About 10 days ago I
was scheduled for minor surgery that involved opening up my abdomen. I had never had this kind of invasive
procedure done to me before, so I was rightfully apprehensive. My surgeon, who
I will call Dr. B, was a man I had met only once, when I had my diagnosis in
his office the week before. He was a
young, good-looking guy with a pleasant personality and a sense of humor. His fingernails were of normal length,
indicating that he was not a nervous nail-biter. He didn’t shift his weight from side to side
as he talked, and he looked me straight in the eyes when he explained what was
wrong with me and how he could fix it. And,
he didn’t have that habit of raising his intonation at the end of every sentence
making it sound like a question (“The
infection rate in such a procedure is about 2%?) So far, so good. He passed the DrTom’s Do I Trust This Guy To
Open Me Up interview. We scheduled the
surgery.
On the day in question, Management and I went
to the hospital where I was admitted, and then quickly led to the prep
room. I undressed completely, put on the
blue paper gown they provided, and settled onto the stretcher. The nurse, who was obviously trying to make
me feel calm with her almost-too-jovial demeanor, asked me many questions about
allergies, medicines taken, and medical history. She took my vital signs and threaded an IV
line into the back of my hand, which promptly spurted blood all over that side
of my bed. I could tell she was not
that experienced in all this, so I found myself trying to reassure her that she
did a fine job of inserting the IV, I didn’t feel a thing, isn’t it great that
I have large veins, etc. In general, I
overcompensated by appearing passive and bored with what she was doing, as if to
indicate that I had abdominal surgery two or three times a day. It is curious how we sometimes pretend to
ignore potential danger in the hope that by not noticing the reality of the
situation, that very reality will change for the better.
Within 30 minutes, I
was all set to go. I had prepared myself
psychologically as best I could. After
all, I had lived a pretty happy life for 66 years, and if this was going to be
the end of it all, I hadn’t done so badly.
As I ran through my list of rationalizations for a worst-case scenario,
I realized the time was passing and I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable
on the gurney. I began counting the
drops of saline plopping into the line leading to my hand. I obsessed about the coffee I was not allowed
to have that morning. I began dreading
the 3-week recovery period after surgery when I was supposed to “take it easy”.
Three hours later,
the head nurse of the unit and her assistant flung back the curtain to my
cubicle, and entered my bedside space.
Dr. B has been detained by the surgery scheduled just before mine. He was already two hours late in finishing,
and he could be another 2-3 hours. There
had been an unexpected complication. Do
I wish to wait it out, with no guarantee he would ever get to me that day, or
reschedule for another day? Management
and I discussed it a bit. Dr. B might be
tired after his first surgery, and then he works on me. And I’m not going to go an entire day without
coffee. And I just couldn’t count saline
drops any longer. Nope. We will reschedule for the following week.
During that evening’s
Happy Hour, Management and I discussed the day’s events and the pros and cons
of our decision. One observation we made
was that people generally spend more time doing some due diligence on the
attorney they choose or their auto mechanic than they do the physician who will
be administering their health care. In
my case, I needed some surgery, so my personal physician referred me to Dr. B,
whom I had never met or heard of. I
accepted the recommendation unquestioningly.
Management, who was an E.R. nurse for years and then a real estate
agent, always pointed out to me how people were much more sensitive about their
money than their health care. They
readily gave up their body to perfect strangers for repair in the E.R., but
always knew better than their real estate agent about all matters financial associated
with the sale or purchase of a house. They
got angry about the latter, but almost never uttered a thought on the former. Do what you must with my body, but never impugn
my checkbook!
A week later I
returned to the hospital and repeated the entire procedure again. This time, Dr. B appeared on time, ready for
action. He had now had another week of practice in the operating room since we almost met, and that couldn't hurt. And I had now lived 66 years
plus another week, so what the heck. As
the anesthesiologist pushed my gurney through the hallways with Versed (that
most wonderful drug of colonoscopy fame) now coursing through my veins, I
wondered if I could remain cognizant until I reached the O.R. I wanted to size-up Dr. B one last time. But I could not remain alert and, therefore, I
did not get to conduct a final appraisal of that somewhat good-looking man with
a nice sense of humor who was standing there with a scalpel in his hand. As the O.R. nurse had told me earlier, "Let's rock 'n' roll".
