Day 8, What It Means to Love

February 9, 2005
Post Op Day 8
What It means to Love

This morning began with my eyes gently opening to the view of an overcasty day in Scottsdale. The weather forecast had predicted rain for this weekend. I rolled my bed up and sat up for a moment for m head to clear from the nights sleep. The time was just after 7:00 AM and I began to think of the events for today.

During my childhood when I was between the ages of 8 – 10 years of age, I had many reoccurring dreams of me being in the hospital and having surgery done on me for something. At the time, I had no idea what those dreams were all about. It did increase my childhood curiosity of things medical and medical stuff related to surgery. I played out my childhood curiosity by reading books and imagination for a while. As I grew older, my curiosity for things medical faded along with the memories of those dreams. Some fragments of those dreams remain with me to this day. Now when I look back upon those dreams, I honestly believe those dreams were to become the story of my trip to Scottsdale and my surgery date with Dr. Meltzer. Strange how some childhood dreams can come true.

Back in the winter of 2000, I requested information regarding vagionplasty with Dr. Meltzer office, he and his staff were based in Oregon at that time. The surgical facility was located at Eastmoreland Hospital. A few short years ago, his practice was literally evicted from Eastmoreland by the hospital’s new owners. It turns out; the new owners from Tennessee had moral issues with the surgeries Dr. Meltzer was performing at that facility, so they wanted him and his staff out, and now. The new owners felt that facility should be performing surgeries and medical services were within their moral judgment of acceptability. Dr. Meltzer and staff had a huge challenge of deal with the all the scheduled surgeries, getting them done, post op care patient care, finding a new home for the practice, and getting the practice grounded again. Their new home turned out to be Scottsdale, AZ. Within a few short years, Eastmorland Hospital had become bankrupt and the entire hospital and everything associated with it went on the auction block. It turns out, Dr. Meltzer’s patients accounted for over 50% of the surgeries performed at that facility. Health care providers who have a significant number of trans patients tend to get tarred with the same stigma, prejudice, ignorance, and etc. trans folks experience during their lives. There are many in the health care profession who look upon proven effective medical treatment for trans folks with significant disapproval.

My breakfast arrive pretty much on cue just like any other morning at the Greenbaum Hotel. I sat up in bed and finished most of my food relaxed in bed. The rash was improving, the sniffles got better, dialiation was Ok, but the tears grew a bit. Thing were looking well so far.

Around 9:00 AM, Cheryl stopped in to give me packet of steroids to help with my rash and remove my foley catheter. We looked at each other and she asked if I was ready, yea, sure.

