Double Flee A

Here in the PACU, not a creature is stirring, not even an enterococcus. There aren't any surgeries today, but they keep a skeleton staff around just in case an organ shows up that they can put in some patient that needs it. The lounge is nicer, but the PACU is quieter. I can't stand the television that they have in lounge. (I'm very sensitive, it turns out, to commercials. Once I started living without them, they really started to irritate me. My fiancee doesn't share my distaste for commercials. She'll listen to corporate radio, even, with all the (industry term here, mind you) "barfing" that the deejays do for a commercial spot. "Hey, come on down for HUGE savings on an INCREDIBLE selection of usedcarstrucksconversionvansandmoreat Willie McPee's MazdaDodgeFordChrysler with NOMONEYDOWN!! You're gonna FIND the deal you're LOOKing for toDAY!!!msrpnotincludedtaxtitlelicenseregistrationextraotheroffersdonotapply")

In this room, sometimes when a baby gets out of surgery, you'll hear a sound that you never hear anywhere else. It is the sound of a baby screaming in mortal fear and maybe terrible pain. Surgery is scary and it hurts. They cut you open and do stuff to your guts, and that's how they make people well, including babies. If the baby had his or her way, this surgery would never happen, and they would die, but babies aren't in charge of what happens to them. You never get used to the sound of a baby coming out of anesthesia. You have to physically restrain yourself the first time you hear it, from instinctively going over there and stopping whoever's causing the baby to make that awful sound.

They do these things to babies to save their lives. Sometimes babies aren't made the way they're supposed to be, and doctors and nurses have to use all the things they learned in medical and nursing school to make their tiny little bodies work better. They usually do a pretty good job, because of their commitment to the diligent, impartial study of what works, a method we refer to as science.

But there's a problem. These doctors don't have religious training. Just think of how many more lives could be saved if, in addition to performing the surgery, the doctors prayed and talked in tongues and stuff! But if they prayed to the wrong god, not the one TRUE god, they might sabotage the whole thing, so they ought to have a government prayer expert on hand to approve of the prayers, and if anything irregular occurs, those doctors should be reported and held as enemy combatants, traitors against god's america who love Osama bin Laden and satan.

posted by dale @ 1:03 PM