A smooth operation (29.1.86)

I have been under the surgeon’s knife three times in my life.  Two of those are lost in the mists of childhood.  I can remember details – waking up after my appendicectomy, unable to move, at the age of seven, the pre-op anaesthetic jab shattering the syringe as it went in when I was 11 or so, but lacking at that age, and for many years after, any sense of self or being, I was unassailed by deep existential angst at the prospect of these voyages.  Just childish fear.

I experienced the childish fear this time, too.  But it went away surprisingly rapidly.  Instead, I became increasingly pre-occupied with the unreality of the whole enterprise.

Consider the facts.  I was preparing myself to be placed in a state of anaesthesia – quite unlike either the waking or sleeping states.  As such I would be helpless.  Moreover, I had even signed a form consenting to anything which might be done to me in that state.  And the nub of what that might consist of was having my body cut open, and bits of it hacked out.  Was this really wise of rational?  Was this really part of everyday reality?

Clearly not; and that was the point.  The act of surgery represents one of the most clearly supra-mundane acts which man is capable of.  It is the old equation of doctors with gods that goes back to shamans and witch-doctors themselves.  The latter are efficacious insofar as they partake of the godhead they serve.

Emerging from unconsciousness is like staggering out of a tunnel into a new world.  It may look like the world you left, but a new light is shining.  You have joined an elect; your mutilation is your rite of passage, and your stitches are your secret badge of honour.  Nothing can be the same again.

What then has this awesome brotherhood of priests achieved?  What have they given you that changes you so?  They have simply shown you that man is master of his body; they have allowed you through them to triumph over the base facts of your physicality.

While you have remained outside the flow of ordinary time – almost outside this world – your flesh has been cut, twisted and stretched; limbs and organs displaced or removed wholesale.  Then you have been put back together, your racked body sewn up, and the neat bundle allowed to surface again.  When you emerge drowsily into the light again, your body has been humiliated, but your spirit – man’s spirit – soars higher.

It is perhaps apt that I chose my consultant by chance after a mistake.  Apt that after a brief and exiguous consultation in an anonymous Harley Street consulting room, I only saw him briefly as a dark figure hovering before my drugged eyes shortly before going down to theatre.  He shook hands, and his hands were as cold as death.  But shortly this man was to prove himself to belong to quite a different camp, and to be one of the ultimate breeds of smooth operators.

(3.2.86)

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