Less typical, however, were the debilitating infections that erupted and a series of tubes that were placed in my body by interventional radiologists because of the formation of an abscess. Oozing wounds, output bags, fevers, implanted devices to deliver large doses of antibiotics, fearful aches, weight loss and blood transfusions: such a list does not capture the agony of the recurrent hospitalizations that interrupted my first and second cycles of chemotherapy — all the result of the botched operation. Was the disaster partly the fault of nurses who had not properly purged me before the event? After it, discussions left agency a mystery, as if surgery had somehow eventuated without a surgeon. “There was a perforation at the resection,” was the reason given. The closest I got to an explanation arrived in the passive voice: “The bowel was nicked.” A medical term surfaced that I could not fathom — anastomosis — defined as “the union of parts or branches,” whatever that means.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 13:42:37 +0000
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