Written By: Robert Paviour
I craved sedation, after an interminable wait for surgery, not looking my best in bouffant cap and three-day beard. The pre-op area was so polar that I draped a down jacket over the flimsy johnny. “I’m getting frostbite,” I told my wife.
Realizing the delay was making me edgy, she said, “Don’t get cantankerous. You’ve had so many surgeriesthey’ve become recreational. Use the relaxation techniques you taught your patients.”
Humor would help more, so I sang a few snatches of “20, 20, 24 hours to go / I wanna be sedated.” These must have been the magic words: Abracadabra!, I was whisked into the OR. Staff bustled around, bringing me warm blankets, propping up my right leg with pillows to take pain off a bum hip. I was appreciative.
Today I was scheduled for a hernia repair, prequel to hip replacement, more steps to becoming Bionic Bob.Tattoos from earlier operations, including a kidney transplant, had been mostly erased by the miraculous healing powers of our skin. But despite the prospect of seamless upgrades, sometimes a surgery should be scuttled.
This fiasco began with a routine safety check, my surgeon asking for name and date of birth. Now giddy, and never one to pass up a captive audience, I answered, “Bad Bunny,” with an execrable Spanish accent. After hearing only asnicker, I supplied my correct name, more ready than ever to go under. But a rapid-fire, head-snapping series of mood reversals loomed, not oblivion.
The young anesthesiologist obligingly fitted a mask over my mouth and nose. I gave her a thumbs-up in gratitude, glancing at the cocktail of drugs – deliverance so close now! She reached for the stopcock, but was interrupted byirregular, nagging beeping. Frowning, she said, “Wait,” as she checked the screen and electrocardiogram leads.
Instead of the longed-for drugged fog, a foreboding crept over me, validated when she said, “You’re not going to like this: there are too many PVCs, a heart arrythmia.”
“I know what PVCs are.” And I understood she intended to call off the procedure, but after fasting, prep, and lengthy holdup, I became unhinged, behaving badly, yanking off the mask. “My EKG was unremarkable last week!”
“Not today. I can’t take a chance.”
“I had PVCs before, during a colonoscopy. They were nothing.” The gaggle of nurses, techs, and my surgeon milled around while we volleyed, their heads swiveling back and forth as if this was Major League Pickleball. “I swam half a mile on Wednesday. Took a four-mile hike last week.”
Without thinking, I sat up, almost wrenching out the IV, which a tech dashed in to steady. EKG leads peeledloose, and beeps went haywire. This was morphing into farce. All I had to do was act naturally, nearly naked in the Antarctic OR, an old clown with a silly blue crown. Cranky, crazed, shivering scarecrow of a human being.
Over a cacophony of loud chirping, the anesthesiologist said, exasperated, “I don’t want to kill you!” Techsfrantically attempted to stabilize the leads, some of which hung like limp strands of spaghetti.
I looked around, appealing desperately. “This is iatrogenic, caused by no fluids pre-op, electrolyte imbalance, and anxiety.” My narrow range of medical knowledge put me more at risk than PVCs. Fact-check everything I say with Dr. Oz.
“Sorry, I don’t want to kill you,” repeated the anesthesiologist.
She shut off my monitor and the racket ceased. I lay down with a thud, deflated, speechless, seething with peevish suspicions that she was more fearful of litigation than death. Struggling for equilibrium, seesawing, I argued with myself: stop whining, it’s not like you were lying mortally wounded in a field hospital that had run out of Ketamine. Consider all the time and effort spent on you here. Then my crabbiness spiked again as I thought of reprising the whole rigmarole. My wife would have countered, “Come on, collect yourself. This’ll make a good story.”
It was inevitable my insurrection would fail. Accepting this would have been easier had I known the decision to terminate was fortuitous. And I realized that the anesthesiologist deserved an apology: though I was right about PVCs, she had unwittingly saved me.
When we re-booked the repair, new bloodwork revealed the precious kidney, gifted years ago from my brother,was faltering. Only immediate heroics rescued it. Had the doctor not stood her ground, I would have won the debate buttrashed my kidney.
Author Bio:
Robert Paviour is a former journalist who became a psychotherapist, and lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. He has published stories in The North America Review, The Ravens Perch, Poydras Review, and Virginia Country. He is keenly interested in the native plants of Virginia, and spends as much time as possible in the Alleghenies and Blue Ridge mountains. He is a Medicare frequent flier.