Post-Op: Day 9

    In a few hours, I'll be home after eight days in Roswell Park Cancer Institute, but not without a few anxieties. How will clothes go over the urine-collecting bag? What about the 17 stairs to the second-floor bedroom? And will I have another evening like last night, Wednesday?

    After room service removes the dinner plates, I notice a big wet spot on the front of my hospital gown. The collection bag, changed earlier that day by Katy, one of the ostomy nurses, must be leaking. Another bag change and a new gown, but it also gets wet. The leak isn't in the bag and it's not yellow. It's that reddish lymph fluid, coming from one of the surgery incisions, the one closest to my navel. Lots of gauze and tape are applied and I get another new gown. It works. From there on, only the gauze gets wet.

    Then, as I leave my chair for the evening to brush my teeth and go to bed, I leave a trail of liquid behind me, culminating with a big spill in the bathroom. A major mess. It's from the urine collection bag, a new model with a different kind of release valve that was sent up to us here on 7 West from supply central downstairs. The new valve clicks into the connection with the old overflow bag, but it doesn't hold. 

    The nurse, tall, blond Christie, who used to work in television -- AM Buffalo and the Channel 2 morning news show -- but went back to school to change into a career where she could get the feeling that she was helping people, applies copious amounts of tape to the connection and gets me still another new gown. It works. I doze off to Rita Hayworth's first movie, "The Outlaw," and sleep well until the morning blood draw. 

    Even though Christie ties the tightest tourniquet in Roswell Park, my elusive veins do not show themselves for her. She pokes my arm twice without success and calls for another nurse, who tries once and fails. The third nurse, who announces that she's the one they bring in for difficult cases, finds a promising prospect at the base of my right thumb and nails it. My veins and I will not miss the morning blood draw.

    Dr. Hanzly, Dr. Guru's associate, arrives for his daily visit in the 8 o'clock hour and says that, despite the leaky incision, I'm better off at home. The longer you're in the hospital, he says, the bigger chance of infection. With that, he extracts the line leading to the Jackson-Pratt Drain, which has been pulling lymph fluid out of my abdomen for eight days, and assures me I'll go home with plenty of supplies to soak things up. I'll need 'em. The former drain has been quiet, but not the incision site. It's still oozing like a basement wall in the rainy season.