My magical moment under a scalpel!
The bright lights on the roof, the humming of medical devices all around, the beeping of the ECG machine and the dancing rhythm of the oximeter are part of my life now. They feel as normal and familiar as the humming of the refrigerator or the buzzing of Microwave oven to anyone else!
So, for the nth time — I am back here again. At the anaesthesia bay just off the operation theatre being prepped for yet another surgery. As I lay there emotionally and mentally numb (which helps heaps — no point, getting your mind racing and having 1000 thoughts cross your mind every second when you can’t even move). It took me a while to master this extremely precious skill in getting through surgeries. It keeps me sane. I lay still waiting for the anesthetic doctor to arrive.
I replayed in my mind a familiar situation. There will be an exchange of pleasantries and joke about the ‘whiskey’ he was going to administer to put me to sleep (GA — General Anaesthesia)! I look forward to GA in this situation, as it takes me someplace I always wonder about later. I mean, when you sleep and wake up — you have a faint sense of how long you slept for. Under GA — it’s always a surprise, upon waking up…even before knowing how the surgery went. I am keener to know how long I was out for because I can never remotely guess…it’s always ‘wow, 5 hours huh! nice.
Coming back to my situation, I am having a thrombectomy of my fistula (I am a Dialysis patient since 2013), the fistula clotted and the vascular surgeons needed to remove the clot and restore the blood flow so I could dialyse again. My K (Potassium) was on the higher side and the team needed to check blood last minute to see if it was safe to go ahead. The wait was for this test result. And the test results that came through were not good enough. The doctor informed me that K is too high to have GA administered. They discussed it with the surgeons and a decision has been made to pivot from thrombectomy to insertion of a temporary vas catheter near the groin under LA (LA — local anaesthesia) and get some dialysis to remove all that K in the bloodstream.
From being numb, I became nervous…As much as I love GA, I hate LA. LA shuts the pain but sends my brain into overdrive. My incapacitated senses try very hard to make some sense of the situation with my brain. i.e. My brain tells me what happened but not fully. For instance, under LA when a cut is made and the blood spills over my skin. I can feel the spill but can’t tell if it’s a cold or a warm spill. Imagine, spilling coffee over yourself but not knowing if it’s super hot, warm or cold and thus, can’t decide on what action to take, even your reflexes go hmmmm…! I wonder what happened there. And Just then, my intellect kicks in and tells me the whole gory and bloody story — you just got cut by a super sharp razor knife and that was your bright red thick blood spilling all over your side now. Stay calm and don’t move! Really….stay calm! don’t move! ha!
Fast forward to the next 20 mins and my brain is ready to go into overdrive, I am pinned to the theatre table now, the vitals, the ECG, the bright lights, the green drapes over half my body, the surgeon and nurses have come around and taken their spot— all’s set and we are ready to make that first cut. I am running the next 20 mins in my mind already. I am shit scared and say that thing that I always do in a meek voice ‘How long will it be doctor? I hope it’s quick’. I am always assured that yes, it will be quick and you’ll be fine.
So, here I am, fully awake and aware…watching intently as the surgeon preps his table with all sizes of sharp scalpels, scissors and injections….and honestly, looking sharp in that surgical gown while I am feeling ridiculously awkward lying there in just a gown with my left leg exposed and my privates gently tucked under the cover. It’s like lying down in your bathrobe with no underwear at your office boardroom table while all your colleagues sit around and watch you. I felt underdressed!
And the deja vu begins - the cut, the spill, a very warm, fuzzy feeling takes over followed by pushing and shoving by the surgeon and I roll up my eyes and begin hyperventilating. I can’t feel the pain but I can feel every bit of pressure while my brain is narrating the gory story. I can’t wait for the next 10–20 mins to just vaporise and I can feel the super nervous, kinetic, tension all over my body, I am forgetting to breathe and have to constantly remind myself of it. It’s as if I am ‘trying to evoke a superpower that would turn me into a rock so I can resist the cutting and shoving’. This is even when I know that the more I tense up, the harder it becomes. I am all over the place by now while super still! This is how it always pan out for me but then this time, something incredibly magical happened!
A lovely surgical nurse, named B**la who was standing by my side, took both my hands in both her hands and seemed willing to join me in my journey of pain and anxiety. It was not an ‘I need to hold you down, so you don’t move’ handhold but ‘We’ll get through this together’ handhold — I couldn’t see her face but the energies told me so. It was my ‘mom, dad, wife, son and more near ones’ — all their touches rolled into one. There was a point where I felt I could have crushed her hand (precisely, when the surgeon was pushing 14 cms long catheter in my IJV) but she held and she did that until I was all stitched up…Long story short. That selfless act of holding hands with a very humane and kind emotion was magic. During surgery, when you are awake — the ability to recognise emotions is at its peak and you can never misjudge at that moment. B**lla’s intention was that of incredible kindness and empathy. Her holding my hands changed the track that was playing in my mind. From a bloody, gory, tissue laden story of a bruised body part — to a gentle remembrance of my near and dear ones. I calmed down, the tension left my body slowly (just like movies, where mystics magically take the pain away) and that’s it! Before, I know it….the surgeon finishes and asks me if I would be going to MCG to watch India v/s Aus next week!
I can’t tell who the healer had been in the theatre. The super-skilled surgeon who fixed my body or B**lla who reinstate the power of touch and kindness in me and changed the story in my head. My guess is both.