Words for My Enjoyment

I Could Be Your Superstar Anesthesiologist

January 10th, 2006

Yes, I could.

Don’t concern yourself with the fact that I may not be able to spell the word anesthesiologist after just waking up in the morning or even sometime during the middle of the day after a full cup of coffee… No, don’t worry about the fact that I probably couldn’t even pronounce the word successfully two different times in a row. Hey, just relax — it’s okay that I can’t say “An Anesthesiologist Ate an Apple Amorously” ten times fast without twisting my tongue…

Just know I’m a master at those, um, sleepy gases…and feel content.

When I was a kid the signs of wanting to be a superstar anesthesiologist were everywhere. I would walk around commanding people to Sleep! without any warning. You’d be eating an ice cream cone and I would saunter up and say that one command and in an attempt to encourage my potentially successful medical future you would have to collapse right then and there in an attempt to make me feel the power that comes with being a superstar anesthesiologist.

Sleep!

As I grew from a little root into a bigger root and then into a much bigger root (note: root = person), the drive and desire to work in a career where I could aspire to rendering people unconscious without any physical effort whatsoever (i.e. hitting them in the head) became more and more attractive. I mean, what’s cooler than making someone appear as if they’re in a coma. It’s like magic! It’s like being a magician!

But alas, a few incidents befell me in my collegiate years (including the No, You Sleep Or You’ll Be Sorry Incident of ‘95) which changed my path from becoming a superstar anesthesiologist into becoming a writer. Some would say that being a certain type of writer could also urge people to fall completely unconscious at the drop of a hat…but that wouldn’t be the type of writer I would become.

Yet still, to this day — I feel that deep down I could be your superstar anesthesiologist.

First of all, I’m a master at determining and identifying different types of gases (which is key when you’re going to be an anesthesiologist). I can tell the difference between oxygen and hydrogen (one you breathe, and the other you can’t breathe). I know the sound of leaking gas and can identify it within 30 minutes of any type of gas leaking. I know the difference between a gas mask and a mask o’ gas (one is a mask, the other is an opaque lilting sheet of cloudy substances that can only be identified by it’s lilting-properties).

But above all, beyond the gas identification process…I have a great superstar anesthesiologist O.R. persona.

Let me just lay my cards on the table here when I tell you that I think that anesthesiologists who use the trademark “okay, I’m going to count down from 10 here and then you’ll start to get sleepy…” statement are lazy, sloppy, unmotivated and uninterested anesthesiologists. They’re phoning it in, people. I mean, please. It’s to the point now that we’ve heard that damn phrase so often that if I was on a table in an O.R. right before a surgery and some anesthesiologist threw me that line, I would get up, leave the hospital, and do the hernia operation on myself with a plastic lunchroom knife.

No, no, no, no, no.

Being a superstar anesthesiologist involves having a unique style. It involves having a certain sized ego. It involves having a secret, highly-guarded list of trademark phrases and monologues on hand for every single O.R. visit that will cause the patient to not only get tired, fatigued and want to sleep but that will also keep them in a deep coma-esque sleep even if the gas turns off. That’s right — being a superstar anesthesiologist is not just about gas. It’s about making someone so tired that gas isn’t even necessary.

Like most superstar anesthesiologists, when people in bars and taverns hear that I could possibly have been a superstar anesthesiologist, they want to hear my trademark superstar anesthesiologist phrases. But like Superman, I’ve got to treat my powers with reverence and respect. I can’t just do parlor tricks at the drop of a hat. Don’t you think if you asked Superman to bend steel or burn a hole in the ceiling at your local bar that he would probably decline to do so?

Yup. You see my point.

Still, in an attempt to illustrate just how great of a superstar anesthesiologist I could be — here’s just a sampling of a few trademark phrases I would whisper to you as I turned on the gas:

“Hi. So, I’ve turned on the gas. Ssssssssssssss. No, that wasn’t the gas, that was me. Ssssssssssss. Okay, take a guess - was that s’s sound me or was it the gas? Hold on, let me try that again. [Makes no sound.] Was that me or was that the gas? The gas? Oh, hm. How about this? Ssssssssssss. The gas? HA! Nope, that was me. Here, let me try again. Ssssssssssssss. Hello? Tell me, was that sound me or was that sound the gas? Here, I’ll do it again. Ssssssssssssss. Ok. Guess. Sir? Excuse me, sir?”

“Look at my eyebrows. What do you think? Do they look like huge superhuman catepillars or do they look like two lithe branches of hair? Oh. Lithe means readily bent or supple. You know, like a lithe ballet dancer. Yeah. Well, back to my eyebrows. What do you think? Here, let me lean in here closer so you can take a look. Oh, sorry - too close. See, watch when I raise them and lower them. Eh? Eh! See? If they were huge thick eyebrows they would look like two huge girders rising and lowering rising and lowering rising and lowering but since they’re lithe brows which I like to just refer to as lithebrows, they’re more like little dancing ballet dancers skip skip skipping along swan lake. Don’t you think? Hello? Ma’am?”

None of this “count back from 10″ crap.

Being your superstar anesthesiologist would entitle me to a variety of perks. I would probably get to wear some of those Tommy Hilfiger superstar anesthesiologist gloves. They would be just as sterile and safe as normal hospital gloves but would come in the trademark Hilfiger red, white and blue color and would also be made out of velvet instead of rubber. But sterile velvet. They’d create a new kind of sterile velvet just for me and my superstardom.

I’d probably have a company life Cafepress put together a set of t-shirts that I would wear in the O.R.. They would have trademark phrases on them like, “Pass the Gas” and “I’m aGASt You’re Already Sleeping”. I would wear them with a backwards hat, sometimes, while I was hanging out in the hospital cafeteria that would simply have the letters “S.A.n.e.s.t.h.e.s.i.o.l.o.g.i.s.t.” on it. (Yeah, it would be a big hat and a small font.)

People would pass me in the halls and say, “Hey gas man, what’s leaking?”

But I would take it all in stride. I would accept the ribbing and the joking and the prodding and the poking because while everyone else was suturing and wiping and cleaning bed pans, I would be turning on gas, talking about my eyebrows, and collecting a hefty yearly paycheck with the lowest medical malpractice insurance premiums on the face of the Earth.

Gas is good.

Or at least, it could be.

Posted under Gas, I Could Be. |