Waking up

It seemed to me that I awoke suddenly, without prompting. I had not heard the gently-yet-insistent calling of my name (“Dean, Dean”) that I remember from previous experiences of being awakened from anesthesia-induced sleep.

One moment I was aware of nothing; the next, everything seemed more or less clear. I was in one of Hillcrest Hospital’s operating rooms, surrounded by four or five medical pros carrying out various important responsibilities on my behalf. Never have so many women gathered to watch me awaken from a deep sleep.

I was in that room for a rare procedure aimed at alleviating the symptoms of something I suspect you’ve never heard of. I had worried more about this surgery than about my previous ones, perhaps because I’d never heard of it and hardly knew how to explain to myself what was about to be done, much less explain it to anyone else. What if my surgical team were literally practicing medicine on me…literally learning how to do it? I even wondered if I might not wake from the surgery.

I’d fallen asleep just as quickly as I would wake, probably surrounded by the same watchful crew. I remember being wheeled into the O.R., and staring up at the large lamps above their heads, lamps that I knew would soon shine bright upon my stomach. My surgeon ran through a check list that sounded like a pilot’s preparing for take-off, while one of the anesthesia team held a mask above my face. (Maybe I was about to take off to somewhere out there?) She told me she would slowly lower it to fit over my mouth and nose. I can only assume she did just that because hers were the last words I remember before giving in to sleep. They had also told me that they would run a tube down my throat. The raspy voice I had for about a day afterwards testified to that having happened.

Next thing I knew I was awake, attended by many, and feeling a bit of pain where the work had been carried out. Someone asked if I’d like something for that pain, I thought why not and muttered yes, my mouth so dry it felt as if a desert wind had blown through it for days. I think she shot something into the I.V. port in my left arm while I, though feeling awake, wandered about in the pale reaches of my mind and of that room. I think I asked how surgery had gone and heard something like beautifully, though that’s probably not the exact word. Whatever she said, her answer was beautiful to me, and I relaxed into my waking.

Then, as my physical and emotional pain relented, I began to sense a gratitude that I have no good words to describe. A profound, freeing sense of well being, of “all shall be well.” I wanted to leap from that bed and hug everyone around me and yell in their faces, thank you—-thank you for all you did and are doing to wake me up, once again, to this world and my life in it.

Of course, I could not do that physically, though I enjoyed imagining it. Perhaps I stage-whispered it to the gathered care-givers. All I know for sure, three days later, is that for a few moments I was in a place I have rarely before been in my life, a place of resigned dependency and trust at simply being able to breathe on my own once again.

As I type this, my sense of gratitude continues, but it sadly comes from a more reasoned and rational place: Of course I got through the surgery and the anesthesia! The vast majority of operations end as mine did! Medical science has this thing down pat!

Of course I got through it…but that’s not all there is to it. My sense of gratitude for those few moments touched something far beyond the medical arts and sciences, yet something that nourishes my continuing wonder at life itself.

Today my belly sports four small incisions covered with a glue that protects their healing. My abdomen is a bit tender to the touch, but all internal systems seem to be working as they did before surgery. On every level I am grateful—except at that exalted level where I rested in those few moments after I emerged from anesthesia.

What if I woke up every morning with so deep a sense of gratitude as was gifted to me last week?

NOTE: The condition for which I had the surgery is Superior Mesenteric Artery Syndrome (SMAS), which may affect about 0.13 to 0.3% of the US population. Many who have it suffer far more from it than I have, but when it hits, it is extremely painful and debilitating. The procedure I underwent is a duodenal ligament release, often referred to as the Strong procedure after the surgeon who developed it.