DISAPPEARING INTO AN IDYLLIC ABYSS
Written by Dr. Geeta Sundar
In the operating room, time and sense stand still, in more ways than one. On rarer instances, everything meshes into actions, training on auto-pilot. Usually, there is some banter, chit-chat or conversation that carries on in a slew of incoming traffic that falls on available ears, as random words freely hanging around.
The patient is under anesthesia, as we operate on her for a large ACOM artery aneurysm, and as the third assist in the case, I am free to stare into space, look around, understand and learn what I can from the roughly small video screen connected to the microscope (eyes only for the main surgeon and assisting one). The cold air-conditioned operating room is my own personal novice, its welcoming and its hindering, its my home, and its my cave, my own escapism. It offers and it restricts. It gives and it takes, like most things in life, and its where I find solace from the hardships I face in the world outside it.
In this instance, I listen. I listen to the observing consultants sarcastically talk about my fellow mates and their mistakes, speak about papers published and the fallacies, the latest expensive liquor in town, their gossip about how some world-renowned dude is an actual nut, about the automobile parts they buy for a new car, or the latest car to buy, their discussion about the latest party they had and how much they all freaked out, about the motorbike one should buy and enjoy, the movies to watch and not to watch, drugs, news, protests and revolts, patient idiosyncrasies, families…and so on and on. I just listen. I look. I listen. I breathe. I exist. I just listen. But my head is lost elsewhere.
It takes me over an half hour to understand the anatomy and orientation right from the radiological images that hang on a TV screen opposite to the patient, and correlate that to the positioning and take off of the major vessels that make the Circle of Willis, and even then, in between, my focus hinders me, as I am lost in a myriad of emotions of hunger, exhaustion, sleepiness, irritation, fatigue, life choices, aspirations, new-set goals for the week, I ponder on why I chose this field, or how I can be a better version of myself, and how I really need a life and that calling neurosurgery my work-wife isn’t going to cut me any slack on the socializing front.
Sometimes, I experience complete dissociation, like as if I am watching and harboring the surgery in third person, in awe, in love, in prayer, in hope, in distress, in satisfaction. Its all new, and it’s all old, and it’s completely invisible to me. I see but then I don’t see. Time transcends into space, and space transcends into thoughts and they are all held together by my genuinely reckless mad brain. The thoughts in my head are pure agony, sometimes pure grief and other times, idyllic visions of a life I want for myself, an idyllic version of where I am embedded in the throes of exquisite nature, or I conjure up characters, and stories I should write at some point of time in my life. I see, I observe, but I’m Alice in Wonderland in my own galaxy.
I am quiet for most of the long hour procedure. I refrain from unnecessary conversations or unrequired idle talk. I don’t find any pleasure in speaking too much, or talking trash about anything or anyone, and even if sarcasm is the biggest wit and representative of high IQ, it is wasted on me. I simply do not find any happiness in gossip or otherwise. Talking, to me, is a need-to-speak-to-communicate-important-things basis. I enjoy solitude. I enjoy silence. I am eager for tranquility. A rare song or melody in the background often works to keep the deafening silence away. I love that I can exist in an alternate universe in my head. It is a corner untouched by so many morbidities I see and face, and it is my own downtime edge.
Over the years, this portion of my head has evolved itself and has created a ton of castles in the air, palaces, luxurious creative offshoots that have made it a place-to-go for me on many situations, especially when dealing with bad days with negative vibes, negative feedbacks, and I lose myself into this vortex when I am on the verge of tears, verge of a mental breakdown, or on the verge of a cataclysmic downfall. It becomes a way to move forward, a manner to pick myself up and dream on, day-dream on about a life that I might ever have, or might not ever have. It represents the void that fills my heart, a sac that contains my wishes, and it amalgamates into the very reason why I do what I do.
