The Last Meal

The last meal I had with my family before my brain surgery last year was from McAlister's Deli.

My parents had arrived to take care of my kids for the duration of my hospital stay. I spent most of the day going through about 20 pages of notes: the Care and Feeding of My Children. Where everything was located, important dates, reminders, addresses. The date of our trash pickup, back-to-school preparation, and instructions for taking care of our cats.

Not only was I not going to be there, but Ger wasn't going to be there. He was going to be with me at the hospital. And odds were, we wouldn't be able to answer many questions, at least for the first few days.

While my children are certainly self-sufficient, there are just a lot of things that go into running a household that could come up. In my notes, I tried to account for everything. In many ways, it was a way to deal with my anxiety, to pour all of my energy into this long, detailed document.

I had this last night at home: Saturday, July 19th. We ordered from the McAlister's Deli menu of jumbo baked potatoes loaded with toppings, a favorite in our house. It's a tradition in our house that before every year, we go around the table and everyone says one thing they are thankful for. My dad said he was thankful for all the work I'd done to prepare – as best I could – for being gone.

The next day, Ger and I left around midday for Chicago. My dad dropped us off since it didn't make sense to keep a car in the city, with the hotel right around the corner from the hospital.

I had to be at the hospital the next morning for a pre-surgery procedure. If we hadn't arrived the Sunday before, we would have needed to get up insanely early the next morning to drive into the city from the suburbs. Part of me wanted a little bit of time away from the kids, also. By that point, I was crying every time I looked at them.

I don't really count my last meal at the hotel. There was a sad Chipotle attached to the hotel, and by the time we ordered around 6:00 pm, they were out of some key ingredients.

I couldn't eat after midnight because of the anticipated anesthesia the next day. I woke myself up around 11 p.m. and drank a whole bunch of protein shakes in an effort to stave off the hunger that I was expecting.

The next day came, and the doctor was running hours behind for my procedure (a tumor embolization, to block the tumor's blood supply and make the brain surgery easier). At one point, the surgeon came out and talked to me. He told me that he was so sorry and that, in his procedures, there's no way to estimate how long they will take, and the patient before me was more complicated than expected. My procedure ended up being about four hours late, and I was starving.

They finally took me back, and I was put under anesthesia. It went smoothly, and I was taken back to my hospital room, where I'd be staying for an indeterminate amount of time following the next day's brain surgery. Everyone had decided that it was just easier for me to stay overnight in the hospital for observation post-embolization, instead of going back to the hotel only to return early the next morning.

The hospital's room service dinner had already been served. I sent Ger to get me Panera from the main floor of the hospital. I was thrilled when it arrived. But then, very shortly after eating, I felt sick to my stomach and threw up. I think it was the stress of everything, and finally getting food in my stomach after so long. It just didn't sit well.

But, like the night before, I knew that I wasn't going to be getting food for a long time. Post-surgery, I would probably be on a liquid diet for a period of time. I drank a few more protein shakes late that evening.

As it turned out, I wasn't able to eat normally for quite a long period of time. The muscles around my mouth didn't move correctly, and I had trouble swallowing. For much of my hospital stay, and my stint at inpatient rehab, I could eat only little pieces of soft food that I would tear up. And I could only drink through a straw because I couldn't move part of my mouth.

I didn't write down a lot of these pre-surgery and post-surgery events. In the flurry of activity before, there was no time. And after, I had to rely on dictation and the help of an editor friend to get my words posted. So these details got lost in the shuffle.

Looking back, I really think of that McAlister's Deli with my family as kind of the Last Meal.

This year, on the anniversary of my surgery, my middle child thought we should have McAlister's Deli again. But that weekend wasn't a good weekend. We had other things going on. Then we were busy the following weekend, and then we had my daughter's birthday.

I promised him we would have McAlister's Deli the weekend before the start of the school year. Told him to put it on the calendar.

That was two days ago. We had our baked potatoes. And even ordered some pineapple upside-down cake for dessert.