Let me say at the outset that the situation, while not totally out of my control, was somewhat beyond my ability to fix. Yes, I could have ripped the IV out of my hand and slid off the gurney and out of pre-op curtained cubicle #1, clothed in nothing but my cotton socks (apparently the only item of personal apparel allowed under Hospital Regulation #142-HUMIL-I-8) and well-laundered and remarkably soft hospital gown. I could have stomped back through the waiting room of day-surgery patients and out in to the parking lot, untied surgical gown flapping gently in my wake as I emerged blinking into the sunlight without a cab (or the means to pay for one) in sight. I could have. But the option seemed a bit daunting at the time, so I just lay there. The prevailing thought 'o the moment was, "Well, at least I'll have something to write about tomorrow on PFIFB."
The man in #2--so close I could see the shape of the attending nurse's butt in the curtain creating our personal spaces--had described himself 5 minutes earlier to the anesthesiologist as an oral surgeon. They had had quite the professional conversation regarding the best combination of drugs to a) get 'em under, quick and dirty, b) prevent post-op nausea, and c) deal with those radical surgeries (although he didn't do the much these days, being 68 and all...) where you have to reconstruct the whole face. Nina, the lovely nurse whose hands hadn't shaken too severely when "finding a nice vein for the IV" on me, had followed the Gas Queen in and was inquiring which knee was up for meniscus repair.
"The left one," he said.
"Will you please point to it?" she asked.
Maybe it's just me, but I found this disturbing.
I have often found these kinds of conversations confusing myself, albeit in completely non-urgent, non-surgical and (from my frame of reference) understandable circumstances. For instance, is "stage-right" from the perspective of the guy on the stage or the dude in the audience? I can never keep this straight. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone here. How many times every day across the planet do you think someone asks the question, "Is that my left or yours?" However, to hear it asked in the pre-op ward BY someone who was responsible not only for the welfare of his left knee but also all my own cherished body parts, and OF someone who was known in the ward to be "in the profession" was disconcerting, to say the least. If they don't understand each other in this arena, what hope was there for clear communication for me?
Apparently, she only asked so she was sure she was shaving the correct limb (which I also got to enjoy, auditorially speaking.) One hopes his surgeon had a slightly better grip on the job spec.
I wasn't done with the inadvertent eavesdropping yet, but this will wait as the fodder of tomorrow's post. For now, let me just say that I was most relieved to realize that regarding the object of my own surgical attention, I had only one.
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