As many of my friends know, I am accumulating titanium and Lithium-ion-powered anatomical accouterments at what some might call an alarming rate. In the past five years, I’ve acquired two screws in my left hip, a lithium-ion battery above my left kidney, about five inches of wire going from the battery to my spinal cord, then two 36-inch runs of wire running on both sides of my spine. This past fall, I acquired a 3.5-inch titanium steel plate, eight screws and three chunks of cadaver bone in my neck.
Why have I had all of these gizmos installed? Well, let’s just say that when they were handing out brains, I got in line twice, but when they were handing out skeletons, I was in the brain line—for the second time.
At any rate, a few weeks prior to my surgery, my then six-year-old son was sitting in lap watching baseball with me. The following conversation ensued:
Eric: Does your neck hurt all the time, Papa?
Me: Yes, it does, buddy.
Eric: All the time? How do you stand it? Do you ever get used to it?
Me: Well, you do get used to it in a way, I guess, but it hurts a lot. This is not the kind of thing that’s easy to get used to.
Eric: Why can’t they fix it?!?
Me: Actually, they’re going to try to fix some of it when I have surgery on my neck in a few weeks.
Eric: Surgery? What kind of surgery?
Me: They’re going to fix me up with some metal parts, right here. [Pointing at my Adam’s apple area.]
Eric: Metal parts in your body? Really?
Me: Yes, metal parts in my body. I already have a battery, some wires and some anchors in my back, and screws in my hip, so I’m just getting some new metal parts.
Eric: Whoa! You’re turning into a robot!
My inner monologue: Heard that one before…
Eric: Maybe they’ll give you a robot head, too!
Me: Would you like me with a robot head?
Eric: Not really, I like my Papa with your normal Papa head. [Kisses me on the cheek.]
When I met with the surgeon to go over the specifics of the neck surgery, he told me that I would be getting bone grafts from cadavers. Immediately, I interrupted him and asked, “Will all of the bone come from the same person or will it be from different people?”
He paused for a moment, then said, “Uh, each one will come from a different donor.” After another short pause, he chuckled and then said, “In 25 years, that’s the first time I’ve ever been asked that.”
Really? Who doesn’t ask that?
Once that can was open, he decided we were gonna eat it all though because he then went on to tell me that the bone grafts come from the tibias of people who have donated their bodies to science. He said, “They saw them into chunks, then they boil them, radiate them, and microwave them until they are totally bacteria-free chunks of bone.”
Share that tidbit at your next cocktail party and you will be a hit. I promise.
At any rate, on the morning of the surgery, the surgeon came in to ask if I had any questions, and I told him I did. I asked if I could see the exact parts that were going into my neck. Standing there in his scrubs and white coat, he laughed, and said, “I like you. Yes! We can do that.”
So, a few minutes later, the anesthesiologist comes in to go over the process for intubation and so on. He then gives me a shot of Versed —which if you don’t know, is a wonderful benzodiazepine (read: “good shit”) sedative. With seconds, I go from “I’m about to have my neck sliced open and have parts of dead guys shoved in there,” to “Bring it. I don’t give a flying <expletive>.”
As they rolled me into the operating room, all of the doctors and nurses were gathered around as my surgeon explained that I wanted to see and get pictures of the parts that were going into my neck.
The first thing one of the nurses said was, “No one has ever asked us to do that before…”
Now, if I hadn’t been stoned out of my gourd on the aforementioned Versed, I’d have said, “Well, you’ve never operated on Rick Kughen before.” Unfortunately, I was still in a haze of legal opiates and missed an opportunity for the perfect riposte.
Nevertheless, after some quizzical looks and chuckles, the entire staff immediately, began pulling out all of this hardware and giving me a lot of detail about each piece. I sort of remember something about the chunks of bone being kept in a jar of saline, that they come in different sizes, and that when they’re ready to insert one, they just reach into the jar and pull out different chunks until they find one the correct size.”
Of course, I could’ve made it up because once the Versed has been injected and is playing footsies with your brain cells, any “memory” is suspect. I mean, I am pretty sure I also remember all of us getting up, putting on big, floppy party hats and doing the Locomotion around the operating room a few times before they put me out, so there’s that.
At any rate, when I awoke and was lucid enough to, you know, stop drooling and asking my wife the same questions over and over, she showed me the pictures that the doctor texted to me:
I like to think that when the doctors and nurses got home that night, they had interesting stories to tell over dinner. Of course, I also hope that the cameras weren’t rolling when we were doing to Locomotion with my backside hanging out the back of my hospital gown. I was also told that when they gave me the gas, so to speak, that officially put me under, I was extolling the virtues of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” and the underrated “The Final Cut” album.
Even when stoned and about to undergo a major surgery, I’m still all about my righteous tunes.
