Mind of a Liver Donor : Tommorow

I control my bed up and down, a little controller at my convenience to tilt the bed in any way that fits that convenience. I have complete control of something that someone else made, so I wonder why I have so little control of my own ups and downs. I’m at the hospital to prepare for my surgery and right now I lay awake in a sleepless night. Maybe this is part of preparation – my brain grasping at the precious minutes left to explore the wonders of a liver transplant.

3 metres to my right is a 41 year old man who had undergone a liver transplant 4 days ago. There’s a low hum of bubbles of oxygen in its tank with a tube sliding down from it into his nose where the neighbouring mouth lets out groans of this man’s own sleepless night. His overly pink wife sleeps at his side, wearing her pink scarf, pink top and pink blanket with her pink bags close by.

What a fitting image to our conversation earlier on in the afternoon. The 41 year old man started off the conversation light, but soon focused the attention to pain. “How are you?” Pain.  “How did you feel going into surgery?” Pain. “What’re your first thoughts when you wake up from the surgery?” Pain. Just like his wife had only pink in mind, this man had only pain in mind. And just like this woman has her jet black hair and eyes to offset the pink, the man has something to offset the pain, he has the words “I’m the donor for my son.”

How strange it is to see a man prophesising my own bodily fate yet be in the opposite situation to I. His son is a baby 4 years old, only getting comfortable with the life born between this man and his wife. Yet, before he even goes to kindergarten, he requires his dad to give him his second life from the malignancy growing in his liver. “What’s the kid going to know what I’ve done” is what this life-giving man claimed to be the benefit of his deed.” All we get as a liver donor is pain, pain and a scar *this big*” stretching his arms to an exaggerated length.

I wonder if this man is that uncaring, that he begrudgingly underwent a surgery to escape the guilt had he not. Worried that the eyes of his wife would become too heavy to look into and eventually his own reflection in the mirror with its familiar resemblance to his son’s. I want to believe that it’s all a front, but I can’t find an answer to why he would be acting this way for the only two people in the room with him, his wife and I. Maybe it’s a short-term defeat to that pain he’s so concentrated on, and with the easing of the pain, so will his cynicism. I hope he gets over it, and goes to visit his son downstairs in ICU, even if he has to remain on the other side of a glass window.

So here I am, down with a harsh possibility sleeping 3 metres to my right. Then again, I’m up with the possibility that my dad and I be blessed with a successful surgery such as theirs that only took 7 hours for him, and 12 hours for his son. That and to my left, I can see a reflection of myself, and slightly lifting my shirt, my recently shaved abdomen has never looked so ready to be cut,  my liver has never felt so big, and my intestines so empty from the laxatives shoved down both my orifices. Maybe this post is my remote, because I feel light and ready for bed.

Good night.

Footnote : This was written on the actual day before the surgery. You’ll find out soon enough where I’ve been, and my posting this at least shows that I made it out of their alive to continue on