out ages ago. I got up and went for a walk, I started pacing around the ward, I felt sick, my heart was in my mouth. So much was going through my mind, what if something had gone wrong? What if he’d tried to wake up? What if he’d aspirated some food? What if the worst had happened? I walked past a beeping computer and convinced myself it was the pager. I was by the ward doors when the pager went off. I was out of that ward like a rocket. I phoned Deo and told him that the pager had gone off and I was already on my way.

When we got to recovery Oscar was still asleep. He looked so small in that massive bed. The surgeon came out and told us that the surgery had gone well and that he was pleased and we’d have a follow up appointment tomorrow morning to find out what was going on.

Me and Deo argued about who was going to take Oscar home that night. I wanted to take him home with me so he could be in his own house in his own bed with his Mum right there and one on one care because James was here to take care of Jake if need be. Deo wanted Oscar to go home with him because Isaac was there and wanted to see him etc. I could understand where he was coming from but Isaac would have survived a night without him so I said no he’s coming home with me. He then started getting defensive and dishing out the insults and telling me to go back to my fake family with James. I’m sorry but he can call my family with James fake all he wants but I’m not the one lying to my child about who his father is. I tried to tell him that I wasn’t going to argue with him while Oscar wasn’t even awake from his operation and in front of a nurse, and he kept going and kept going. Then he sat back, sighed and said that I was a shit parent. IN FRONT OF A NURSE. I was absolutely fuming. I stayed calm for Oscar though. Once Oscar had woken up and had an Ice Pop and some juice they were happy he could go back to the ward even though he was a bit sleepy.

When we got back to the ward Deo’s family arrived and I felt like I didn’t have the right to sit there with my own son, so I went and phoned my Mum and had a cry. It was such an emotional day, and Deo hadn’t helped things with his outburst. I sat in the parent's room and cried my eyes out. Deo’s Mum came in and had a chat with me and I said how nasty he’d been and she said she’d speak to him. I waited for my parents to arrive before I went to see Oscar again which is wrong because I had more right than anyone to be there.

When I got back on the ward with my Mum and Dad, Oscar and the others were in the play room. My Dad and Deo’s Dad get on quite well so they were chatting and we were all making a fuss of Oscar because he’d been really brave the whole day. Deo apologised to me and we went for a chat in the parent’s room where it was decided we need to help each other more, the point scoring and the competitive parenting had to stop. Unfortunately, it was all just words. Oscar ended up going home with Deo’s Mum that night and that was his decision. I was happier with him going to hers rather than Deo’s, considering Fraser was the reason Oscar was in this position in the first place you can kind of understand my reluctance to let Oscar go back there.

The next morning we met at the eye clinic with the surgeon and he did a series of tests. The vision in his eye wasn’t great. He couldn’t see the massive letters on the board he could only see the light behind them, he could tell you how many fingers you were holding up though. It was arranged we’d go back on Tuesday.

On Tuesday we went back to the eye clinic at 8AM. He had an eye test and it was obvious that the vision in his eye still isn’t great. He’s still only counting fingers. I asked the surgeon lots of questions and by the sounds of it, it’s unlikely Oscar will regain 100% vision in his eye. This upset me because out of the twins his eyesight was perfect. It’s likely we will have to eye patch him like we do with Isaac but he won’t need glasses.

School is really worrying me because he will still need eye drops and they have been shit with Isaac’s eye patching. And Oscar can’t do any PE at all and I’m scared they might make him.

Anyway after the eye appointment on Tuesday I went to my friends to pick Isaac and Jake up and we randomly decided to go to the seaside! So in the car and off we went! It was a great day but I was knackered by the end because I’d been awake since 5am!

The next day was rainy so we stayed in in the morning because my brother in law had the car, then we went to McDonald's and to Spotted Giraffe in Linton for a spot of soft play before going to see my Mum and Dad. Then I had to take them back to Deo’s because it was Fraser’s birthday the next day, much to my reluctance.

Here is where Deo breaks all his promises. I was under the impression I was getting the boys back today (Friday) and I asked him what is happening and apparently, he’s arranged to go to the seaside and the boys are excited. I tried to argue with him and ask him to bring them back but he twists and turns me being nice into me not caring. Fucking frustrates the life out of me.

I had so much more to say but I’m exhausted and have forgotten it all!

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lifeinstereo-blog1 · 7 years

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My Second Cochlear Implant Surgery.

I recently had my second CI surgery almost two weeks ago. Obviously, with all surgeries, planning is required. I had to go through a whole process before the surgery, I just couldn’t go to my surgeon and say “Hey, I want another cochlear implant” and then be approved for it on the spot and go in to surgery. It doesn’t work like that.

