Yes, We Have No Anesthesia

That's the story I got when the interns knocked on the door--I'd been prepped for surgery the day before: taken my numbered slip from the machine, gone through the conversation with the secretary for whom I feared I might have to find my American passport, brought my labels and papers to the nurse's desk. Many a test tube of blood was drawn by somebody who was clearly in the learning phases, a conversation with the anesthesiologist completed, the hospital evening meal consumed--a greasy slab of mortadella, a cheese labeled "Gouda," though you'd never know, and two slices of bread. Then I lay awake--who sleeps on the night before surgery? Good thing I didn't take the sleeping pill they offer to the anxious. I'm always anxious--why start with pills now?
So there I was, an indelible black X circled on my leg, where surgeons are going to remove the too-long screws, which hold in place the rod now decorating my femur after a tumor was removed last January. That rod, incidentally, has visited the Eiffel Tower, plus papal and princely palaces in Avignon and Monaco, without setting off metal detectors. I always whip out my hospital card, identifying myself as a patient with metal in her leg, and they always wave me through, and the sophisticated machine never beeps, a fact rendering me nervous.
So there I was, with the black X, the white compression stocking on the other leg, a signal not to cut there, and the unspeakably unattractive hospital johnny that barely ties at the back, plus the nylon net panties that don't bring out the most attractive aspects of one's privates.
There I was. In they came, the interns in the white coats, saying they didn't have good news. "We have no anesthesia," they claimed, hastily adding that the nurse's strike--currently in its twelfth day--had "nothing to do with the problem." My surgery is not an emergency, and they were doing emergencies all night. Apparently the anesthesia people require sleep. But hey, I wanted to say: I watch Gray's Anatomy, and I just know they never sleep. Yesterday, however, during the conversation with the young anesthesiologist, I observed the bags under her eyes and estimated she'd been vertical for more than 48 hours. I guess she's human after all. But so am I. Now I'm, home, disoriented, and doing laundry. In a week, I'll return to the hospital, possibly with the X marking the spot still intact.