Duck Soup

I'm writing (and perhaps posting) this on Tuesday evening, rather than the usual Friday morning, for I'm going to the hospital tomorrow morning for a carotid endarterectomy. (Lord, I hate any medical condition that I can't spell!) The carotid arteries, which carry the necessary juices to the brain, tend to get clogged, and as a result of living high on the hog for too long they now need to be purged, cleaned out.

Ten years ago or thereabouts, I had the right carotid reamed out, and since then the doc's been keeping an eagle eye on the left side. It's been serious enough to watch carefully, but it's now reached the critical stage and the surgery isn't really elective. So tomorrow I'll show up at glorious pre-dawn hour of 5:45 to jump through the necessary pre-surgical hoops, have the two hour operation around 7:00, and then spend that night at the hospital "for observation". I trust that doesn't mean they'll apply restraints! Which brings me to the real source of my discomfort about this surgery business.

It isn't the pain, for I expect that if there is some of that I'll get a pill or a shot to deal with it. It isn't the hassle, for that minor inconvenience is more than outweighed by the benefits. No, it's being out of control that I don't like. The whole deal is a living demonstration of powerlessness: they put me in a strange room, take away my clothes, tell me when and what to eat, inquire about all sorts of rather personal information, and then in the ultimate demonstration of powerlessness, they put me to sleep.

As a surgical patient, all I do is what they tell me I can do, and I have precious little imput to make in that process. This is not a participatory event or a debating contest, and once signing into the hospital I abdicate any suspicions that I might be in control. One of my brothers is a fine neurosurgeon with a twisted sense of humor: the night before surgery he tells the patient, "Don't worry, this will be duck soup...[dramatic pause]...and you're the duck."

I take great comfort, even in the midst of all this, in the awareness that this sense of being out of control has happened to me before, a couple of times in fact, and accepting the reality of my powerlessness has always, always, resulted in good things. Like so many of us, I live most of my life with the foolish delusion that I'm in charge, that I can handle things, that I'm in control.

Of course I'm not, not in things pertaining to the bottom line, which in this case means that I can either (1) retain control and eventually stroke out, or (2) surrender to being out of control and let the medics take care of me. The medics, that is, and God. So once again, I think I'll be the duck and take option 2. It always works.



P.S. I'm now home reuperating on Thursday, be posting on Friday, and the NCAA finals play out over the weekend, then Major League Baseball begins. How good is that?