Back a few years ago during a routine-check-up with my audiologist, at the end of the visit, he pulled out a box that had a dummy model of a new processor called the Naida CI. He showed this to me and my dad and brought up the idea of me possibly getting a second cochlear implant. The Naida was a lot lighter and thinner than the processor I was using, the Harmony. My audiologist talked about the different colors and features and programs and it all seemed pretty snazzy. I left that day thinking that it was cool, and talked with my dad about possibly getting my left ear implanted. I talked with my mom about it too. However, at the time, things were busy and we didn’t take the idea of implanting me seriously. This happened a few times over the years. Eventually, I was able to drag my mom to the audiologist with my dad and I so she (and also my dad and I) could ask more questions about that process as well as re-implanting (that’s for waaayyy later, if need be.) me. After that, appointments were made for further evaluation.

After that, I can’t remember the exact order of appointments, but I saw my audiologist and my ENT (ear, nose and throat, or otolaryngologist, for you science nerds) doctor. At my audiologist’s appointment, I was subject to hearing tests as part of determining my candidacy. I was internally groaning at the thought of taking more hearing tests—I get so frustrated when I can’t get everything right. But it turns out that it was the easiest thing ever since it was an unaided (code for no cochlear implant on) test. They took off my CI and I’m not sure exactly what they played, words, sentences, or pitches since I’m deaf as a post without it on. Then, they gave me hearing aids and I assume they cranked them up as high as possible and did a pitch test. I just sat there, knowing I wouldn’t have to raise my hand if I heard a sound. My audiologist knew it too, so the both of us just went through it for formalities and proof for the insurance company. However, something funny happened. The hearing aids and the sound booth’s speakers together must have been so loud that for certain pitches I could actually feel my eardrums vibrating but couldn’t hear anything. That had never happened before.

At my ENT appointment (their office is on the same floor where audiology is, just that it’s off to the left where audiology is off to the right. Handy to have them both in one place.) I met up with my ENT doctor for a cochlear implant consultation. It had been years since I saw him, which was for my tonsils. Before that, I had seen him for my first cochlear implant surgery since he was the surgeon. Questions were asked about my general health, medications I take, vitals were taken, etc. My ears and throat were checked. My doctor sat down and told me a few things. He started off with the fact that the second implant was not going to be like the first. It most likely would not perform at the level my right one was at even though the left one would be cutting-edge technology, due to the amount of time my left auditory nerve and brain had gone without stimulation. My right side had gone over 2 years without stimulation before I was implanted, but then got implanted and used for 16 years. The left side had nothing for 18 years. Even with newer materials, design, and processing strategies, the new implant’s performance would not match or exceed my old one. My doctor also told me that I could get a wide range of results. I could get the best potential out of it (this potential would still not match my old implant) or I could get very little potential. It was essentially gambling, but with the expectation that the benefits would be better than the risks, since my doctor was willing to do the surgery. I understood this. I agreed that I still wanted to go ahead and do the CT scans. An appointment was made for a CT scan of my temporal bones.

One of the images from my CT scan appointment. This is just a general image of the skull, the structure that was of most interest in the scan was my left cochlea. Images showed that my left cochlea was clear and of normal anatomy. the bright white structure in the scan above is actually my right cochlear implant. It is a magnet, receiver coil, and small computer encased in a ceramic shell that looks like a square with a rounded side. The electrode array is visible. It is light gray and almost blends in with the large gray area but is still noticeable. For those of you curious about the bright white line where my teeth are, it’s my bonded retainer that I got after my braces were removed!

Since my cochlea was good to go, requests for a cochlear implant surgery and cochlear implant were sent to my insurance company. After a while, they approved it and my surgery was set for early August since I was excited and wanted it ASAP. However, the date ended up being too close to the start of college for me, so I decided to push it back to late December, when I’d be home for over a month for winter break. I’d have plenty of time to heal. (In hindsight, I’m extremely glad I made the change. There was no way I could’ve gone through orientation in the state that I was in after surgery! Orientation was hot, busy as hell, and there was SO much walking.) That proved to be a little sticky with the insurance company since during that time my insurance was also renewed, but it was done and the December surgery would be covered. My first semester of college kept me busy so I didn’t have much anxiety or thoughts about the surgery.

