You Look Like Groucho Marx

I have had a few surgeries in my life.  The very first one was the birth of my oldest son.  He was big, laying transverse and wasn’t budging.  So it was decided that I should have a c-section.  That was fine with me, no labor!  But this was before the days of epidurals. My choice was either a general or spinal.  I nixed the spinal and went with the general.  No big deal.  You are out for a bit and then they wake you and your baby is here.  With the birth of our first child, my husband was in seventh heaven.  I actually felt pretty good afterwards, but was not able to get out of bed that day.  We had lots of visitors.  The next day the nurses came in and they want you to move, get out of bed and walk a few steps.  OK, so I did it all.  Several more visitors…great!  The next day they want you to move further, try going to the bathroom, perhaps take a shower.  OK, up I went to the bathroom, good so far, until I looked at myself in the mirror.  I had tape marks across my face apparently from the surgery.  I could not believe that my family had let me go 2 days with tape marks plastered on my face.  It probably made no difference to anyone else as everyone was here to see the baby.  But I was appalled.

When I first met my husband he was clean shaven.  One day he got the notion that he was going to grow a mustache.  He always kept it pretty neat.  During the early part of my husband’s stay in SCIU, he still looked very much unlike himself.  Amongst other things, he had to wear a cervical collar as the doctors were unsure if he had any spinal injuries.  This kept his head pushed back and of course he was unconscious and laying on his back.  He was starting to look a bit scruffy.  The nurses at first did shave his face, but my daughter absolutely refused to allow anyone to touch his mustache.  That is how she always remembers her father.  So we let the mustache be.  After a while though, with him laying there on his back with part of his head shaved and the rest of his hair pushed up and this overgrown mustache, all I could think of when I looked at him was, my god, you look like Groucho Marx!

 I appealed to my brother in law, who brought it clippers.  Between both my brothers in law and my father in law and with the help of the nurses on the unit, we managed to make his hair (and mustache) a bit more manageable.  You see, it brought back the memories of the tape on my face way back when.  All I could think of was if he knew we let him look like Groucho Marx, whenever he woke up he would be very angry with us all.  Thankfully, my family kept up his appearance and once he was moved from SCIU to the respiratory unit, we convinced the doctors to remove the cervical collar, which then allowed us to just shave his head and clean him up entirely.  But that darn mustache stayed!  However, Groucho was gone.