A few days ago, I was lying on a gurney, lightly
anesthetized, waiting to be taken into an operating room to have a feeding tube
implanted. They’d parked me in a hallway; I was like a plane idling waiting to
take off at an airport. (To be honest, I wasn’t so much idling as eavesdropping
on doctors’ telephone conversations and studying the pattern of the ceiling
panels.)
The receiving nurse, Rose, introduced herself and patted me
on the shoulder (to reassure me, I think, and also to reassure herself that I
wasn’t going to be difficult.) Then she busied herself with the ten thousand
other things that seem to be going on in her department.
Then two new characters appeared: a fortyish woman, very
pert and charming, and a tall younger woman, trying very hard to look bright
and eager. They presented themselves to Nurse Rose. “Hi,” the older woman said.
“I’m Professor Dunbar from the nursing school, and this is Katie, our nurse
trainee.” She giggled briefly. “We want Katie to have an endoscopy day.”
“That’s fine,” Rose said. “The nursing staff is okay with
it, and you don’t even have to ask the docs, because they’re okay with it too.
All you have to do is ask the patients if it’s okay.”
She and Professor Dunbar slowly turned to face me, with
sweet smiles. Katie didn’t know right away what to do, but caught on quickly.
“Hi,” she said to me brightly. “Is it okay if I observe - ?”
“Of course,” I said.
As they wheeled me into the operating area, I heard Rose
tell Katie: “This isn’t the usual thing – not an endoscopy or a colonoscopy.
This is the implanting of a feeding tube. You won’t be seeing many of these.”
I lay in the operating area for about fifteen minutes,
listening to the nurses chatting around me. They’d faced me toward the clock,
and all of them were behind me, so I had a hard time connecting names and
faces; there were at least four of them, I think, including Trainee Katie. Rose
showed Katie the various kinds of equipment they’d be using, and now and then a
new nurse would introduce herself to me and ask my name and birthdate. My blood
pressure was through the roof, and I kept having to reassure them that, yes,
I’d taken my medication that morning, and that my through-the-roof reading
(190/90) was unusual for me; before my diagnosis, I was usually more like
135/85.
Then my gastroenterologist came into the room. I find him
cute: he’s short and stocky and has a sharp expressive face. He kept leaning
with one elbow on my gurney as he talked to me. I could tell that this was just
a routine procedure to him, and I was very comforted by that, and by his
casualness, and by the way he insisted on shaking my hand, even though I was
draped with all kinds of tubes and sensors.
It was over in an hour or less. A little after that, I was
revived in the post-op area and given cranberry juice.
Also, I had a huge plastic tube sticking out of my
midsection.
I keep thinking about Katie, the nurse trainee. No doubt she
learned something that morning, watching my feeding tube being implanted (it’s
a quick process, but a very involved one). How did she feel about it? Did she
wince when they made the incision into my belly?
I’m fascinated by medicine, but I know I could never be a practicing doctor or nurse.
The things they see!
The things they have to do!
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