Search
What are you looking for?
I Could Be Your Surgery Waker-Upper Trainer
Here’s the scenario, hotshot.
You go in for a reasonably complicated but typical surgery. You’re having your appendix removed. Or having a heart-valve cleaned out. Having knee surgery or an ear-canal restructuring. You’re going in for a prostate thingie or having some work done that you’d rather not talk about (although I’d probably not talk about the prostate thing either). But no matter the surgery, they’re going to put you under. And once you’re under, you want to wake up as quickly as you possibly can when all is said and done.
That’s where I could come in, being your surgery waker-upper trainer.
There’s three things in this world that give you the simulated feeling of being officially dead. One of those things is the feeling you have when you wake up having slept on both your arms and you can’t feel them. They’re so dead that you have to fling yourself out of bed and THUMP onto the floor just to cause the blood to fill back up those dead arms. The second thing that causes one to feel pretty close to being dead…eating five to eight Krispy Kreme doughnuts over the course of ten minutes. If that doesn’t kick your soul out of your body, I don’t know what will.
And the third thing? Being put under with anesthesia for surgery.
There’s nothing scarier than not having control of your consciousness, and as your surgery waker-upper trainer, the first thing I’ll tell you is that you’ve got to get over that fear. I’d probably say something like, “Look at Paris Hilton. She’s alive but not conscious — and not under anesthesia! Which makes being unconscious but actually under anesthesia a real morale booster!” You’d probably hem and haw about how you can’t stand being put under and if there’s any way for me, as your surgery waker-upper trainer, to help you get through it as quickly as possible… Well, you’d be indebted to me.
As your surgery waker-upper trainer, I thrive off indebtion.
One of the key skills we’d train, and one of the cornerstones of my Tibetan waker-upper training, is being able to snap yourself out of a drug-induced slumber as quickly as you possibly can. And let me tell you something, people — it’s all in the training. We’d start off slow, giving you a half a bottle of aspirin or a double-dosage of Nyquil to get you used to that groggy feeling. Then we’d slowly ramp up the slumber drugs and see how long it takes your subconscious to realize the situation and startle your soul awake. The progression training, which would be enacted over the six week period prior to your surgery looks a little something like this (but is tailored to each waker-upper client):
- Week One: Double and triple doses of Nyquil.
- Week Two: Triple doses of Nyquil with accompanying warm milk shooters (2%).
- Week Three: Double Dayquil doses mixed with triple Nyquil doses, mixed with warm milk shooters that have been combined with cough syrup Triamenic.
- Week Four: Abandon previous “wimpy man’s cocktail” for half bottle sleeping pills, mixed with three to four 8 oz glasses of vodka/cranberry juice.
- Week Five: Whole bottle sleeping pills, six 12 oz glasses of Kahlua and cream, half turkey.
- Week Six: Previous concoction abandoned for “Final Test” — Whole turkey, entire carton of Nyqil (12 pills), bottle of Captain Morgan’s rum (24 oz) and half bottle of sleeping pills.
As your surgery waker-upper trainer, we’d take things slow. Each week, as I introduced you to an even more potent sleep-inducing/coma-causing cocktail, I’d be there to train you in the ways of being able to become subconsciously aware that you’re sleeping under heavy sedation. I’d start with my “Clapping Technique” which involves me, um, clapping. But a lot of clapping. And I’m not one of those wimpy clappers — I’ve got my clap on if you get my gist. These are full-on bass claps — the kind that you hear people using at sporting events and you think to yourself, “Man, those are some loud claps, I wonder if my hands can even make claps that loud.”
Those claps.
As you’ll start to doze off, I’ll begin my clapping — which will startle your eyes open with each stomach-rumbling, head reverberating smack. The key here, of course, is for you to become aware of the sounds outside of your head — an important step in being able to be conscious of your surroundings on the outside while falling into a dead-feeling drug-induced coma on the inside.
As your surgery waker-upper trainer, I’d take you to the next steps when I felt you were ready. Sometimes, in first orientation meetings, I’ll get the sense that you might need more than six weeks and I’ll be honest about that. I might say something like, “You seem pretty unaware of your surr- Excuse me, sir? Helloooooo? Are you asleep?” And you’ll know, that as your S.W.U.T. I know what’s best for you. So if I say eight weeks, you say okay. If I say ten weeks, you give me a hug. If I say twelve weeks, you just thank your lucky stars that you’ve got me in your corner.
Clapping gives way to pain training. That’s where I thrust small sewing needles into really sensitive parts of your anatomy while under the influence. Again, if you’ve mastered the clapping stage, the pain stage shouldn’t be quite so hard. Our goal here, without giving away my entire waker-upper training plan, is to train the body to wake up with the pain. As you all are very aware, when you have a stomach ache while sleeping — it wakes you up. When you have a headache, that’ll wake you up. Tumors, in general, usually wake you up. So as your surgery waker-upper trainer, sewing needles can also serve a purpose.
Because as we all know, you are never more alive and aware than when you’re feeling pain.
The steps to giving you a comatose consciousness will come slowly and not without sweating, seething and snoring. The skills you’ll develop will not only be useful in a post-surgical recovery room situation, but also in boring real estate seminars and family photo album viewings. The price for such a potential skill-set is, honestly, priceless.
But we take Paypal and all major credit cards.
When deciding whether or not I could be your surgery waker-upper trainer, remember that life is too short to be sleeping five hours away in a hospital’s recovery room. Think about how much better life would be if you could sleep one and a half hours, then watch Montel Williams for another two and a half hours and then still have an hour to play your Nintendo DS while sipping on some hospital raspberry juice. Think about how proud you’ll be to wake up faster than any other recovery patient in the ward? Think about these things, my friend.
And then…being hired as your surgery waker-upper trainer won’t be too far behind.
I see you created a new word : Indebtion. It’s cool, I may use it. But what’s the matter with the words that already exist? By the way, may I assume you are dedicating today’s entry to the “Narcolepsy Research Foundation”?
Somehow I made it through surgery without a S.W.U.T. I woke up because I was cold (neck packed in ice, you know). Of course, once they put an electric blanket on me I went right back to sleep. I could have used you then.
I fall asleep on my stomach with my right arm under my pillow. Pretty much every night I wake up in the middle of the night and roll my body over while my dead fish of an arm flops back down to my side until it comes back to life on its own about a minute later. If you were a really fast surgeon you could operate on it for that minute and I wouldn’t even feel it.
Wordmaven – Indebtion is a word for a new generation of those accepting indebtment from others. I think with tax season upon us, it’s going to really become popular! If you use it, be sure to give credit where credit is due.
Stacey – All patients can use a SWUT. I would have SWUTtered you with all my skill had you hired me.
Jeff – Sometimes, when my left arm (the one closest to the snooze alarm button) falls asleep, I have to use my right arm to lift up the dead-tree branch of a left arm and strategically drop it on the top of the clock to turn off the alarm. I usually miss about three times, end up with a sore thumb, and/or knock the alarm off the side table. Ergo, I love when my arm dies in the middle of the night.
mmmmm, Krispy Kreme
My only concern would be that you did your job TOO well. Assuming that I would be safely anaesthetized, the doctor would apply pain stimulus (i.e. scalpel, retractor, bone saw, etc.). Being so very well trained by my SWUT, I would immediately awaken to the horror of being able to see what I look like on the inside.
This is not a happy thought.