If I wouldn’t
have had the herniated bowel scenario, I would have gotten sprung from the
hospital in plenty of time before my birthday.
But it didn’t happen like that and I was still in the hospital, my
bowels had still not woken up yet from the trauma of two surgeries. Once the day before my birthday came around,
I knew for sure I was stuck there. I
was going to turn 9 in the hospital, and what’s worse, I couldn’t eat yet, so I
couldn’t even have cake. It was going to
be the most un-birthday I could dream of.
While I
was sleeping at night, during the wee hours of my official birthday, one of the
nurses who was kind and had pity on my situation decided it would be a lovely
gesture to decorate a few things in my room to try to have some kind of
celebration, to cheer me up. I think my
mom may have helped a bit, I don’t remember.
A few other nurses joined in to help too.
They took their color coding tape and stuck it around the water
container they used to irrigate my NG tube with. They made some banners and signs that said “Happy
Birthday Heather” and hung them around my room.
They used the tape to decorate a few other things near my hospital bed, just
to put some color into my room and make it feel a little more lively.
When I woke
up, I was surprised to see they had gone out of their way to make me feel
special on my birthday. It was a small
gesture, but it was huge to me. It
lifted me up a little. My mom had asked
me the day before if I minded if she brought a cake in to “celebrate” my
birthday and so I could blow out the candles.
I couldn’t eat the cake of course, but she wanted to know if it was ok
to bring it for others to eat. At this
point, I didn’t care about much anymore, so I told her to knock herself
out. At some point that day, my parents,
my sister, and some of my parent’s friends sang happy birthday to me and I’m
pretty sure I blew out the candles. I
don’t remember making a wish. I probably
didn’t believe in wishes anymore. All I
had been doing was making wishes the whole time I was there and none of them
came true.
The cake was
cut and everyone in the room except me got their piece of cake. I guess this is one of situations where you
can’t have your cake and eat it too. I
would get really familiar with meaning of that figure of speech for years to
come. I made my mom pull the dividing
curtain between my space and the space of the other half of the room where
another patient would be staying had there been one. Everyone sat on that side of the room and I
heard them eating their cake. I just
watched TV as usual, and more food commercials came on of course. This was turning out to be a swell birthday.
I don’t know
if I got any presents. I don’t
remember. They either weren’t
remarkable, or I didn’t get any. Who
knows. I guess it doesn’t really matter
because I don’t think anything would have made me happy anyway. This was the lowest point of my life and I
really just didn’t even care about anything anymore anyway. I was wasting away physically and
mentally. At this point, I was down in
the 40’s in pounds and I basically had no will to live. I wasn’t dying, but there were many times I
wished I was.
I never
thought about this day in my life very much until a few years ago when my
daughter Bluma had her colectomy. I will
talk more in detail in later posts about my children’s surgeries and treatment
for FAP, but I am thinking very particularly about how it felt for her to have
to spend her birthday in the hospital.
Much like me, she was not supposed to be there on her birthday. She had her colectomy and was only supposed
to be in the hospital for about a week, but her small bowel twisted off where
it was anastamosed (sewed) to her anus and the surgeon had to take her back
into the OR to fix it which made her stay in the hospital two weeks. She went home and was doing well for a few
days until she developed a post-operative bowel obstruction. She had to be readmitted and wouldn’t you
know it, it was only three days before her birthday. Her bowels had not straightened out by the
time her birthday came and she was stuck in the hospital, just like me, and she
couldn’t eat either. We had to cancel
her birthday party and Bluma was heartbroken and cried and cried. It was déjà vu. It just wasn’t fair.
I went home
for the first time ever during Bluma’s hospitalizations and brought her
birthday presents to the hospital. My
thoughtful, amazingly generous, and loving friend Diahndra sprang into action
to bring a balloon lady, decorations, and make your own teddy bears to the
hospital so that Bluma would feel special on her birthday and have a party with
friends to celebrate. All the nurses
that were working that day came into Bluma’s room, gave her a special birthday
present, and sang happy birthday to her.
She was really sad, but everyone’s sweet gestures got a few smiles out
of her. I felt so lucky to have so many
loving people around Bluma who cared about making her feel special, even if she
didn’t feel happy.
Many things come full circle. I thought that day back then, my 9th
birthday, was the worst day ever in my life.
But now that I’m older, there have been worse days unfortunately, like the
day my daughter turned 6 in the hospital and she couldn’t eat cake and was
heartbroken to have her party canceled.
It made me realize that I wasn’t the only one suffering that day back in
1984. My mom and dad were too. I wasn’t alone in my grief. I just felt like I was.
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