In order to make things go more smoothly on the day of your procedure, I have compiled the following checklist. Adhere to my commandments, and we will get along wonderfully. Deviate from my directives, and I will mock you while you are unconscious. The decision is yours.
1. Clean your belly button. There are those who believe that you haven’t really lived until you get to watch a nurse dig down into the recessed folds of a patient’s umbilicus with forceps and pull out chunks of last week’s meatloaf. However, most of us, myself included, find it repulsive. Before your surgical procedure, put your belly button up to the O’Reilley test. After you clean it out, ask your significant other to stick their tongue in it. If they refuse, go wash it again. Repeat this process as many times as is necessary.
Oh, there’s my car keys!
2. If you have to go to the bathroom before being wheeled back to the operating room, don’t do it right before we’re ready to go. Most patients spend at least sixty minutes in the preoperative holding area before surgery. The five minutes that I have to spend waiting for you to take a wiz is simply five minutes of my life I will never get back. Over the course of my career, I figure I’ve donated at least a month to last-minute patient potty breaks. That’s thirty days that I could have spent on the beach getting skin cancer. Instead, I’m pasty white and thoroughly annoyed.
Do your business on your time, not mine!
3. Unless you have a strong medical background, don’t ask me to tell you what drugs I’m going to give you. If the name “rocuronium” means nothing to you, please don’t waste my time. You’re in for surgery, not a crash course in pharmacology.
Rocur . . .What?
4. If you demand that your anesthesiologist calls you the night prior to surgery, have something meaningful to say. Please, don’t make me take time away from my family to tell me that you have a hangnail. It’s irrelevant.
I’ll give you a finger!
5. When your anesthesiologist asks you if you have any health problems and you are taking eighteen medications, the correct answer is “Yes.” If I had a penny for every patient with heart disease, emphysema, and diabetes who told me they have no health problems, I’d certainly be on that beach right now working on my melanoma. You know that medication that you take for high blood pressure? News flash – it means you have high blood pressure!
No, sir. You are NOT healthy!
6. Be forewarned that, according to the O’Reilley criteria for diagnosing mental illness, if you have more than five allergies, you are most likely a whack job. I will always be fair before I determine that you party with the White Rabbit on a daily basis. Depending on your perspective, falling into this category might not necessarily be a bad thing. I tend to anesthetize the nuts much more quickly. Crazy people are a lot less crazy when they are unconscious.
Let’s see. I’m allergic to pink pills, purple pills, Tylenol, Pepcid, antihistamines, and sanity.
7. While we are on the topic of drug allergies, a normal reaction to a medication is not a stinking drug allergy! If Benadryl makes you sleepy, that’s not an allergy. If epinephrine makes your heart race – again, it’s not an allergy. If you tell me these reactions are allergies, I won’t lump you in with the crazies (see number 6), but you will instantly annoy me. You, too, will be offered express anesthesia services.
Unless drug X makes you do this, I don’t want to hear about it!
8. Know the names of your medications or, at least, carry a list. As hard as it may be to believe, I don’t know what that “little pink pill” is. You’re an adult. Have some personal responsibility.
“I take a little pink pill”
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
9. Never be rude, demanding, or condescending to your anesthesiologist. In real life, you may be the head of a Fortune 500 company or married to the head of a Fortune 500 company. You may have a team of people who kiss your behind every day. I don’t care. In my eyes, you’re a self-entitled pain in the butt. I’m not your waiter, your hairdresser, or your personal assistant. If you treat me like one, I’ll still take good care of you, but you will be denied the O’Reilley love that so many crave.
Trust me, I’m not impressed.
10. Don’t come to surgery looking perfect. If I think there is any chance that at the end of your procedure you will look better than me on my best day, I’ll smear your mascara across your face when you’re asleep just to make a point. This is not a threat – it’s a promise.
Don’t make me do it!
