Post-GA Ranting

I can’t remember having written about the time I broke my arm in Boracay.  In retrospect, blogging about it would have been the perfect way to clear the air once and for all about what ACTUALLY happened.  Different versions of the story have been floating around my different social circles, and back then I would have found a blog pretty handy to give my version of the story, instead of having had to go around repeating myself like a defensive broken record.

So am I going to give you the real scoop about what happened?  Nah!  My friends and acquaintances have too much fun recalling the different funny aspects of the story, parts of it thrown into magnification like a reflection in a carnival House of Mirrors, always one aspect blown up into humorous context.

One funny anecdote shared now and then is how my intern friend found herself monitoring THIS pay patient in the recovery room.  Now, general anesthesia is a wondrous thing.  One minute I was lying on the table wearing a mask.  Next minute, I was in the RR.  A few minutes later, I was going up.

You know who invented time travel?  Anesthesiologists.

Apparently, the operation to reset the bones in my left arm (one of which had decided to take a peek at the outside world) had taken a few hours, my stay in the RR a few more hours, and between that time I first woke up to the time I felt I was going up another few hours.  And in those few hours, I had managed to thoroughly embarrass myself by ranting all that time.  I have no idea what I said.  No one ever really told me what I had said exactly.  I think the entertainment factor of it all stems from hearing a delirious guy spewing English invectives and rants in a room of semi-stuporous people.

Truth serum?  Anesthesiologists are responsible for that, too.

Yes.  General anesthesia is a wondrous thing.  No pain, makes the time fly, totally makes you forget that you ever went through your controlled trauma.  Sometimes that state seems enviable.  GA for your everyday life: no pain from disappointing relationships, fast forward through all those frustrating moments, forget all those traumatic fragments of life inflicted on you by this cruel world.  Who wouldn’t want that?

But if you stop to think about it… if you never show your basest, truest self to anyone during those vulnerable moments, when everything is really all just hanging out there for everyone to see… how can you ever really heal?  How can you ever really get better?

Maybe it’s better if you save the isoflurane for the OR.  Bear that pain a little longer, rant away when appropriate (preferably when someone who cares is listening), and keep those precious seconds, minutes, and hours of life close at hand.  You can never really get those moments back.  Time travel sucks anyway.  And if you ever do find yourself waking up from a trance in life, just make sure to check all your bits and pieces are still in place and where they should be.