December 18, 2024
Discharge
The day begins with some confusion. The plan we’d been left with last night was that I was to have the biopsy at nine and be wheeled into the surgery room perhaps a half hour earlier. Based on this, Rachael planned to walk back to the hospital at daybreak so we could spend some time together before the procedure. Time enough for a hug, but probably not for a hand of cards.
That plan goes by the wayside though when a man walks in and brings out an authorization form for me to sign. He’s the anesthesiologist and he needs my consent to put me under. I sign, he leaves, and two women show up shortly after with more forms to sign. Somewhere in here I manage to ask what’s happening with the timeline and I’m told I’ll be relocated to surgery soon. So there’s no point on Rachael coming over so early because I’ll be gone already.
I call Rachael telling her to take her time and maybe be here about 9:30, by which time I should be coming out again. She can wait in reception and staff will let her know when she can see me. While I’m going over this though a slender, bearded man walks into the room and says good morning. “Oh hi, Dylan” I reply, thinking he’s the night nurse from my first night here. But no, he reintroduces himself as Jason - the surgeon who spoke with me yesterday. He’s dressed much more casually this morning and I didn’t recognize him. He too has an authorization for me to sign, and then I ask him how soon I’ll be relocated. Now. They’ve rescheduled the procedure for 7 instead. There’s just time to tell Rachael to come over sooner after all because I’ll likely be out by the time she arrives.
I’m immediately wheeled out the room and down the hall to a small surgery room. They edge my gurney up against the operating platform and I sidle across onto it, hoping I won’t just keep going and roll off the opposite side and tumble onto the floor. One by one the team members enter the room, introduce themselves, make small talk to relax the atmosphere. Jason comes in last, and there’s some extended chatter about our travels and lives. Jason knows Portland, I think as an former intern at OHSU, and used to run on Terwilliger.
And then the anesthesiologist steps up to perform his magic. One moment I’m talking about biking north through Spain with the love of my life, and the next instant I’m gone. Lights out in a matter of seconds.
I’m not sure of the time when I come to again, but I think I’ve been out for about a half hour. I’m told the procedure went as expected, there were no complications, and I’m wheeled back to my room where Rachael is already there waiting for me. I can’t remember for sure. Among the first orders of business though is to take a photo of the new scar on my left temple.
The events in the rest of the day are starting to blur together when I think back now. There’s still a lot of activity happening though. I receive my third and presumably final intravenous steroid dosage. I get breakfast. Rachael and I play another three hands of gin, with me winning two of them and edging into the lead. And most importantly, I’m cleared for discharge this afternoon, with the instructions to make my way back to Oregon as soon as possible so I can meet with my new ophthalmologist. In the meantime they’re prescribing me daily 60 mg dosages of prednisone.
The fact that I’m being discharged imminently comes as a mild shock. We’d been imagining that we would probably be staying in town until Saturday morning, when we have to leave our Airbnb to make way for other arriving guests. We’d been discussing what we might do with the two intervening days, possibly having Rachael drive us down to Laguna Lake or even the twelve miles to Morro Bay where she could take a walk and I could have a last chance at the California birds before heading north.
That’s all out the door now though. We’re going home tomorrow, if it can be arranged. There’s a whirlwind of phone calls and research tasks but it all works out. We consult the flights on Expedia and see that there’s a nonstop Alaska flight to PDX tomorrow afternoon for the not unreasonable fare of $319 each; not bad, given that we’re edging up to the Christmas holiday weekend. We call Liz and confirm that she and George are available to receive our car tomorrow and drive us to the airport. We call Bruce and Andrea to let them know that we’re flying home tomorrow and to cement our getaway plan: Liz and George will keep the car here loaded with everything but what we’re taking as carry-on. Sometime after the holidays Bruce and Andrea will fly down to pick up the car and drive it back to Portland for us, enjoying something of a road trip on the way.
One other detail: we’re leaving the Rodriguez behind, for George to find someone in their community of SLO cycling friends to claim him. This painful decision came from two considerations. First, it was quite difficult biking down to Laguna Lake on it last week - partly because of my vision, partly because it takes awhile to readjust to the different architecture, and partly because it just doesn’t feel as safe. The seat is higher, I’m less limber than in years past, and my leg gets snagged lifting it over the saddle when I get on or off. The Bike Friday, with its lower profile, wider tires and step through architecture is a safer ride. As painful as it is to think of, it’s time to let Roddy move on to a new home.
We’ve got buy-in from our friends so we move on to booking our flight. It’s a pleasant surprise to see that the price is less than we expected - only $190/person - which we presume is because we overlooked the bump in fares if we’d flown on the weekend. An hour or so later though there’s a panic when I call Liz again to confirm the flight. We look up our itinerary on the confirmation email so I can let Liz know of our departure time, and Rachael sees that we screwed it up. The fare was lowered because we booked for the wrong day, on New Years Day.
Careless, but we mostly blame it on the quirks of the Expedia website. If you make any changes to your seatch criteria and filters - for example, to add the second passenger - it resets the departure date back to the default of New Year’s Day. Fortunately, Alaska has a 24 hour free cancellation policy so there’s still time to rebook; and fortunately there’s a flight still available for tomorrow.
As one last step, I send a message to my PCP in Oregon to let him know we’re flying home tomorrow and to arrange for an ophthalmology appointment as soon as possible. And then we get my discharge papers, walk to the Raven, and Rachael drives us back to our airbnb after stopping at the pharmacy to pick up my new prednisone prescription in the way. The balance of the afternoon is spent sorting and packing. What’s going with us as carry-on, what’s staying in the car for Bruce and Andrea to drive north with two weeks from now, what are the bare essentials we need to get by with until then?
And then we load the car. Our belongings that stay behind go first, up front behind the driver’s seat. Then Rachael’s folded Bike Friday overlaps that, and Roddy goes on top of the heap. The area in the back is left free for our carry-on bags, and once we’re gone it will be the space Bruce and Andrea will have to work with for their own travel kit.
The last packing step for the day is to flip Roddy up into the back. I’m just about to lift him in when I stop and head back to the house for the camera. I need a last shot of the bike, for myself and for the blog. And then a strange thing happens. For the first time in this entire five week saga I break down and am openly sobbing as I walk back to the car. and I realize of course that it’s too soon. Not all decisions need to be made now, and this one can wait. I’ve got all year to see what happens with my eyesight before I’d be apt to ride that bike again anyway. I take my shot, Roddy gets tucked into the car, and he’s bound for Portland and a trip back to our bike locker. Later I’ll call Liz again to give George a heads up in case he’s already started putting out feelers for potential Rodriguez fans.
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The day ends with us walking about a quarter mile to My Thai, the casual restaurant we ate at several days ago. It’s not far but it’s slightly spooky walking there and back in the dark in a neighborhood we’re only somewhat familiar with by now, but it’s pleasant. Rachael and I hold hands the whole way, I on the right side so I can see her better, in a style of walking we let go of some time ago for no obvious reason.
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Good decision on Roddy.
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In ten days we will be at the end of this hellish year, and hopefully everything WILL be better 👍
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