Flat on my Back
The Curse of Ms. Bliss
The first warning I ever heard about old age came from my fifth-grade teacher. Grey-haired, thin, and usually dressed in black, Ms. Bliss aroused no special feelings in me. But somehow I brought out a deep resentment in her. One day, I discovered an alternate way to solve an arithmetic problem, and eagerly put up my hand. “I have a different way to do it,” I piped.
Ms. Bliss told me to shut up and do it her way.
I don’t remember exactly what brought on her curse. I was probably just horsing around, not paying attention, when she erupted:
“Some day, Tommy Phillips, you’re going to be flat on your back!” She said this quivering with rage, repeated it for emphasis, and added “Then, you’ll see…”
For the next 60 years I wondered about the curse of Ms. Bliss, and what it was I would “see” if it came to pass. And then at 71, I found myself flat on my back.
On Columbus Day, 2013, eight weeks after the first stabbing pains in my right hip and thigh, I lay stretched out on the table in a neurosurgeon’s examining room, unable to sit or stand for more than a few minutes. I had grown a spiky beard and lay there moaning when Dr. Cohen came in. He immediately diagnosed me as “pretty miserable.”
The MRI showed a badly herniated lumbar disk, pressing on the nerves from my spine. Rest, ice, heat and stretching had done nothing to help, and the pain was getting worse by the day. He proposed a micro-diskectomy, cutting away a portion of the vertebra to clear out the herniated tissue. I was desperate, and the surgery seemed to make sense. “Let’s do it,” I said.
Clearing his schedule, the nurse found an opening three days away, but only if I could get the pre-op tests with my primary care physician. Dr. Baskin grumbled about the hurry-up, but he squeezed me into his schedule the next day, even after the holiday weekend. Normally brusque, this time he patted me on the back and said, “Good luck. You’re in good hands.”
I woke up in pain at 5 a.m. Thursday. My wife Debra helped me dress, led the way to the elevator, then to the street to hail a cab. The cabbie was African, mellow at the end of a night shift. Light traffic in Manhattan. I stretched out in the back seat as best I could and we rolled down Columbus Avenue in the pre-dawn, past familiar signs and buildings, to Roosevelt Hospital.
Inside the atrium, a small crowd was gathering. These were the ambulatory surgery patients, reporting for 7:30 operations. We were blacks, whites, Latinos and Asians, some with kids in tow. I was the least ambulatory of the bunch. A Latino, a sharp-looking guy in a new straw hat, gave up his place on the one couch, so I could stretch out.
At 6:00 a nurse came to escort us upstairs. She looked Chinese, plump and jolly, and herded us like campers on an outing. I was last in line when we reached the 5th floor ward, but she put me in Waiting Chair Number One, closest to the door.
Before I even tried to sit, an orderly came up to ask if I would rather lie down. “We want you comfortable,” she said with a Haitian lilt. She wheeled a bed from across the way, adjusted the height, helped me onto it and covered me with a blanket.
Next to come in was a senior RN, who introduced herself as Alicia. She reminded me of Edith Bunker, friendly but serious about her business. She went through a ream of paperwork, checking my medical history, allergies, etc. Alicia had seen hundreds of these operations and assured me I was going to feel better soon.
A few minutes later, I watched the ceiling fly by as my bed rolled through the corridors, pushed by a Jamaican guy. The anesthesiologist had deep blue eyes. She looked deep into mine, checking my consciousness before she obliterated it. “This is your last chance to ask questions,” she said, as Dr. Cohen strode up in casual street wear.
I had no questions. The surgeon and I shook hands. His hands were good.
A Filipino nurse popped into view. — -You’re going on a trip, she said. Where you wanna go on vacation? I checked my bucket list. “Aruba.”
“OK, Aruba!” The anesthesiologist dropped the bomb.
Next thing I knew, I was back from vacation. A medical student debriefed me — told me all they’d done in surgery, and what I could expect in recovery. Already I felt a warm ache in the lower back, and the return of normal sensation to my right hip and leg.
They wheeled me to the recovery room, where a golden-skinned, dark-eyed nurse took my vital signs, and gave me a choice of snacks. I chose cranberry juice and graham crackers. They tasted divine. She brought me seconds.
“I’m Miss McDonald,” she said primly. Ah, but what’s your first name?
She hesitated. —-I rarely give it, because people can’t say it right. Z-E-N-A-I-D-E.
Oh, Zen-IDA, I said.
She smiled. — So, you’ve traveled, she said.
A volunteer was hovering, an elderly woman named Evelyn. Her job was to contact loved ones and escort them to the recovery room. She brought Debra to my bedside.
The last nurse we saw was a solid Latina, middle-aged, who was there to check out my “sea legs.” She watched me intently and followed close as I got up and walked on crutches to the men’s room. I hadn’t noticed before, but there was a bright yellow bracelet on my wrist that said FALL RISK. My legs felt steady, though, as I made my way across the floor. The nurse closed the door — -“for privacy” — -and told me to knock when I was ready.
I stood, I peed, I knocked. I walked back across and sat on the bed. The nurse said, “You’re good to go.”
We rested for a few minutes, then Debra called for a wheelchair to push me to the lobby. I sat while she went out to hail a cab. Another mellow African driver took us up Amsterdam Avenue, past PS 87 where the kids had gone to school, past our favorite Taqueria, past V&T’s Pizza. We took a left on 111th, stopped at our entrance, and Debra gave him a $5 tip “for a smooth ride.” I asked for extra time to get my legs and crutches out.
“No hurry, man. All the time you need.”
I was home again, miraculously with two working legs under me.
That night I reflected on the curse of Ms. Bliss. She was right, I’d been flat on my back. But what I saw was not what she envisioned. She probably thought I would see that my boyish freedom was an illusion — that our lives are controlled by others, we live by the dictates of family, school, employer, medical establishment, church and state. Shut up and do it their way.
Maybe that was her life. But on the day of my surgery, every human being I saw recognized my distress and shared it in some way, helped me to bear it. I didn’t feel controlled, but lifted up by others. I never felt helpless. Lifted up by people from all over the world, in the heart of the greatest city in the world, I wound up feeling on top of the world. I was doing what needed to be done, was thrilled to see it working out. But I wasn’t doing anything. It was all done by the people in whose hands I trusted my life. My sense of freedom was renewed, but understood in a new way. Freedom is not an individual achievement, but a communal gift.
A hundred years ago, I might have spent the rest of my life flat on my back. Today, on the cusp of 80, I am walking on two feet, damaged but intact, living the life abundant. I owe it to New York City, to humanity and science, and even our half-broken health care system. I only ask for the strength and wisdom to return the blessing.
And to Hell with the curse of Ms. Bliss.
— Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips
