The surgical divide

Introduction:

We take many things in our life,  as available at our will or pleasure.This card house requires variety of glues to stay intact. This need will be felt only when an emergency comes calling to make us start counting our fortunes & friends. For both it might turn out to be an enlightenment! Can this experience be called pickling of nerves?

 Extreme experiences in life might give rise to the feeling that one is near or on edge of a precipice. This experience of being on edge differs from person to person and hence unforgettable and unique, as far as that individual is concerned. 

That over the hill experience can be described   like this: It is similar to an ace mountaineer, reaching the peak only to find the foothold slippery and getting scared of falling either over the peak or sliding back to the valley and yet determined to regain at least a toehold. 

The intervening period between the slip and the grip, and the experience of an emotional flux– is the state being on edge.

One such state of being scared and unsure is going under a surgeon’s scalpel, literally up to one’s neck, deep on a diet of anaesthesia, routed through the spinal column. Chest to cranium you are present and chest to toes you are immobilized like a stone.

Sensing a travel through unknown corridors, the demons of doubts and fears take control of the neurons. The brain, under seize, joins hands with these villains to generate nightmare after nightmare, struggling to take back its commanding role. 

Bathed in anaesthesia up to the chest, the patient starts experimenting with different version of fear psychosis. This process starts with a procession of gods, semi-gods and angels. The only doubt that remains unanswered is  "will I regain consciousness or slip into  coma?"

Now, the patient on the surgery table begins to see all the dark matters in the universe. Fear is such a powerful force and endows the patient   with special vision, to see even the dark matters, a feat impossible as per the laws of science! The patient has now become a full fledged citizen in the state of fright.

When all these things are happening on the surgical bed, another branch of science dealing with pure human emotions generates morbid thoughts, in the mind of an attending relative. The severity or intensity depends on whether one is a close relative or just a relative.

The sluice gates of the fluid bank get opened by moist palms, moistened lips with a racing heart ably assisting the process. The hospital floor suffers wear and tear; the flush in the wash room becomes tired.

The life threatening or severely inconveniencing malady gets corrected. The after effect of a surgery lingers on, not of anaesthesia, bothering the patient. Some get over it quickly and others carry it as a ghost from the past for a long time. May be these types can only forget things in instalments.

To describe the traumatic feelings, pre and post surgery, the best suited person is the person reliving the surgical trauma – words straight from the horse’s mouth.

The patient starts convalescing, testing the patience of dear and near with tales, liberally mixing them with horror, warnings and lectures in medical sciences. The negative impact these repeat recaps are capable of creating in others’ psyche, is simply forgotten.

Fearing a lesser stellar rating for the surgical experience, these recaps ,invariably tend to,  omit to mention the supporting role played by the one who stood by anxiously, outside the operation theatre!

This leaves the relative/attendant to recite the other side of the story; to whoever is willing to lend an ear needing a break from the previous one - less dramatically of course!

The attendant’s mind, under notice to churn out alternate scenarios, tries hard to cope up with a flood of improbable ideas as far fetched as the screenplay of a blockbuster. 

The attendant discovers that fear is a dipole and the lines of patient’s nightmares pass through his/her mind. The mere thought of the patient undergoing a surgical procedure is enough to reproduce the very same feelings and anxieties, strictly obeying the laws of magnetism!

Taking a small diversion, the procession of different set of gods, semi-gods and angels take to the streets of prayer, though the doubt – ‘will the operation end in success or cross the border into the no-man’s land – coma remains glued to the mind.

The attendant opens a register of friends & relatives who would come forward to donate a pint of blood, or chip in with a bundle of currency notes or a towel to cry into.

At the end the attendant feels whether the experience was worth the trauma?