I gave my daughter a piece of my liver (pt.1)

The surgery

This time felt different. Not just because it was clear to see that she was more well in herself than the last time; both the numbers and her demeanour told a story of vital readiness.

It is no small thing to go through an organ transplant, especially as a metabolically compromised baby. I needed to know that she was in the best possible shape she could be, and I probably lost years off my life to stress watching her as vigilantly as I did in the days leading up to the operation, but I had to, to protect her and, admittedly, my own mental health.

The day before, the anaesthetist came to see us, asking how she was doing; an informal assessment before the big event. He then turned to me and asked,

“and you, Mum, are you well in yourself?”

(I am everyone’s mum at this point; I get called it daily by multiple different people, many older than me. It’s grown on me.)

This question stopped me, because not once had it occurred to me that in preparation for this major surgery that I too needed to be ‘well’.

I mean of course I’m well aren’t I? My bloods are always normal, I didn’t need to alter anything in my lifestyle to be her donor. I’m probably in the best shape of my life etc. etc. etc.

But am I, hand on heart, really ‘well’ in myself?

I like the expression ‘well in oneself’. I think of it as describing a state of homeliness in one’s bones, a sense of belonging, being and breathing. By contrast, you might find yourself ‘out of it’, whether that be through self-inflicted causes or illness; a phrase that evokes that inability to stay within the present tense of the body. Whilst I, on paper at least, probably meet the criteria for being ‘well’, I would describe it more as being well out of myself. I am well as long as I am training in the gym, well as long as I am busy, well as long as I am writing, well as long as I am ordering doctors around, well as long as I am scrolling social media whilst my daughter sleeps on me.

I am not ‘in’ my body at all.

In fact, I didn’t come back into my body until they awoke me from surgery.

moments before surgery. am I excited/shitting myself/both?

I encourage you to be gentle with yourself if reading from hereon in:

I woke up to jubilant voices saying ‘ok Eleanor, welcome back, time to wake up!’, like I was being roused from a massage, but it wasn’t that at all, because instead, I was having a nasogastric tube pulled out via my right nostril (I still have a friction burn), and I remember the feeling of lights being shone very brightly, but also that my eyes seemed to be shut.

I was further awoken by the sharpest shoulder pain, which seemed to be emanating from my left side.

“I’m having a heart attack”.

I felt tears rolling down my cheeks, saltily into my mouth which was still crusted with secretions from where they had intubated me. ECG stickers and probes were plugged promptly across my chest. I still couldn’t see.

From the tiny slant of light that was now coming in at the very top of my field of vision, I thought I saw my whole life. I truly believed in that moment that my life was hanging in the balance.

As it would happen, the ECG was normal and the pains were ‘retractions’ where my chest and abdominal muscles had been pulled back into position upon the incision being closed. That, and me on fentanyl is clearly quite dramatic. Maybe it was the absurd pain and the heavy narcotics, but I did, in that moment, get a very real sense of just how vulnerable I was. I don’t know why but I can’t reflect on that moment without crying. There is something hauntingly humbling about handing over your life that I don’t think I had grasped until that moment. Life is unbelievably precious.

All the while that I was in recovery, being juiced up on opioids and forehead strokes, the wonderful transplant coordinator and clinical specialist nurse came down intermittently to update me on Ruby’s progress in theatre.

It’s funny because I remember very little about the conversations had during this timeframe, but I recall every detail of those updates; proof that the heart listens far more deeply even when there’s lots of noise. Maybe it was precisely the level of drug-induced spangling that rendered my cognitive function obsolete at this point anyway.

I’m mentioning drugs a lot because this whole debacle was, for me, a clean and sober person of nearly 6 years, unbelievably triggering; so much so that I, over the coming days tried to even come off my pain meds so as to come back to life, to the slight detriment of my healing.

What healed me far more than any drug though, at this immediate post-surgery point, was news of Ruby’s surgery progressing. There is a crucial moment in liver transplant surgery when the new liver and it’s veins are fused with the veins of the recipient. Sometimes this can be bumpy and initial rejection can occur, but I am so unbelievably grateful to say that the wiring fused seamlessly, made more possible by the kindred nature of our cells.

It’s magic really. I know it’s science, but it’s also magic; that two foreign bodies can be brought together, and somehow the cells just know to fuse. Science is amazing, but there are so many unexplained processes that I have also come to call magic. Maybe science and magic aren’t in as much of a binary opposition as we might think? If you know me you know that I don’t seek that many answers anymore; my mind thrives in liminal spaces and I worship mystery over certainty. I don’t think that we’re supposed to be able to explain everything.

I’ll never be able to fully explain this experience, but I can tell you how it made me feel. If there is sense to be made of big things, it’s better done through feeling, I think.

The beginnings of one of my proudest battle scars.

When I was wheeled onto the ITU, high as a kite, I found myself excited to see my family. My husband and mum had been waiting for me to come out of surgery. I still couldn’t see, but I knew somehow that my mum was in the next room. My mum, like me, reserves her big emotions for those who earn the trust of them, making her seem more stoic in these moments than she maybe really is, but of course, it was her baby in surgery too.

I also started to have a deep sense of knowing where Ruby was and what was going on. I can’t fully explain it, but for now I’ll chalk it up to my brain and logical reasoning faculties being so fried on narcotics that the gates to the deep, non-conceptual knowing of the Heart were flung wide open.

ITU is absolutely where I needed to be at that moment, but there is little that is healing about the environment. I came armed with an eye mask and ear plugs, which served me greatly, plus I had worked out that my pain relief button, available for a push every 10 minutes, also knocked me out. Even in that state, I felt like I had to sensibly interrogate each button press, and what that meant in terms of my addictive nature and the fact that pain can be quite subjective. I kind of wish I was one of those people who could just let go in that moment and give over to the out-of-body experience.

I was absolutely out of my body, and not at all well in myself.

On reflection, there was no way that I was meant to be in my body during those 48 hours after such a physical assault as that surgery was. It was a means to an end. I knew already that it had been a success at her end, and for now, all there was to do was to close the eyes of this body so that I could travel to her, to rest inside her heart and mind like she does mine, eagerly anticipating our reunion when the time was right.