Today was a good day. In many ways. It started with telling myself 'all is well'.
All is well--even as I scooped my kid up without breakfast to the sitters', for a 7:00 a.m. start case, and the surgeons was ten minutes late. AND, we didn't cut until 8:00 a.m., the normal cut time for our 7:30 a.m. starts. I just trusted in the Universe.
Next patient--couldn't find them in pre-op. Turns out they were a very sick SICU patient. You know, the kind with Contact Isolation and you have to terminal clean the room after operating on them? Yes, I got to wear gown and gloves OVER lead. When the patient came, I was FASCINATED, energetically. This was a patient who 'was not there': anoxic brain injury from too much alcohol and drugs. Not old. Was a resident in a care place, with a trach and a PEG for tube feedings. Very easy anesthesia for me. Just hook them up to the breathing circuit and BOOM! Instant anesthesia. No messy airway or extubation to contend with.
This patient had the most BEAUTIFUL eyelashes I have ever seen, nicer than my son's, who are long and wonderful. Energetic pattern? Very strange. Nothing, but heart. The heart center was glowing. Everything else was near dead on the chakras. Curious, I wondered why, why this pattern? "I used up all my chips" was the answer. The time for life had been contracted out, but the way the life had been lived had used up all the 'bonus points' --this patient was left unable to make any more 'bad choices'. Wow! Take it all away and what is left? Love. And a chance for all of us to work on them and heal them. Who is the healer there???
I saw Parkinson's today (very strange vibe. Did not have time to measure the chakras. But very strange vibe.). I cared for a Mexican National with NO insurance. For FREE! I called my boss, and he said not to ask for cash, just send in the billing slips, and I will get paid for my work out of the blended units. It works that way for everyone. So WHO paid for their care? All of my group did. It didn't seem so wrong when I worked for a big hospital before. But now? Well, I see...
And the last patient? I got this big romantic vibe from them as I we talked in PreOp! I was like, 'I didn't know I could feel like that any more!' The last time I felt this was in the ICU in 1998! It is very rare to feel anything like that for a patient. Luckily, the Circulating RN got the same vibe. And she is newly engaged to her boyfriend of eight years! 'He's charming!' she said. And he was. And we were both falling for him! LOL
Once he was asleep, though, I saw. I saw all the flaws that the charm makes go away. The teeth on the bottom were crooked and loose and looked painful. The well-groomed hair and brows. The tattoo of a loved one 'in an angels' arms' on the right shoulder. No wonder why this person worked with troubled youth. There was a LOT behind the scenes of this individual. There was complexity, depth to this soul.
In recovery room, he heard me telling the nurse we all fell in love with him. He looked sleepy, but the first thing he said was, 'where's the anesthesiologist? I LOVE YOU!' I laughed and said, 'I love you TOO!'. But then he shared, 'the last surgery I woke up pretty stressed out. This one is soooo much better!' And there is was: the charm worked as a weapon to assure a safe passage through surgery. Kindness is a weapon. Everything is a weapon to be used to help you survive. We all pick our own. But he was adorable! And it was nice to help out with the anesthetic...something different from the norm.
I followed my intuition and took both of us to the doctor, my boy and me.
I knew he was sicker. I knew I had 'beat it', my illness. The chills had gone away. The pain in my chest from the coughing was burning my airways under my sternum. But for the FIRST TIME, I knew I could get well WITHOUT ANTIBIOTICS. I had been brainwashed since my first strep throat that you need medicine every time you are sick to get well. We did get strep tests today, and both of us didn't have it. That one you don't want to mess around, because it can cause valvular heart disease like, forty years later, if not treated. But my son had an ear, bronchi, and sinus infection. We both got put on azithromax. And I took it. Only because I have an OB shift coming up sometime soon, and I knew it would wear me out.
Today I had this incredible sense of the life that was entrusted to me. My own. My patient's. My son. My sitter (my work helps support her). My mother (she was supposed to baby sit, but is in poor health. I excused her from her time this weekend). I see the entire TEAM in the health care, from the cleaning people, to the guy that pushes the patients around. Our OR orderly is Margarito. Today, due to the contact isolation, he had to wear a green surgery gown and gloves to help transport the patient back to the unit. I laughed because he looked just like a doctor, and could have been one. Maybe back at home? Or in another life? But it looked RIGHT on him. How funny this world is. And what we think of it.
In Reality, all it is--is a DELIGHTFUL place to learn. Life is what we make it.
Namaste,
Reiki Doc
