I am lying in front of the operating theater in the new building of the Clinical Center, completely naked, thoroughly depilated, under a sheet. That building is amazing. From the outside, it looks compact and understandably large. Inside, however... In the lobby with a dozen elevators, you can comfortably play football. If someone had told me to get up and go home, they would have found me wandering starving in a few days. If there are no ongoing works - as if we are not in Serbia. Medics pass by, nobody even looks at me. I can no longer analyze, worry and assume. I have no more strength. I close my eyes. I lie by the sea and feel the sun all over my body. My gaze meets Maya's. Children's voices can be heard in the distance. Peace.
"How are you?", a woman's voice told me. I open my eyes and sincerely say: "Excellent". The nurse puts a new brownie in the crook of my arm, checks the "central", a needle in the neck artery from which at least four tubes come out. "In about fifteen minutes, they will bring you into the hall. Don't worry", he says wrapping his warm fingers around my forearm and leaves. I stare at the flashing neon light. "Difficult, but routine surgery. Difficult, but routine…”
They brought me into the hall. I move to the operating table. I hear a familiar voice behind one of the masks: "We're going Branko, don't worry", and his mask is stretched into a smile. Doctor Putnik. "I'm not worried at all", I say and I really mean it. Now I know for sure - I'm ready. What's more, I can't wait. The table also has two arm extensions that I strap on. Together with the anesthetist's eyes, a huge eight-pointed star filled with hundreds of tiny LED bulbs hovers over me. It's like I'm being operated on Enterprise.
I have already met the anesthesiologist. He speaks in a flat voice without recognizable emotions. A peaceful man. Not only will it put me to sleep, but with some enzyme it will also put my heart to sleep. It "lasts" about 20 minutes, so if there is more work, it will be added. While my heart is asleep, my lungs will be useless, so both functions will be performed by machines. Everything about that operation was as interesting to me as a show on Discovery, and I asked whoever I could about it, and they happily explained. First, they will remove half a meter of artery from my leg and use it to bridge the narrowing around the heart, because that "material" has no expiration date, unlike artificial ones. They're going to cut into my sternum, open me up, and do the job. It will take between four and six hours. They will check if everything "works", they will place a couple of drains around my heart, tubes that will collect blood and other fluids and lead them out of me. They will also place two electrodes for a pacemaker, in case it is needed after the operation. The bone will be connected with wires, the leg and chest will be sewn up. What you have read, however, is an insultingly simplistic description of an operation for which it is a miracle of science and medicine that it has become "routine" thanks to entire libraries of knowledge, the millions of patients on whose hearts that knowledge was acquired, and the army of brilliant scientists, doctors and innovators who held in their hands each of our lives, whose hearts have developed certain fatal "mistakes".
While everyone is doing something on me, the anesthesiologist says, in the same flat tone: "Today we offer a triumphant goal in the final of the Champions League and an erotic fantasy of your choice, one with twins." I don't remember what I answered him, I just thought that I could have been more witty, when...
WHAT A RIDE
A monstrous attack. In the middle of the familiar grinding of the tissues in my chest, much worse than the one at the trolleybus station in front of Gradska na Zvezdara, enriched by a much sharper and more defined pain that spread in a clear line diagonally, somehow through my heart, I thought, before the hideous, existential fear gripped every synapse and every neuron in the brain: "The best place and the best time". The dark proximity of death is strangely selfish. Neither Maya's face nor the faces of the children. Only lonely peace and a thought paradoxically full of relief: "At least everything is over now".
And then I heard a familiar voice: "Branko, you are in the hospital, you had an operation...", frantically collecting my mental capacities, I opened my eyes and saw - Doctor Putnik surrounded by doctors and nurses. He kept his hands in the pockets of his white coat, smiled at me and continued: "Everything went well, don't worry, there is a breathing tube in your throat, it must be there for a little while longer".