However, there was a time during the summer before I started college where I was very unsure about my decision to get a second cochlear implant. I had been doing fine with my right implant, and I had begun to really identify as a Deaf person and feel like part of the Deaf community (short explanation: deaf is used for the medical view of deafness, and Deaf is used in reference to the culture) and was worried about how others would view me if I got another cochlear implant. I feared that they would think I wanted to become more “hearing”, that I didn’t cherish the culture or want to be part of it. There is a small section of the Deaf community that are very against cochlear implants for a number of reasons, but that is for another potential post in the future. But, that wasn’t the case. I still call myself d/Deaf even with my cochlear implant on. My CI is not a cure—I take it off and I’m instantly deaf. With it on, I’m essentially hard of hearing. I still sign with it on. I know personally that the CI doesn’t make any difference in me being part of the Deaf community. I was just afraid of how others would see it though. Me being me, I made a list of pros and cons of getting the implant. I talked to some of my friends who were hearing, deaf with cochlear implants, and very strongly Deaf (they rejected cochlear implants and hearing aids for their self). All of them supported me, regardless of what decision I made. That made me feel better that the people I knew had no objection to me getting another cochlear implant. At that point I was like 98% sure I was going to get it. When I was at RIT (my college) I saw a huge variety of d/Deaf/HoH people using a wide range of assistive equipment. I had captioning and interpreters. I had the most access in my life. It was nothing like I had back at home. This made me kind of waver in my decision to have a second implant because there was just so much support I could get. I hesitated during the fall months and reevaluated the pros and cons. I locked in my decision one hundred percent in early December. I was going ahead with the implant.

I had pre-op a week before my surgery, where my height, weight and vitals were taken for anesthesia reasons. The general instructions for surgery were given to me via a pamphlet. I had to stop eating at midnight the night before surgery. I could have clear fluids up to four hours before. No makeup or jewelry could be worn that day. My surgeon specifically requested I have my hair pulled up so shaving it would be easier. I asked more questions like what specific electrode array that would be used, how much hair would be shaved, if I was going to be fully intubated or not, if the magnet position would be symmetrical with the other one, if they were going to use a facial nerve monitor, etc. I left feeling good about my surgery. I knew not to psych myself out. It was just surgery, I’d seen countless CI surgery videos on YouTube. It would be like closing my eyes and then opening them and the surgery would be done before I knew it. Plus, I trusted my surgeon. He had done my first CI and it went smoothly, so I already had a foundation of trust with him. This time around I (not my parents) was able to personally judge his character and trustworthiness. He passed—he is a really sweet guy who definitely knows his stuff, and is someone I might ask to shadow someday!

The day of surgery I woke up at around 7:45 AM and got comfy clothes on. My family left the house around 8:30 since we had to be there at 9:45. My dad drove me, my sister, mom and aunt to the outpatient surgery center. We sat for a few minutes before I was called in. Once again, my height and weight were taken. An urine sample was also taken (since y’know, that’s required for all females who are capable of reproducing) and I was led to my room. I changed into a hospital gown and got into the bed. The nurse was really sweet and got me heated blankets since I’m pretty much perpetually cold. It took two tries to get the IV in but that was no biggie. During the end of the IV insertion, my surgeon came and talked with me while the nurse was poking around trying to get a vein to pop up. It was a nice distraction. I remember this conversation I had with him:

“What did you have for breakfast?” he said.

I was very confused as to why he asked that question because its obvious that I didn’t have anything, since that’s required for surgery and that’s pretty common sense for a surgeon and for me, too.

“Uh...Nothing?”

“Good. That was a trick question.”

Then I got why he asked it. I laughed. He left the room to go prepare for the surgery.

The IV was in and the nurse gave me some fluids. I could feel the cold liquid running up my arm. It was so weird. I could feel it run up to my shoulder before I could feel nothing as it warmed up and went into my heart and the rest of my body. At some point, a nurse came in and said that my surgeon was running ahead of schedule so my surgery would actually be sooner than expected. I talked with my parents for a few minutes and then met the circulating nurse that would be in the OR with the surgeon, then met the anesthesiologist. The anesthesiologist said he would be back soon to give me some medicine to relax me before they wheeled me in to the OR. I talked with my parents some more and then took off my CI and gave it to them to hold during my surgery. My glasses were already in a leather pouch the nurse had given me and was put with my clothes. Then a nurse popped in and said everything was ready for me. The anesthesiologist stuck to his word and was back to give me the “happy juice”. He did that and I felt fine for like three seconds and it started hitting me. My mom and dad kissed my forehead and sent me off. At that point things started to get foggy. I clearly remember my dad saying goodbye and my mom’s goodbye was a little hazy. Then, I only remember being wheeled down the hall and the doors of the sterile corridor opening and having a feeling of “OH SHIT THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING”. Actually, a few hours after surgery, a random image of a square blue label that said “OR 5″ on it popped up in my head as well. That’s all I remember.

