May 22, 07. Operation #2

I had to be at the hospital by 6.30 and I got up around 5.15 just as Yaniv arrived, having picked David up at the airport. It was still dark outside, adding to my general feeling of misery. When we got to the hospital, we discovered that we’d forgotten to bring a certain form and Nachum and Yaniv went back home to fetch it. I was getting more nervous by the minute – David and I sat in the corridor of the surgical ward, or rather I sat on a bed but he was reprimanded for doing so and had to stand.

By the time we reached the pre-op room, I was a mess. Hillel Yaffe is the mirror image of Herzliya Medical Center: where everything at HMC is designed to ameliorate an unpleasant experience, Hillel Yaffe’s dilapidation and general air of neglect just seemed to highlight it. I put on the hospital-supplied gown and tried to meditate but found it impossible to focus. At the edges of memory, I recall being approached by a chirpy Russian doctor who slipped a needle in my arm. Everything is a blank until what seemed to be merely minutes later, but was in fact three hours later, and I woke up to find Gabi at my side. She told me that they’d all been so worried because it had taken so long but the surgeons hadn’t been able to isolate the sentinels, so they’d removed 15 nodes. One by one, my family appeared at my side. My legs were shaking, I found it difficult to take a deep breath, my eyes felt crusted, my throat was full of phlegm and I was aware of something alien taking up space around my left armpit.

Itamar appeared at some point and told me that all the lymph glands were very small, the largest being around 5 mm. It was a good sign.

I was wheeled into the ward, again one with four beds, but this time all beds were occupied. I felt like hell and it hurt where a tube jutted out of my body. The tube ended in a small bottle which was filling up with the bodily fluids that would normally have been drained by the lymph glands. It was totally gross.