Help

As I have grown older, my perception of my role in the universe (or in my universe, at least) has solidified and become part of my self-identity, evolving from malleable clay into fired ceramic. In my mind, I am the “fixer”. I always have been to one degree or another, but over time, words and phrases like “right hand”, “go-to guy” and “care giver” have come to define me more and more. And I haven’t minded.

The role feeds a certain naccissistic appetite for control. It reinforces to me that I am needed. It gives me a role to play in the grander scheme of things. It makes me strong. It’s what I do.

I am not used to being looked after, taken care of or helped by other people. I fiercely resist any attempts by any one to do so. I am independent. I can take care of myself.

That’s what I dreaded about surgery more than anything else: I was going to have to let people take care of me. And that was before I realized what the scope of my need would be. That the “procedures” weren’t going to be a single “procedure” and were going to be more complex and invasive than I was prepared for.

From the morning of the surgery, I had to let others help me. I could have taken a cab to the hospital, but a friend offered to drive me, and I let her. As we navigated the pre-dawn streets, I admitted to her that I was nervous—scared, even. She told me it was okay to be scared. That it was not a sign of weakness but of good sense.

At the hospital, I checked in, paid them and was shown to an austere pre-op room. As I changed from my real-people clothes into a paper surgical gown, I became acutely aware that, from that point on, other people were going to be taking care of me. I was temporarily ceding control to a group of people whom, save my surgeon, I had never met before. That I was depending on them to take care of me.

The operating room was cold, sterile and scary. “It looks like something from a science fiction movie where humans are adbucted by aliens,” I remarked. That was all I remember until I woke up in the recovery room several hours later.

I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t. I tried to move my legs. The right one wasn’t budging. “What if there’s a fire?” I thought. “How will I get out?”

“How do you feel?” a somewhat disembodied male voice asked.

“Awful. Like a car wreck. And I’m the car.”

As I got my bearings, the voice slowly materialized into a nurse standing by my bed. “At least I got a cute nurse,” I thought. Or at least hope I only thought. If I said it out loud, he didn’t seem to mind. He’s probably seen and heard it all.

That was when the real neediness began. I was parched, so Gerome (the cute nurse) put crushed ice in my mouth. What in another setting could have been a sexually-charged action meant nothing to me except helping to slake my thirst. And when he thought it was okay for me to have water, I couldn’t hold the cup. He held it for me, and I drank through a straw. I had temporarily lost the will the be a dirty old man.

Then I needed to pee, so he brought me one of those plastic hospital pee bottles and pulled the curtains. But I couldn’t get things positioned right, so he had to put my penis into the mouth of the receptacle until I could hold it in myself. Although he did so matter-of-factly, I was embarassed to accept such intimate help from a total stranger, no matter how cute.

And I said so. “Don’t worry about it. That’s what I’m here for. To help you in whatever way you need,” he replied. “You’re a lot less trouble that some of the people who come through here.”

I had never felt so helpless in my life. The tables were turned: I was no longer the fixer or caregiver. I was the one being cared for and attended to. And I couldn’t quite reconcile that role reversal in my mind.

The next 24 hours or so became a study in how to ask for and accept help, as well as accept and be grateful for help I hadn’t asked for. Like the friend who had been there to talk to the doctor after surgery and had called people to let them know I was out of the OR and that things had gone well.

Or the orderly who cleaned me up after my late lunch came roaring back up in a Linda Blair moment. Or the medical assistants who arranged my pillows, brought me water and ice and emptied my pee bottle.

Or the nurses who calmed my fears because I couldn’t keep food down. “It’s not that unusual,” they told me again and again. “Some people react that way to anesthesia. It’ll pass.”

Or my sister, who spent the evening with me in my room getting things for me that I couldn’t reach, fixing the tv and letting me use her netbook to get some basic emailing done.

By the time I was released, I gladly accepted being pushed outside in a wheelchair. I had given in to the reality that I had to accept help some times, whether I asked for it or wanted it or not. I was not comfortable playing the role, but I realized that my psychological hangups would, on occasion, have to subordinate themselves to my practical needs.

Leaving the hospital, I accepted one final offer of help: a ride home. Home, the place where I was in charge, independent and self-sufficient. Even though I now realized that those notions of control were mere illusions, I was ready to return to the role I knew.