The next thing I know, I’m opening my eyes and I’m back in the same room I was in before. Only this time, I felt pressure around my head and a little pain inside my ear. I look over and see a cup on a little table. I pick it up and drink it. It’s apple juice.

“How’d you know I wanted apple juice?” I ask my mom. I was thinking either she just knew me really well or the nurse read my mind or something.

“You asked for it.”, Mom says.

“Oh. This stuff (the drugs they knocked me out with) is GOOD!”

My sister later told me that when I initially woke up 20 minutes after they wheeled me back in from the OR, I started coughing because they had removed the tubing from my throat (I did not have a complete tracheal intubation, they had put something in that only went down to my vocal cords, I cannot for the life of me remember the specific name my surgeon gave for the equipment in pre-op) and my mom and sister had started freaking out because I couldn’t cough. Coughing, sneezing and blowing my nose were banned because that messes with the air pressure in the ears. So, the nurse asked me what I wanted and got me apple juice to help alleviate the coughing. After that I must’ve passed out again and then came to and finally started drinking it or was awake but the medicine gave me amnesia. My mom told me that I kept repeating sentences 5-6 times, particularly whining about not being able to see the OR. I remember complaining about that around two times. I had been curious to see the OR because I had shadowed a few surgeons before and got to see different ORs so I was curious to see what this one looked like since they all vary a bit.

The nurse came back in and asked me if I was feeling nauseous or anything a few times. I said no, but my stomach did feel weird, like it was full or something. She gave me a little container in case I did vomit. I was going to object because I knew my body, but I told her better safe than sorry. She then asked me if I was in any pain. I said a bit, but it was nothing too bad. The inside of my ear hurt and felt like there was some pressure and throbbing. I was given some Dilaudid and that helped quite a bit. She said my vitals looked great and that I could go whenever I wanted. I just wanted to lay in my warm bed and chill for a bit. My dad went to start the car to warm it up so I had more time to relax. Eventually it was time to go. I changed back into my comfy clothes and walked slowly to the wheelchair. My legs felt a little weak, but still capable of walking. I was wheeled to the car and got in. My prescriptions for antibiotics and pain medicine were picked up and we left for home. I just rested in the car, trying to fall asleep but I couldn't.

This is the cochlear implant that I was implanted with. It is the Advanced Bionics HiRes 90K with the Mid-Scala electrode array. It is a clear silicone oval with two circles side by side in it. The circle on the left is a silver “O” that is the computer chip. The circle on the right is the receiver coil with the magnet in the center of the circle that the receiver coil creates. At the side of the silver “O” is the wire that curls into the tiny electrode array which is inserted into the cochlea. Looks VERY different from my other cochlear implant, huh? It’s amazing how much technology can change in 16 years.

My sister took a pic of me knocked out cold. I am laying in a hospital bed with multiple white blankets over me. My head is turned to the side, showing the mastoid dressing I am wearing (it is a pressure bandage made of gauze and cotton packing to keep swelling down and everything intact). My brown hair is pulled up into a ponytail so everything is neat and not falling down around the gauze. I am wearing a nasal cannula that is supplying oxygen.

After surgery I had to take medications. I was given Cephalexin, an antibiotic that I had to take three times a day for five days, and Hydrocodone (basically codeine) with Tylenol in it. There were times I considered taking the Hydrocodone but didn’t want to risk upsetting my stomach and vomiting and messing up my ear because even burping hurt the first night or two. I burped a lot when I was home after surgery. I believe that was from the air that was flowing from the tubing into my lungs, but some had flowed into my esophagus and down into my stomach, thus explaining why my stomach had felt weird and kind of full after surgery and why I was burping so much. Sleeping was a little hard, since I am mainly a side sleeper, so I was limited to sleeping on my right side or on my belly. I also kept my head elevated using a few pillows so it would help with the swelling. For pain and swelling I took Aleve for the first two or three days, then for the last 2/3 days I switched over to generic ibuprofen. I had some swelling on the second and third day around my temple and eye. On the fourth day (New Year’s Day!) I had some slight bruising around my eye.Most of the time the pain was very manageable, it was just the pressure that the stupid mastoid dressing was putting on the cartilage of my ear and it was hurting it. On the fourth day or so I had enough of it so I took a cotton ball and wedged it between the dressing and my ear. Relief. I was told to wear the mastoid dressing for at least five days. The ENT nurse told me to try to keep it on until post-op but I just could not wait until it was off because it was becoming itchier and itchier as my incision healed. Finally, I took it off late on the fifth day. It felt so good but also weird to have it off because I had actually gotten used to having it on. I actually went to the mall and the grocery store with it on. People stared but it was fine with me. I didn’t really give a flying flip. I kept the surgical tape over the incision after I removed the dressing though.

