O.R. As Place

Yesterday was one of those extraordinary days that was supposed to be awful and turned out to be just amazing… I was scheduled for surgery at 9:45 am and had to be in two hours earlier, not having eaten or drunk anything after midnight. There’s a lot of paperwork and different rooms to go and sit in in a kind of ritualistic sequence. But a morning with no tea for someone who drinks two or three pots before work is definitely starting off on the wrong foot (the left one, in my case).

First unexpected thing: they let my mother come in and sit with me in the pre-op room. The anesthesiologist shows up: he’s an affable, chatty guy who after a couple of jokes tries to talk me into a spinal block as opposed to a general anaesthetic. No way, I say. I don’t want to hear, smell, feel, or see anything. That’s what they all say, he says. He explains how he needs to get the muscles REALLY relaxed and in order to do that with a general he’d have to put me way under, which would make me very, very sick. But he can give me an out-of-body experience, half and half, so I’d be like a centaur. Now I’m interested—shades of Harry Potter. He’s selling me this like it’s a truffle.

Second unexpected thing: the surgeon shows up, instantly wants to talk to my mother, wants to make sure I’m okay, wonders if I have questions, is fine with my emailing him. The anaesthesiologist hands him a line and says “hook that up there, will you R—?”-and explains that he has known R- since R—was twelve and that he used to send him all over the Operating Room to get things. They have a very comfortable interaction. I’m instantly intrigued and forget, frankly, to be nervous.

When the time comes to wheel me in to the O.R., after R—explains that he needs to go and get into his pyjamas, the nurses cluck sympathetically to the story of the jig on my wedding day (I am getting a lot of mileage out of this) and then THEY start bantering with the anaesthesiologist, whom I’ll call Dr. F.—and everyone wants to know what music I want to listen to (even though I’m assured I’ll be out cold). Not heavy metal, say I.

The Operating Room, a forbidding, scary, and chilly place I last saw at age seven when I was having my tonsils out when syringes were the size of walking sticks, is now a cozy, mellow haven where Beethoven is welcome. I didn’t ask for Beethoven but nodded an assent when they asked “Classical okay?”. The minute I came to, I was totally alert. They were still joking, two hours later. And I felt elated, elated to be alive, to have gotten through this ordeal, and to have been part of this almost coffee klatsch (even though I was asleep through most of it).

I didn’t hear, feel, smell, or see anything, I say to Dr. F. That’s because I’m your anaesthesiologist, says he, and disappears off into the C Section in the next room.