How to Have an Original Thought

Why does the image of her hair stick in my head so much?  Maybe it is because the first thing that came into focus that night was the sight of her hair, next her head, then her body, laying forlornly, calmly, almost peaceful against the outside of the tent.  It was immensely frightening to say the least.  The way the tent slowly crumpled at the entrance, just to the side of the opening.  As if someone had stepped lightly but forcefully onto the tent itself.  

My fear grew as I called out for her and heard nothing in return.  A second call for her disappeared into the pitch of the night, the blackness of solitude engulfing every syllable.  Her response was weak and distant, but there was a presence that was looming and near.  It unnerved me.  I was blind with no light and unfocused without my glasses.  The list of disastrous outcomes grew long in my mind, the sickening imagination of a night gone sorely wrong manifested into an insurmountable wave of terror and then came meekly crashing down in front of me.  When I shone the dim light from my cell phone onto her face there was nothing but a blank kind of numbness running through my mind.  That moment stayed with me for what seemed like minutes.  I flew into a panicked action.  I grabbed her under the arm pits and propped her up against my bent knees frantically chanting her name.  She groaned and began to sit up on her own.  She slumped forward and groaned some more, and then in a slurred weak voice said, ‘there’s something wrong with me’.  No shit, I thought.  There’s something wrong with this entire picture.  Just hours ago we were sipping wine under the covered cooking area, laughing and chatting with a friend, waiting for an episode of The Great British Baking Show to down load; cut to us in bed, sleepy, entertained, looking forward to the day we had planned out during our rest day, today, tonight. 

The beauty of Big Horn canyon, immense, wide open, undulating. 

Ten Sleep Rock Ranch, the perfect camp ground and base camp.

She got to her feet somehow, perhaps the keen panic in my voice had imbued her with a kind of magic energy.  I helped her to the car.  There was only one way to solve this problem, and that was to drive as frantically as I could to the nearest town.  And that would be a massive undertaking at this point.  I started out slow and steady, the relaxation of a couple hours of sleep fading quickly, my veins now pumping with adrenaline and cortisol.  All of a sudden the lack of lighting on the road and the fear of careening into some wandering nighttime ungulate no longer held the kind of lethal gravity it did previously and instead all I could think of was getting her to someone, anyone, who could help.  I smashed on the accelerator as she started to moan again.  She swayed in her seat, arms folded over her taught stomach in an agonizing attempt to stave off the impending unknown pain.  ‘I think I’m going to pass out again’ she said.  I drove faster, feeling impotent, now knowing what it’s like to truly feel helpless.  She groaned and slumped forward, then sat up again and started to wail, the kind of noise that makes you want to run away.  But I was trapped in the driver’s seat and obligated by love to keep going.  She passed out again providing a brief respite from the nightmarish noises that the pain had driven out of her body. 

Ten Sleep brewery.

I cursed the time it had taken to find the small town of Ten Sleep - a mere 5 miles away from the camp ground we had been staying at – while I jerked the wheel to the right and made a hasty stop at the only gas station in town.  A call to 9-1-1 not only proved useless but infuriatingly devoid of any kind of reassurance that help was on the way.  I took one look at her and made the decision to plunge back into the night; our destination now was Worland, the biggest city in a nighttime sky of small ranching towns, only 25 miles away. 

A meandering Yellowstone bison.

The road became a blur.  I leaned further and further into the steering column willing the car to go faster; psychically trying to summon a portal in which we could drive through that would take us away from this nightmare and back to the dimension where this was not our reality.  I strained to see hundreds of feet ahead of the car in order to keep us safe in the deadly clutches of the nighttime, my headlights illuminated a small moving figure in the shadows and before I could change my desperate course a rabbit was all at once here and then obliterated.  I kept looking at the distance traveled on my phone and the subsequent distance to the only hospital that came up when I google mapped for help and would update my weary passenger with how close we were getting in the hopes to take both of our minds off of our immediate predicament and spear head whatever positivity I could muster out of thin air.    

Finally the endless rolling hills, straightaways, and dark nothingness of the Wyoming plains melted away and left us in the welcoming glow of street lamps and closed restaurants that were scattered about the main street of Worland.  I made a single turn and all of a sudden there it was, the clean sharp lines of a tan square building and large sign that read Washakie Medical Center – it was as if I had taken my first breath in hours.  I pulled around to the ER entrance and slung her arm around my shoulders.  We limped into the ER and were met with an abundance of nurses and doctors (apparently the ER in Worland on any given night isn’t exactly bustling with patients, and thank god for it!).

In a matter of minutes my world was turned from darkness and desperation to the droning hum of strange medical equipment, nurses in green scrubs intently focused on my partner, probing questions, harsh lighting, and the sweet sensation of stifled relief.

Old Faithful.

The next few hours were a blur of tests, IV’s, probes, scans, charts, questions, and finally the realization that she was going to need emergency surgery to stop the massive amount of bleeding that was going on inside of her.  Approximately a liter of blood had leaked into the plural space of her lower abdomen caused by a small cyst that had hemorrhaged on her ovary and caused a blood vessel to rupture.  The ER Doctor said bluntly, “This is the most blood I’ve seen inside of someone who is still alive.”  New faces appeared and then disappeared, and amongst all of the nurses, doctors, surgeons, anesthesiologists, and OR crew members that came and went the only face I could focus on was hers.  I went from being surrounded by people to completely alone.  They wheeled her down a typical hospital corridor with me beside her grappling with a small back pack and her purse and feeling useless.  They came to a small juncture in the hallway guarded by two large double doors and that is where I had to make my leave.  We parted like the typical scene in a movie – me holding her hand (now abundantly taped from the various pokes and punctures from needles hungry for blood) and leaning over to say goodbye before they wheeled her off into the mysterious unknown of the OR. 

I tried to calm my mind but it was subject to the infinite screaming possibilities of my imagination oscillating violently between calm, cool, relaxed and terrified, manic and alone.  Just as sleep was about to overtake me I was escorted to her recovery room and waited there for her to come out of surgery.  I passed out hard, scrunched up on small couch that I would later learn turned into a cot.  The lights snapped on and there she was, guarded by nurses and large man who showed me pictures of her insides.  Her gall bladder protruding from a placid lake of iron rich dark red life-giving liquid – her ovary enlarged, brain like, a small tear in the fabric of homeostatic stability – suddenly a foreign object appears, a long slender pole like instrument snipping and burning closed the stem holding her ovary, and removing the hemorrhaging appendage placing it delicately and somewhat comically into a silver baggie.  The synopsis of her surgery in flash card form.  Well, I thought, this is kind of cool, and now we have pictures for our trip.  

Couldn't believe my eyes when we received a bouquet of flowers from our friends Billis and Kevin (and their new puppy Bodi) all the way from Olympia, WA!  Well, the flowers came from Wyoming but the positive thoughts came from Washington.  

Her recovery, not unlike everything that had occurred so far, was rapid.  We spent a day and a half in the hospital before they were ready to send us back to our coastal den of iniquity.  Two days later we were pulling back into the drive way we had left exactly a week ago.  Surreal to say the least.  The longest I have ever driven for a weekend trip climbing and easily the most mileage spent in a car to undergo an oophorectomy. 

Being tourists instead of climbers. 

Ruth just before our trip to Ten Sleep making very good links on her mega project Californicator (7c)

And to think I almost lost this amazing cow girl in the heart of cow boy country.  This is a picture of Ruth (and her horse Stormy) when she was 16 and loving life, rodeos, and most of all horses.

Back at work.