A day after I took off the dressing. There was a little bit of old blood on it but nothing concerning. I was surprised that amount of hair was shaved off since I was expecting a little less to be shaved. But it’s okay. At least it’s not half of my head like it was the first time around, The tip of my ear and a patch of skin above it was numb (currently, they still are numb but they’re slowly regaining feeling I think?) In the picture my hair is obviously messy because I didn’t want to mess with my pony tail and pull on the skin. The nurse had made the pony tail because before I went in to the OR it was more to the back of my head but then after surgery it was on the crown of my head and loose, obviously to protect the skin from any unnecessary pressure that may delay or complicate healing. You can see the side of my head and on the skin in front of my ear there is a purple spot from the marking pen that my surgeon used to mark the side where I was getting the implant (so many people kept asking and checking that it was the left side! They wanted to avoid accidentally opening up my right side by all means.) The tape is yellow (I hope it came that way, if it was originally white, then ew) and is in a bent line behind my ear. I am laying down on a bed, facedown so it was easier to take the picture. This was taken on January 3, 2017.

On the fourth I had post-op. I wasn’t sure what my surgeon used to close up, skin glue, absorbable sutures, or the old-fashioned typical sutures? A resident did most of the check-up and removed the tape. My surgeon had used the typical sutures so they needed to be removed. I was nervous that the suture removal would hurt, but the resident told me that it shouldn’t and would only feel weird with some pressure. She was right, and it was only towards the end that I felt any kind of pain, but it was very tolerable, like 1/10 on the pain scale. The skin around the incision and the inside of my ear were examined and the side of my head palpated for any air leaks. Everything was good, only that my skin around the incision was quite dry so putting antibiotic ointment on it was recommended to help with that. I asked how my surgery went, and my surgeon said that everything went smoothly and it took about 3 hours. I also asked him if we were in the fifth OR room and as soon as I asked that his face lit up because I had remembered. I explained to him my flashback after the surgery and how I wasn’t sure if I was right or just seeing things because I was hopped up on drugs. After post-op I was given the okay to wash my hair. I just couldn't scrub the incision vigorously or submerge my left ear underwater. I was extremely happy to take a shower and wash my hair because it had been over a week since I had last washed it and my hair was getting pretty cringeworthy.

My dad took this picture of the side of my head after the tape was removed. You can clearly see at least five dots in a somewhat straight line about two inches back from the incision. When I took off the dressing I noticed this and was curious what they were. I knew they were scabs, and thought maybe it was from a head clamp or something, but I knew that wasn’t it because head clamps are used for neurosurgery and not cochlear implant surgeries. I asked what made these scabs at post-op and the resident said they were from staples. Staples were used to secure the medical drapery and hair around the surgical site. The incision is kind of an S shape but more like a curved line. The sutures were tied up using one continuous black thread. This suture technique is called a running locked suture—it is good for wounds under some tension, specifically those on the skull and postauricular sulcus (the groove right behind the ear). The background is a desk with drawers in a doctor’s office.

After the sutures were removed. This picture is basically the same as the previous picture, except that the sutures are gone and the area around the incision is red from irritation due to pulling out the stitches. The skin around the incision is noticeably dry.

Another picture of the side of my head. My hair is pulled up into a high bun. As you can see the hair on the shaved section is growing back. Most of the dots have disappeared, there are only three left in a line behind the incision. The incision is mostly normal with red marks from the thread pushing into my skin perpendicular to the incision, like railroad tracks. This picture was taken on January 5, 2017.

Another picture of the incision. My hair is pulled back into a low side bun with a strand rolled and pinned back to exposed the shaved area. The shaved hair is ever so slightly longer. The incision is still in it’s slightly S shape with no redness. I am wearing a dark green plaid shirt with a collar. The background is my bathroom, with the wall painted a light blue and a green curtain with white flowers all over it to the left. This picture was taken on January 8th, 2017.

So there it is, my entire surgery process from when I first started thinking about it to pretty much almost today all summed up in one post! I will try to take more pictures as time goes on so you can see how the incision is healing up. I’m sure it will heal up great. My other one did, I actually never realized I had a scar from my first CI surgery up until a few years ago!

Ashley

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