Gutless, but home sure feels good

It’s been awhile since I wrote for the Frontiersman. Feels good to be up and about and able to do things again after flying down to Seattle to have my stomach removed. I gotta say, I don’t recommend it. Try something more enjoyable like, say, removing your fingernails with a pair of pliers.

While I was recovering, it was indeed nice to have the Frontiersman online and be able to keep tabs on what was going on back home. But nothing made me miss home more than several weeks in Seattle.

I spent several years living in Washington state, and even then I avoided Seattle like the plague. If I had to drive from Port Orchard to anywhere in the northern part of the state, I would take whatever ferries and bridges I had to just to avoid Seattle. I didn’t care if it added two hours to my drive. The Mad Max traffic and abundance of crazy people were too much. This time I had no choice. The best doctors around for this surgery are in Seattle, so off we went.

We arrived late the night before all the pre-op appointments and headed to the hotel next to Virginia Mason.

The next day we met with the nutritionist who went through all the foods I wouldn’t be able to eat, the ones I should eat, etc. It was information overload and all I really heard was, “If you like it, you can’t have it. If it sounds nasty, you need to eat lots of it, but in several small portions.”

Next came the appointments with the people who would be knocking me out, the surgeons who would be sticking a mixer in my gut and letting it rip, etc.

The morning of the surgery, my two younger children kept patting my rather oversized tummy and telling me, “Don’t worry, dad. Soon the baby will be out.” They sure thought they were funny.

A few minutes later, a nurse took me away to change into the special backless mu-mu. Then a quick needle here, a tube there and suddenly the whole world was a ’60s psychedelic montage.

Don’t remember much after that until I woke up in the hospital room several hours later. My wife and children were there. My mother-in-law was there. I closed my eyes hoping I was having a nightmare. I hit the morphine button.

After I was able to rally a little and take stock of my situation, I realized surgery had transformed me into a marionette. I had no fewer than eight tubes or wires hooked up at various places on my body (my favorite was the rather large one that ran up one nostril, then down my throat into my gut. I bet I looked sexy). I also had a zipper running up my belly. At least that’s what the row of staples looked like.

After a bit, my mother-in-law grew bored of watching me slip in and out of consciousness and left, taking the grandchildren with her. My wife, being the trooper that she is, stayed the night with me. Which is good, because even in my totally beat-to-heck state I started fantasizing about hitting the guy in the bed next to me with my IV pole. He was a 20-something kid who was there for something much more minor than I, and I think he had Virginia Mason Hospital confused with the Waldorf Astoria. Every five minutes he was hitting his call button to ask such life-saving questions as, “Do you have a TV guide? Can I get some different slipper-socks? These ones are yellow and I don’t like yellow.” Glenny, my super wife, soon had me transferred into my own room.

I can’t begin to count the number of times staff — which was the nicest hospital staff ever — told me that rest was the most important thing. But I think they keep hidden cameras in those rooms so they could see when I had finally fallen asleep so they could come running in with the cart to take my blood pressure, oxygen saturation and pulse.

I had a great view. From where I lay, I could look out my huge windows at the neighborhood surrounding the hospital. It was better than TV. I got to watch fistfights, lover’s quarrels, arrests, people receiving medical treatment following a scuffle, shoplifters running from security. Good stuff.

A few days into my stay I started to think I was overdoing it on the pain meds because I started to see Spiderman, the Hulk and strange multi-colored men and women walking around. As it turns out, “Comic Con” was taking place one block over from the hospital.

Finally I was feeling better and able to sit up, get out of bed and shuffle over to a chair. All the doctors wanted was to see me eat a little and I could be sent home. I felt like a man in prison praying for an early release for good behavior. But there was a catch — the “food” I had to eat looked like regurgitated cream of wheat. But I wanted out of there so bad that I tried.

When they said I wasn’t eating enough to make them happy, I got crafty. I ordered the slop, waited until I was alone in my room, shuffled to the toilet and scooped away. When the staff came back to check on me, “Yum, yum! That wasn’t so bad! Look, I finished it!” I got to go home the next day.

So I’m back in Alaska and back to work, feeling almost 100 percent again, 25 pounds lighter and dropping weight like crazy. I can now truly say I’m a gutless guy. Still relearning how to eat and such, but oh man does it feel good to be home! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think my wife has whipped up a delicious cup of mashed potatoes with baked salmon sprinkled on top.

Ben Compton is a Palmer resident and publishes his column as “Compton’s Corner,” the same title used by his grandmother, Phyllis Compton, a longtime Frontiersman columnist.