“The shock of his words hit me like a slap in the face. This couldn't happen to me. I was not prepared to hear what he had to say; I had difficulty understanding. He was speaking about a heart problem—my heart problem!—that psychologically I could not accept. Thoughts of escape filled my mind. ‘Just get up and leave,’ I told myself. ‘It's all a mistake.’” — Joseph Piscatella, at age 32

Any kind of surgery can incite fear, just the idea of it. Of someone cutting into your body with a knife, looking for something wrong to excise or repair. In my case, it has been two surgeries for suspected cancer and three to make in-vitro fertilization stand a better chance of succeeding. These weren’t major surgeries; my recovery was relatively quick. But they were intrusive, and one, in particular, the worst one, was not only scary, it was inexcusably wrong to carry out under the circumstances.

Neurosurgery, we know, is always major, like open heart surgery: You cannot go into it, whether you are the patient or the loved one, without fear. Wayne and I approached his brain surgery, at a hospital across the country from where we lived, numbed into dumbness by jet lag and conflicting information: the many “probable” life-altering complications we could expect, the stories of past patients who’d sailed blithely through, despite this, with nary a problem, and the plainly stated risk that he could die from it. His surgery, scheduled for four, maybe five hours, took nine, in minutes that ticked by like a dripping faucet, with no word from the operating room about why things were dragging beyond the allotted time. When he was finally wheeled into intensive care, his face as white as the turban of bandages swathing his head, I saw him stir gently as he regained consciousness. His first real move was a gasp followed by violent retching, jolting him up and contorting his face over and over again as he heaved. It was torturous even to watch. No, they couldn’t give him anything for it, really. They were too afraid of overmedicating him. It was due to a severed nerve. But look, they said, his face is moving properly. He isn’t paralyzed. Be glad for that, at least. 

I have only a few disjointed memories of the next week. A nurse who whisked around in a weird sort of cape and hat that made her look like she belonged in a WWII field hospital. I still remember her first name, embedded as it is, in my memory of her querulous efforts to shoo me out of Wayne’s room at every turn. She was the enemy, the one I could see and upon whom I could cast some of my anger at the powerlessness I felt. I remember the surge of fear that coursed through me when it seemed Wayne was catching a cold that might exponentially add, with its garden-variety congestion and sneezing, to long-term problems that seemed to be emerging by the day. I remember being stuck, almost frantic, for an entire afternoon on a city bus, as it crept though the morass of downtown Los Angeles traffic. I was on a mission to buy some food and flowers I thought Wayne would like, at the suggestion of the awful nurse, who was no doubt familiar with the plodding bus routes.  

We weren’t prepared, when we got back home, for the depression that can follow brain surgery or for the length of time a full recovery would take. Wayne, unrecovered but doggedly back at work (spurred by those damned optimistic stories), was unexpectedly, thoughtlessly driven to desperation by the upending of his role in the work he cherished. I found him in his office, dead by suicide, a few weeks after this crisis was put in motion. 

All surgeries are hard, but brain surgery threatens your ability in the aftermath, should things go wrong, to function. In my life, I can only make one legitimate comparison, and it occurred more than a decade later, in the middle of an ill-fated Thanksgiving dinner with my partner, John, and two friends. John had been quiet while we ate, uncharacteristically quiet. He came into the kitchen as I cleared away the dinner plates, saying he didn’t feel well, that he wanted to go to an outpatient clinic for help. But glancing over at him, as we headed to this clinic, I saw that his face had turned a strange shade of gray, and he was holding a hand over his heart. I floored the gas pedal, and we careened to the front of the clinic, more than ten miles from home, in as short a time as I could manage without causing a wreck. There, we encountered an officious guard stationed at the entrance. This guard had apparently been trained to repeat, like an uncomprehending parrot, seven words, no matter what the circumstance. “You can’t go in without a mask. You can’t go in without a mask.” 

As the situation unfolded in full, I found myself again waiting, this time late at night, through a surgery that took hours longer than expected. John almost died, and his life hung in the balance for days afterward. I’ve never seen anyone hooked to so much machinery, so many tubes. A ventilator plunged into his mouth, to spare his fragile heart from the stress of drawing breath. My conversations with physicians, while he lay in a motionless, drug-induced sleep, were studded with words like “permanent damage,” “transplant,” “intra-aortic balloon,” and “out of options.” 

This is the difference, however: During John’s surgery, I was alone at the hospital because of Covid restrictions. I was alone at night, after visitors had to leave, and I went home. But I was not alone emotionally. I got streams of messages from friends who were praying for John. They brought me dinner and care packages. They called. Their texts were a lifeline for me; their prayers were a lifeline for John, who, against the odds, fully recovered in time. Wayne’s surgery came on the heels of five years of infertility treatment and a miscarriage. As these five years passed, I became more and more isolated from friends, who either had children or were having them with relative ease. I didn’t wish infertility on anyone, but the world of friends and family became an excruciatingly painful place, given what wasn’t happening within my own body. A constant reminder that I was different, and was lacking, and was failing despite a cataclysmic effort. I pulled away. They did, too, in response. Who could blame them, caught up as they were, understandably, in the lives of their children? But it left me alone at a time when I needed, rather desperately, the kind of rallying that happened during John’s equivalently threatening, frightening surgery. 

So this page, with whatever useful references I can find, is my way of saying to you (and reminding myself) of this: When someone you know, even if you’ve grown apart for one reason or another, is in the middle of a significant medical crisis, do reach out. Do pray for them, if you are a praying person. Do bring dinner, if you are a cooking person and an offer of food seems right. Don’t expect an answer to your questions, necessarily. It may be impossible to provide answers, for lack of time or emotional ability while under such duress. But your presence will be felt, like a blanket, or hands holding, or arms around, and you’ll be there, whether you are physically or not. And it will matter.