It was damn near impossible to sleep the night before the surgery. Although I had read extensively about the safety and success of laparoscopic gallbladder surgery, the wheels in my skeptical mind kept on turning. After tossing and turning for a few hours I could no longer keep my mind from wandering down the dark alley of what-if. As I neared the point of a full-blown panic attack, I focused all of my energy on thinking happy thoughts and began softly chanting Om Mani Padme Hum, the mantra of Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. This mantra, which has no literal translation (the closest we have is the jewel in the lotus), is said to contain all the teachings of the Buddha and helps open the mind and heart to a world beyond pain and suffering. Om purifies joy and bliss, Ma purifies jealousy and the need for entertainment, Ni purifies passion and desire, Pad purifies ignorance and prejudice, Me purifies poverty and possessiveness, and Hum purifies aggression and hatred. Sounds easy enough in theory, just mumble some Sanskrit and boom, lights out, but as I lied there strangled by the icy chokehold of anxiety, no amount of spiritual masturbation could quiet my uneasy mind. I finally fell asleep shortly after 4:30 a.m., exhausted from the cinema of horrors that had been playing in my mind. "Stupid over-active brain," I thought. "If only lobotomies didn't give you a lobotomy..."
There is a certain excitement in facing the unknown, though. Walking into a doctor's office knowing that you're about to allow somebody to pump your body full of chemicals in order to be knocked unconscious and cut open requires a monumental suspension of doubt.
"Hey how you doing, nice to meet you, mind if I stick you with this needle then drain this big bag of drugs in you?"
How 'bout no, Scott...
There are three stages of anesthesia: induction, maintenance, and emergence. Induction is exactly what it sounds like. In my case, when it was time to start the surgery, I was wheeled through a seemingly endless maze of emotionless grey steel doors into a room filled with more buttons and computers than a Daft Punk show. Seriously, you could find Atlantis with all the shit they had in there. The nurse parked my bed next to the surgical table, which looked like a slightly more padded version of a prison bed complete with crucifixion-style arm rests. As people scurried about, masks covering their mouths, I tried desperately to find something familiar about the situation, something to focus on other than my fear, but my mind was off to the races…
…It’s ok, man, all these people are supposed to be here. Just relax, think about something funny. Animals. Animals are funny. What funny videos have I seen of animals? The sneezing panda! That shit was hilarious! Why do they have all those different sized knives…is that a crash cart? They know this is gallbladder surgery right, should I have written ‘NO’ with a Sharpie on my arms and legs? Maybe they should use a system like Starbucks to mark people before surgery. Double tall decaf hemispherectomy…Christ I need a new job. Is it true pigs can’t look up? That sucks, man, the sky is awesome! Makes sense I suppose, fat little bastards…Ok, other funny animals. Dogs are funny. Not cats. You know what they say about cats, too many cats, not enough recipes…"Now this may burn a little bit but it's nothing to worry about, it's just the medicine warming your veins," the nurse said to me as I lied there on the cold steel table, bare-assed and vulnerable.
And just like that, I was out. No count backward from ten, no here comes the thunder, no imaginary sheep, just oblivion.
I have no memory of dreaming during the surgery, and I would like to think this is due to my anesthesiologist watching my vitals with the same intensity as a coked-out day trader watching a stock ticker. I wish I could say the same thing about when I had my wisdom teeth taken out. Although I was assured that I would be "out cold" for the wisdom tooth surgery, I did regain some type consciousness. I couldn't feel what was going on but I sure the fuck heard it- scraping, picking, sawing, drilling- and it was horrifying. Same goddamn thing happened during my upper endoscopy. Woke up partway through it with a two-foot-long camera down my throat, gagged like crazy, and had to try to put my mind elsewhere. I once saw a documentary about some monks from way up in the Himalayas. As part of their training, they would spend the night outside in the freezing cold of winter, clad only in their robes, and would survive by using meditation to lower their body temperature to adapt to the situation. Surely this can only be achieved through years of intense practice, but it is attainable, and I have often thought of these monks when facing an uphill battle.
