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prev.cont.I’m finished with surgery for now. I hereby declare that I’ll never do something like that again if I have any say in the matter—which I do.
The problem with surgery is that it’s really easy to have a bad time, and it’s really hard to have a good time. And as bad as it was for me, it’s worse for the doctors who don’t get the same respite as I do. They’re being exploited and beaten down with no end in sight while taking care of very sick people. That sounds like a good idea, right? It’s a slow death for everyone involved.
I feel like none of this is real. None of this is necessary for a healthy society. I’m starting to see that hospitals are places of enhanced sickness and not places of healing like they’re advertised to be. It’s sick what the medical system does to its patients, and sick how much it expects from its workers. Did everyone else already know this?
I don’t want to put my head down and let the world shit all over me. I shouldn't have to give up so much of myself for something that feels so wrong.
But I know you’re not supposed to throw the baby out with the bath water or whatever. The whole thing doesn’t have to be bad just because I found this one little experience to be bad. Surgeons’ ability to think fast and act faster serves them, and all of us, says the devil’s advocate who works overtime sitting on my shoulder. Maybe it can serve me, too. A useful quickness.
Last night, for instance, I realized while in the gas station that I could pick up a hot dog wrapper, take out the bun, take a hot dog out of the rolling warmer machine, throw it in the bun, add some ketchup and mustard, pay for it, and eat it. Normally, something like that would feel like too many steps, or too vulnerable a thing to do in public, but I did it. Above all else, surgery taught me that I can—and should—use single-use items like hot dog wrappers and ketchup packets with gusto, and shouldn't apologize to the earth that gave itself up for me to nourish myself, asking nothing in return.
Let’s talk about the single-use item thing. I get that we need to maintain a sterile environment in the operating room. I get why we need to throw away a new pair of gloves if I brush my naked, unsterilized hand against it. I get it, but I also kind of don’t. Is all that waste really worth the benefit to the patient, a benefit that’s questionable in the first place? Is all of this really worth it?
I’m one psychotic break away from becoming a total medicine denier, and one bad day away from a psychotic break. The ice is thin! Spring is coming!
exit