Breathing Room

The location of the tumor created a problem: there was no way to get access to the tumor for a biopsy without putting pressure on my airway or heart. Because my airway was already “in crisis” (read: very, very, narrow) further constricting it while pressurizing my heart was deemed a Bad Idea that Might Kill the Patient. My ingenious thoracic surgeon solved this problem by cutting open the little area where the scar is. It is right above the “notch” where the collarbones intersect. There are no major blood vessels, muscles or nerves there. Doing it this way avoided having to pry apart my ribs with a medieval-torture-device looking thing, or giving me a general anesthetic that might result in the “permanent closure of [my] airway.”  So, good news: no general anesthetic. Bad news: local anesthetic, which, it turns out, does not work very well on me (standard procedure is to use Lidocaine, which does not really work on me. They now know to use Markane (sp.?) but at the time, everyone was a little too worried about death to be too worked up about using excessive amounts of local anesthetic). Incidentally, the surgeon, a UC Berkeley alum (go Bears!), refused to let other surgeons do the surgery because she considered it too complicated for an inferior surgeon. No Operating Room had been booked, so she promised to stay at the hospital for as long as it took to get one. On top of that, she also made other members of her thoracic surgery team (most notably an anesthesiologist) stay. Several hours after her shift ended, an OR came open.  

When they did the surgery, I was fully conscious. I did not handle this event Like a Man. They accidentally dropped a sheet over my head at the start. A nurse apologized and said they’d move it in a minute. I said “I plan to lay here with my eyes tightly shut. Leave it, it helps.” They did, and only laughed at me a little.