It’s 0700. All is quiet. The OR is empty except for an operating table, anesthesia machine and the usual equipment. Much like the sound of a dark, haunted house, the whirring sound of the air exchange and the smell of CaviCide disinfectant permeating the room, it doesn’t feel like a friendly place. There’s just something about the cold temperature, a balmy 62 degrees, the fluorescent lighting, drab gray paint and white tile floors that make this space incredibly uninviting. This space is not supposed to be inviting. This is a clean space where people come in to be poked and prodded. It can go from calm, clean and controlled to chaotic and blood bathed in an instant. It is the frontline of our healthcare system, and I have a front row seat.
This rather depressing space is my office. I spend my days at a small desk with a computer, taking patients to and from surgery. Patients who range from age zero to 100. Black, white, yellow, brown, rich, poor, gay, straight, transgendered, mentally ill and handicapped, homeless, insured and uninsured, critically ill and injured, non-English speaking…I assess their history, make sure all paperwork is complete, comfort them, position their body parts, prep their skin, and watch as the surgeon cuts them open with a surgical knife.
I watch the revelation of the knife, profound as it is so simple, revealing how fundamentally human we are underneath our surface characteristics which define us in the context of society, but in the context of surgery people are simply human bodies with pretty much the same parts. Parts that are cut, cauterized, removed and sewn back together.