Emergence. Although I’ve never been roofied, I imagine the morning afterward feeling a lot like post-surgical confusion. Discombobulated and completely unaware of how much time had passed, I decided to take a quick glance underneath my Orca-sized hospital gown to confirm whether or not the surgery was over. It was, and I had four stab wounds and the shaved happy trail to prove it. As the anesthesia wore off and was replaced by a dull, throbbing pain, I began to feel the familiar sensation of liquid needing to be released from my bladder. And this is when the real fun started. See, during general anesthesia, your body and its functions are put on pause and in order to be released from the hospital, the docs need to know those functions are starting back up again. So, as the nurse shut the bathroom door after escorting me arm-in-arm to one of the stalls, I tried to begin the very complicated and frustrating process of taking a post-surgery piss.
After ten minutes of trying every trick in the book to coax a few measly drops out of my reluctant spout: turning on the sink, placing my hand under hot water, flushing the toilet, plugging my ears and imagining myself in a rain forest (which creates a look-at-me-no-hands situation and requires tremendous aim), I gave up. Nothing in life is more frustrating than when the things we take for granted stop working for a moment. I stood there, penis in hand, cursing my body for repeatedly failing me so. Sadly, I never realized the nurse was waiting outside the door the entire time and had heard my loving recitation of 'Ode to Failed Penis...' Ready for painkillers (and my bed), I tucked it back and did the Ozzy Shuffle back to my room to get dressed. It was time to leave.
Upon arriving home, I decided to re-tackle the whole urination issue. They did warn that it might take a while for my bodily functions to return to normal and after relaying my bathroom story to my sister the RN, I was informed that if I was still having trouble urinating in eight hours, I would have to go back to the hospital. Uh-uh. No. There was no going back. Going back would mean pain. Going back would mean catheter, and catheter means, excuse the vulgarity, having a tube shoved up your cock. Nope, no cock-tubes, not for me. So I set up shop in my bathroom, determined to empty my post-surgery bladder. I grabbed my ipod, dropped trow, and listened to the frogs, crickets, and babbling brooks of some nature tracks as I tried to imagine myself standing waist deep in a Colorado stream. And finally, dribble, dribble, dribble, release! It was, in a word, exhilarating.
As far as surgeries go, laparoscopic gallbladder surgery is fairly low-key. Typically, Gallbladder Disease occurs mostly in women (80% of reported cases), particularly in women over 4o years old who have had children, and is the result of being overweight and having a very poor diet. Obviously, that shit doesn't apply to me as I'm 27, male, and in pretty decent shape. But, I am no stranger to being an exception to the rule, and never seem to fail at finding new ways to become an even bigger statistic.
The whole experience, which started long before I began to feel any symptoms, is just about over. I am recovering nicely, and after a minor setback, my body appears to be healing. The drugs are nice, that's for sure, but I have to be careful not to let the voice of my pain become too loud, for if I do, I may end up like Rush Limbaugh. For months, I lived in fear that my body was shutting down for good, that my years of living the fuck out of life had finally caught up with me. Facing the consequences of your past is never a fun thing to do, especially when there is tangible evidence of your destruction involved, but living in constant fear of death is quite possibly worse than death itself.
Although I will be walking through the remainder of my life minus a gallbladder, I have gained tremendous insight into the frailty of this human body. We are not invincible and in a relatively short amount of time, our bodies will begin their own version of the anesthesia cycle. There is no way to determine when or where this is going to happen, and as we all know, this is beyond our control. I'll spare you the clichés about this being the only moment we have because anybody who has ever contemplated the question of "what the fuck are we here for" has already come to that conclusion. I ignored my health and had to pay a price for it. I seemingly forgot that my body is like a machine, a machine that runs on a certain kind of fuel, and eventually, if you continue to put the wrong fuel in the machine, the fucking thing will break down. So, in short, pay attention to what you're putting in your body. Everything has a shelf life.
- Timothy Baker
