My Daughter's Face
It felt like a miracle, even if it was just life happening.
I’m returning to my regular habits. I took a walk this week. I’m watching baseball again. I finally started the second pass at the novel, after putting it off for weeks. I even submitted a short story to an anthology.
I’ve been taking care of my daughter. I won’t go into specifics, because it’s her surgery, not mine, but it involved a recovery time of, according to the doctors, eight weeks. I set aside time on my calendar and tried my best to tamp down my worries as the surgery date and time approached. We all made detailed plans, down to the minute, for the big day.
On surgery day, we got a phone call at 6 a.m. saying the surgery had been rescheduled, someone had canceled, the previous 9 a.m. surgery time had now been pushed up to 7 a.m., and it was time to get to the hospital NOW. All our carefully made plans were rendered meaningless. My wife and I met my daughter’s family at the hospital. We whisked their kid out of his car seat and into our car seat, took him to school, and then rushed back to the hospital (my wife, I will point out, was doing all the driving, as I was a little too freaked out).
The only good news about the suddenly rescheduled operation is that because it started earlier, it was over earlier. She spent the night in the hospital, and then came home.
Her fever stayed uncomfortably high for several days. We took her temperature continually, and called her surgeon at least once a day. When her fever seemed to stick at 103° our calls to the surgeon became more frequent. Her advice was to wait it out. The fever would eventually go down. Keep her cool and comfortable. The meds would kick in. The fever will break, she assured us.
On the third day after the surgery, my daughter and I were sitting on the couch, watching the Treehouse of Terror episodes of The Simpsons (one of our goals of her extended convalescence was to watch all of them).
She wheezed loudly. I hit pause on the TV and turned to her. She looked awful. Her skin looked grey and sallow, her eyes tired and red and lifeless.
I took her temp: 103.2°. I didn’t know what to do, but I had to do something. I remembered a couple pieces of advice from the nurses at the hospital: getting up and walking around was supposed to help, as was a cold washcloth on her face.
“Let’s go to the bathroom and wash your face,” I said.
She felt as helpless as I did. The fever seemed unbreakable, and it was seriously kicking her ass.
“Okay,” was her listless reply.
I got her up off the couch, and we slowly walked down the hallway to the bathroom. I couldn’t find a washcloth, didn’t know where to look, didn’t want to ask my daughter to root around and find one, so I used the corner of a towel, ran it in cold water, and then slowly began to wash my daughter’s face. The skin of her face was pale and all scrunched together. She was covered in sweat, and a few tears as well. I began to wash her face, very slowly and very gently. Left cheek. Forehead. Right cheek. Left cheek. Forehead. Right cheek. Refresh the towel with more cold water from the faucet, and repeat. I spent several minutes on each part of her face before moving on.
As I cleaned her, I was hit by a memory of holding her hand when she was a little girl, and sick with a fever. That night, I spent much of the night at her bed, holding her hand, stroking the back of it with my other hand. I took her temperature continually, trying to will it down below 102°, ready to wake up my wife and whisk her into the car and to the ER.
Eventually that fever broke. No ER visit was necessary.
We spent a long time in the bathroom. Gradually, my daughter’s skin transitioned from a sickly grey to red, as blood seemed to flow through her cheeks. Her face relaxed. Her skin felt cooler. But the detail that sticks in my mind the most (other than that flashback of holding her hand as a child) is her eyes. They brightened. I don’t know the mechanism behind it, as I’m sure her eyes didn’t literally brighten. Perhaps they widened. Perhaps they became more active as she looked around more. I don’t know. All I can say is what it looked like to me: her eyes brightened. They came alive.
After about fifteen minutes, I asked her, “Do you feel better? Do you want me to keep going?”
She smiled. Actually smiled. The first smile I’d seen on her face for days. “Let’s go back to the couch.”
We took the long slow walk down the hallway and back to the couch. I laid her down, and took her temp again. It was hovering near 100°. I wanted to dance. Her energy level was up. Her eyes were bright.
Her fever came and went for the next few days, but never returned with such ferocity again. Essentially, it broke before my eyes, in the bathroom, as I washed her face.
I know this was no miracle. Every medical professional told us the fever would eventually break, and it did.
So, yes, it was no miracle, but I feel blessed to have witnessed her fever breaking, her eyes lighting up, her cheeks filling with red, the smile forming like an unexpected treasure at the edges of her mouth. I feel honored to have a small part in helping the fever break.
It felt like a miracle, even if it was just life happening.
That was all several weeks ago. Since then, her health has steadily improved. I spent a couple weeks caretaking full-time. We watched more Treehouse of Terror (we still haven’t finished; there are 33 of them). When she napped, I cleaned her apartment or read Moby Dick (still not done with that either).
I no longer hang out with her all day. I now pick up her kid from school, drive him home, do the dishes, hang out a little, and then rush home to watch the Mets game.
Despite that scary first week, and a few minor complications since then, it looks like she’s going to be okay.
It’s just life happening, even if it feels like a miracle.
Perhaps life is the miracle.
Peace.