It's amazing how clearly and quickly I realized that I survived. It wasn't an attack, the tube in my trachea was blistering, plus the drains around my heart. A little later I understood that the time between the injection of anesthesia and waking up simply disappeared, without a trace, thought, feeling or any unit of memory. The anesthesiologist (who was advocating for me while injecting me with anesthetic) explained to me - this type of anesthesia has an amnesic effect quite deliberately. Probably, I wouldn't accidentally remember something, say an open chest. That would be a very difficult memory. Years of therapy. At the moment of awakening, despite the breathing tube deep in my chest, the tubes and needles sticking out of me and the terrifying, unfamiliar physical experience, like a warm tide, the simplest, purest human happiness flooded my entire being. No triumphant explosion ever experienced before. No. Ordinary human happiness, only of disarming intensity. I also felt a wave of gentle gratitude towards everyone around me. I couldn't speak with the tube in my throat, so I raised my fist to wave to all those great people, smiling like that. All their heroism, knowledge, strength, dedication and humanity stood with them. I also heard: "You were the first to smile at us when we woke him up", but I don't remember much more. For example, I don't remember at all whether they took out that tube right away or maybe later, as was the case with some other patients. From peace, to saying goodbye to life, to a kind of rebirth in a few seconds. What a ride.
Whenever it happened, the removal of the breathing tube was performed by the nurse so quickly and skillfully, that when the thing flew out of me, and her hand with a crumple of some kind of cloth met the shocking amount of liquid that poured out of my lungs in a thick stream, I didn't quite make it. I'm not even surprised. I lay back down from the sitting position in which it is performed and tried to say, "Thank you," but all that came out of me was a hissing sound. And a very short hiss. I didn't have the breath to say a single word. Recovery has begun.
FRANKENSTEIN
Did I mention pain? No? It would be very unfair not to write about it, one might think that this is all a movie. So let's do that too.
Nothing is free in life. Well, not life itself, it seems. "Those drains will blister you a bit," Doctor Putnik told me before the operation. Dear doctor, there are different types of pain and we are very different in how we tolerate them. Life, like everyone else, has given me many physical pains, of which the broken leg was perhaps the worst. I controlled him enough, however, to feign bravery in distress. The pain caused by the drains in the chest, however, although similar in intensity, maybe someone really is just a blister, but me... It literally caused me to panic at times. Insanity is a few levels lower. It hurt, admittedly, only when I change the position of my body, breathe a little deeper or, God forbid, cough, but - unbearable.
At the same time, on the leg from which my artery was removed, there was an elastic bandage from half of the foot to above the knee, the same size as the incision. The bandage was so tight that the end of my foot swelled up like a doughnut. That pain was continuous and extremely unpleasant, if "pleasant" even exist. This, of course, was not unintentional. Over time, the blood should use the smaller blood vessels and compensate for the absence of the main one, explained the surgeon who removed my artery. If the bandage wasn't so tight, things would go very badly very quickly. "I can come every day to give you a little discount," she said, but it was clear to me that she would prefer that we not do that for a while. I played the brave patient and said I agreed we don't do that. It would be very stupid to complicate things here. Honestly, I wasn't sure I could handle it.
Surrounded by fellow travelers who were suffering the same things, I lay in silence, breathed cautiously, tightened my leg muscles so that the pain would move and change, which made it a little easier for me and - silently suffered. "Central" in the neck, brownies in the hand, catheter in the bladder, bandages on the leg, chest and arm, something hurts, something blisters, something bothers... Ah, Frankenstein.
The hours dragged on.
I don't know how long the operation lasted, nor how much I slept after it. I don't even remember if they took out the breathing tube when they woke me up or later. The chronology of events in those day or two after the operation is confused for me. I remember the event very clearly, but when what happened, not at all.
In that period they brought Mrs. Mitsu. They put her in the bed across from mine. She was sleeping and I was watching her and rooting for her. When I saw that she opened her eyes with that tube in her trachea, I raised my hand and signaled with a clenched fist - victory. Over the thrombus, constrictions and her eighty years. Total pathos, but what can I do. I was in an altered state of consciousness. And Mrs. Mitzi meant it too.
