A selection from
by William Martin
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pleased to have Dr. Rosas second his colleague's
opinion that this relatively recent tool has been
one of the greatest improvements in the management
of post-surgical pain. He recommended that
I not make any major business deals or assume
that any sentences I happened to write were as
brilliant as they might seem at the moment, but
promised I would feel less pain and less wooziness than with earlier forms of anesthetics.
A nurse shaved my stomach. Later in the
process, after I went under, someone completed
the process on the rest of the surgical region in a
manner so thorough as to make me wonder just
how it was done.
At last, it was time. As I was rolled into place,
Dr. Rosas told me that this was the operating
room used by Dr. Michael DeBakey, the legendary
Baylor/Methodist surgeon who pioneered and
perfected many of the techniques of open-heart
surgery. Looking up, I could see the windows
through which observers had viewed those historic
operations. And then I was gone.
I remember nothing else, but from watching a
video of the operation - not my own, but that of
some prostatic Everyman - I know approximately
what happened. After making a vertical incision
of about eight inches, from the navel to the pubic
bone, the first order of business was to remove the
lymph nodes and send them upstairs to see if they
end of page 180
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