Heaven

Heaven

Maybe I have gone to the netherworld.

I mean, the people around here talk funny, I’m 10,000 miles away from friends and family and rarely see them, and the locals keep trying to feed me vegemite – which I am fairly certain doubles as axle grease – not to mention how hard it is to find a decent burger around here. What brought all this up? Let me explain.

Anesthetics isn’t just knocking someone out so they can have all kinds of invasive things done to them; I once heard you don’t get paid to make the patient fall asleep – you get paid to make sure they wake up afterwards. So we have a ‘Post Anaesthetics Care Unit’ at FMC; it’s what we would call post-op or recovery back in the States. It’s where the patients – just having something rather impolite done to them – come back to the land of the living. As part of my rotation, I have to help watch over patients; make sure they can move air, give them a warm blanket or a cold compress, hand them a bowl if they need, and make sure nothing untoward happens like swallowing their tongue or divulging State Secrets.

(It’s here I should mention that some of the drugs used to knock people out are also used by various countries of the world – Egypt comes to mind – as truth serums. I have heard some amazing tales and deep inner secrets from some of our patients. Darn those confidentiality rules, or I could implicate a lot of people for a lot of things! And that’s not even including one patient who looked at me and in a very slurred voice said I was cute – she was obviously delirious. But I digress.)

Anyway, a few days ago I was in the PACU when one of the patients starts to come around; the first thing he does is look at me and asks, ‘Did I live?’ Now, while *I* would like to think that all angels look like *me*, I have a sneaking suspicion that heaven looks nothing like the recovery room at FMC. And if that is what heaven looks like, why have I been living such a pure life only to end up someplace like this? (Mom, no comments from you.) If I could be *bad* and end up in someplace like FMC – where I have seen neither fire *nor* brimstone – why not start living large? You know, rock-and-roll all night and party everyday? Then it dawned on me:

Maybe I’ve already died and gone to heck. And it looks like FMC. And I have brought ALL OF YOU WITH ME.

Hey – you’ve laughed at these emails; you have only yourself to blame…

And with that, it’s the weekend. I have to get a lot of work done for my paper/presentation that is due next Friday, plus there is a bit of a going away bash on Saturday at which I really need to make an appearance. Not to mention getting my halo and wings dry-cleaned…

As always, Love to All and keep working on your 101 List!
Bryan