I also remember the physiotherapist. "After surgery, fluid builds up in your lungs. You have to get that liquid out, otherwise it will be very dangerous. "Come on, cough."
If I could say anything without pain, I would tell him: "You, brother, are not normal". I know that liquid, it tickles and scratches me all the time, it drives me crazy. Then I cough, but I'm afraid. When I just try to clear my throat, my brain splits in half. He knew, however, what I had to tell him, I was neither the first nor the last. I coughed. It didn't hurt any less. "Cough again". "This one is not normal, mother". But I cough again. He was satisfied. He gave me a short plastic drain taped to a surgical glove: "Come on, inflate the glove as much as you can. "Come on, come on". It was a disappointing experience. I barely straightened the fingers of the glove. I looked into his eyes until a telltale tear ran down my cheek. "Excellent," he said before rushing to the other patients. "Each time a little more and it will be fine".
I looked at that glove in my lap with unadulterated fear, for hours. The fluid in the lungs gurgled and bothered. But the fear of pain was terrible. That night, my sister, the head of the shift, approached me. She completely broke me: "I'll give you something for the pain." You are in the hospital and while you are there, you should not suffer pain. Say, we will help you". When she left, before the medicine even "worked", I lifted the glove, closed my eyes and blew into the pipe as hard and as long as I could. I wish I could write how it was immediately easier, but it wasn't. The therapist, on the other hand, achieved the goal. I got used to that pain. I started blowing more often than I should have. Just to get out.
That evening, a dark-skinned guy appeared among the sisters. It seems that he is actually studying medicine and doing this part-time. Not only did he treat me like a child, but he addressed me as "na ti" and "Mico". I decided to ignore him, but late in the evening a new shift came and he completely lost himself in the presence of the beautiful sister to whom he was teaching the shift. He started to get nervous so much that everyone, especially her, was uncomfortable. They also came to my bed. He was convinced that he was interesting and witty as he spoke bizarrely into her face like a small child and squirmed his whole body. "We found him a little too sensitive to pain, so we gave him boooooooo", I will only quote a part. She was deeply uncomfortable, she didn't even understand him, so he had to explain further by crying, which was even worse. Although I had very successfully ignored the various fools in these three hospitals, it had never occurred to anyone else to act like that.
I lay there, unable to speak and helplessly listening to volleys and volleys of slurs about me, sympathizing with the girl who had no choice but to keep a dignified silence, look him in the eyes until he finished his idiotic performance and got rid of him for the night. No pain, no disability, no fear, and nothing that I had been through up until that point had hit me as hard as that immature jerk who didn't care how I felt and showed me how helpless I was. I began to think - what kind of doctor will he be?
He is, however, proof that the decision to wait for some time to pass before writing these stories of gratitude to everyone who treated me and helped me was very correct. I'm not really "socially adequate" either, I owe many people apologies in my life for various situations in which I behaved like a jerk. The guy is clearly following the example of doctors who, like so many people, confuse a macho mentality with self-confidence. He studies at one of the most demanding faculties and doesn't work in a cafe to earn money, but changes my catheter, which is only good. I want him to understand how much he can hurt others. I don't believe that he will read this, nor that he will recognize himself. But if that happens, I greet him warmly and I want him to know how much he humiliated me, so that he doesn't do it again. Move the girls somewhere else, not over helpless patients. You don't like swinging, change it. Respect people in hospital beds. And be a good doctor.
In one of the visits, I asked Dr. Putnik to give me a phone. He agreed even though his people weren't really right. I immediately slapped a selfie (but from below, I can't raise my arms because of the wound) to make Maya happy.
Obs. Tortured, pale Frankenstein with exhausted eyes, crushed and absent from life would make an undertaker happy. I put on some kind of smile, take a picture again - even worse. Then I close my eyes, sit down again with Maya on the shore, remind myself that I have a soul, and then quickly blow one, while my humanity holds me. Satisfied with the deception, I let myself sink back into listening to everything that creaks inside me.
Every evening, however, when the time comes, the nurses finish their endless work, turn off the lights, and begin the night in the intensive care unit. Beckettian endless. Every one.
