Doctor my guise

Have you ever gone under the knife? I have. Quite a few times, actually. It's an interesting experience. They give you a little something, you slide subtly into the deep and dreamless, you come to all achy, and you have a little chat with the surgeon.

I have been thinking recently of this little chat. In the past, I've always related to my surgeons as I felt a patient ought to relate to his doctor, vis. with heartfelt but just slightly distant gratitude. Surgeon/Rob exchanges, that is, have generally gone something like this:

Surgeon: "You're quite lucky to be alive."
Rob: "Err."
Surgeon: "We had to use twenty stitches, sew up a laceration in your stomach, sell one kidney on e-Bay, and replace your left eye with a mechanical replica which is just as functional as the original but can also make great chili and fries in a pinch."
Rob: "Thank you."
Surgeon: "You know, usually people don't require such extensive surgery for a paper cut."
Rob: "Yes."

And so on. Terse from one corner, decidedly un-terse from the other. I have often wondered why (aside from some sort of medical code or liability issue) the surgeon does not simply say "you've been fixed" and move on. I mean, who is this person? It was just a surgery, like hundreds of other surgeries he's performed. Why is he so chatty about it?

But then I got to thinking. And this is what I thought: "Self," I said to myself, "This man - or quite possibly in today's equitable world woman - has just come out of a small room after several hours of poking around in your insides with a pair of forceps. She (or perhaps he) has seen more of you than you would ever desire to see. This poking included, but was not limited to, sewing up a hole in your stomach!!!" I may have appended a few "gosh-durnit"s, even. That's how moved I was at this epiphany.

The point is that I now view my several surgeons in a different light, and should I ever have the opportunity to be operated on again, I will try to be much more understanding of my operator's point of view. Perhaps our conversation will run more along these lines:

Surgeon: "You're quite lucky to be--"
Rob: "Do you ever have dreams about what would happen if you accidentally sewed your watch up inside of a patient?"
Surgeon: "Err."


Music of the moment: "Cogent" by Rodney Kendrick, from his wonderful CD "Dance World Dance", which you can borrow and listen to for free if you happen to have access to any of the fine and deceptively unassuming public fronts of the notorious Whatcom County Library System.