She raised my bed, lowered the top part of the bed and helped me into position. She asked me if I was ready, I told her, “let’s get on with it.” She defliated the cuff on the catheter and began to slowly remove it. There is a burning sensation as the catheter was removed. I bleed a bit after removal and told me to apply pressure with a towel to stop the bleeding. The bleeding stopped after a short time. Cheryl asked to go try and pee. I drank some water and tried to pee. I dribbled a bit and it seemed OK. She told me to call if there are any problems. I did my morning routine of taking a shower and stuff. I began taking the Prednisone tablets as instructed to help with my rash. Got back into bed and began to catch up on my journal. All the while, I drank water to get the flow going. I got the urge to go, went to the potty, tried and nothing would come out. I was hoping this was a fluke, so went back to bed and got back to what I was doing knowing I will try again later. By now, Jen had arrived and greeted me with a kiss and a hug. I told her what has been happening so far with the pee problem, Jen knew I was worried. She told me not to worry and things will work out OK, if you wind up going home with the Foley catheter in place we can deal with it. I told Jen, “It won’t be the first time, Trisha had something similar happen to her and so did Gwen.” Things were getting pretty bad, all the instincts were there, but nothing would come out of me each time I tried to pee. I started to get desperate called the one of the nurses. Rita came and told me that they would call Dr. Meltzer’s office for instructions. The instructions from Dr. Meltzer’s office were to go ahead and put in the catheter and see what happened. So Rita, Nancy got a Foley kit and began the process of putting a catheter back in me. Not having drained me for the past several hours has not been an easy to deal with. I lay back on the bed and the process began. The amount of pain involved with this process is not small. Jen held my hand as I winced during this process. Much to our amazement, nothing came out of me after they inserted the Foley. They tried reinserting the Foley two more times and flushing it once to see if a blood clot was causing the blockage, but nothing. There was more than once when I screamed from the intensity of the pain as Jen held me. The amount of pain involved is not small, during my years as a bicycle racer, bike races can easily push your entire body into a state of pain and suffering that is intense enough to where all you can do is use your mind to focus, concentrate and block out how much your body is hurting. Unless you have engaged in a high level of competitive sports, this experience hard to relate to by the weekend warrior. The level of pain involved took nearly every bit of my experience as a competitive athlete and emotional toughness to stay the course. After all of this, I was asked to try one more time pee in the potty. I got out of bed with Jen’s help. She held and walked me to the bathroom where I tried to pee again, but nothing would come out. It was at that moment that I had an emotional break down, and began to cry uncontrollably, Jen held me as this was happening and I know it not for her being there it would have made that moment in my life far more difficult. My mind was reeling for a while as I struggled to regain control of myself. Several minutes passed and so did one of the most trying moments of my life. I got myself back together and Jen helped me back to bed. Several of the nursing staff was ready to try and inserting the catheter again, I knew it was a none option, I had to relieve myself some way since several hours had passed since I peeded. It was only a few moments after I got back in bed when Cheryl appeared with an extremely concerned look on her face. She came over to me and said, “Bernice, We got to get this done.” We both knew it and I got ready to try again. Jen held me as the process began again. This time, Cheryl got the catheter in place within moments and the relief was amazing. I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was Cheryl’s face. “You have been to Hell and Back, Don’t worry, it’s going to be OK now.” I smiled back at Cheryl and thanked her. It turns out, the catheter was inserted into the wrong place on my surgical site and that is why nothing came out of me on the first try. The nursing staff quickly got everything cleaned up in my room and everything was quite again. While all this was happening some of you might be wondering, where was Dr. Meltzer while all this was happening? He was in the building, the problem, he was already in the operating room working on a patient. It was a moment of bad timing when this happened to me. Jen and I had lunch after I had a chance to recover from all that had happened. We spent the rest of that afternoon together and me trying to rest and mentally process all that had happened. I noticed a yellow envelop sitting on the table and asked Jen to bring it over so we could find out what was in it. I opened the envelope and pulled out what appers to be a dark blue folder and opened it. The folder held a certificate stating that I had undergone Gender Reassigment Surgery on February 1, 2005 and three yellow colored certrified letters stating the same. It looked just like a graduation diploma. That certificate was something of a surprise to me and looking at it made me smile. This must be something new that Dr. Meltzer’s office is doing since none of previous Dr. Meltzer patients I knew had one. I asked if Jen would like one, “yes, it would be nice.” Jen replied. I had already done most all of my legal sex designator change back in 2001-2002 with a letter from Dr. Brownstein. My new set of legal paper work still feels nice.

Later that afternoon, Dr. Meltzer came in to see how I was doing. Our conversation focused on what happened to me today and what needs to be done now. We discussed everything in depth and worked out a plan. I’m going home with the catheter in place and early next week it’s going to come out with the aid from one of my health care providers. If not, Jen or I will get to remove it with help from Janet or Cheryl via the phone. I got sent home with what ever we ne eded to deal with this when we get back home. Our conversation moved on to other topics including a visit Cal Dreaming in April. With all of the events settled, he went on to visit his next patient.

Dinner came and went right on schedule. I told Jen at that I wanted to get to bed early after such an eventful day. We both knew tomorrow would be my last day at the Greenbaum hotel and it would be good to get some packing done if possible. I got out of bed and we began to gather up my stuff and ready to pack in my bags. We hugged and said a loving good night to each other. Jen traveled back to the Holiday Inn for the rest of the evening. I got back in bed and went to sleep early. I was simply drained and tired from all that happened today.

It would be so easy to do the blame game for what happened to me to on this day, but I’m not even going to even begin to go there. Yes, mistakes were made, but no real harm was done and to error is being human. I hope all involved learned something from the experience and it time for all involved to move on with the process and our lives.