A few of you may recall an old TV show of this name… truth be told, I never watched it. I’m really squeamish and absolutely abhor horror flicks and the like (more on this later!). But as I was being wheeled down to the surgery, some similarities crossed my mind: an OR located in the basement of a hospital, some funny characters milling about, and the fact that my life was kind of a horror show at that moment! How was I going to survive this?

Well the answer is twofold:

• Be an ostrich
• Find the humour!

My surgery was scheduled for Tuesday, December 13, and the neurosurgeon came by my room for a chat the night before. He reiterated that we were scheduled for noon on Tuesday, and he mentioned again that the surgery was not an easy one – that it was in fact quite complicated. He then asked how much detail I was interested in. So I laid out my game plan:

• You’re going to put me to sleep
• While I’m asleep, you are going to do your thing
• Then I’m going to wake up, and I’ll do my thing; I don’t need to know anything more than that

He agreed, so we had a plan…(this is killing Chris S that there’s not a spreadsheet involved here… but sometimes you just gotta keep it simple…)

Fast forward to Tuesday morning…as I enter The Crypt!

As you can imagine, there are a number of people involved in this type of procedure. Early on I met Andrew, who was tasked with prepping me for the anesthesiologist. In order to do this, Andrew had to get me and my bed into a different position. Except he was having some trouble with this part. He fussed around my bed for a few minutes to no avail. He then enlisted the help of another team member, Calvin, for some assistance. The next three minutes are punctuated with “I think it’s locked”, “How do we unlock it?”, “There’s gotta be a combination of buttons…?”…

Well I just couldn’t let this opportunity go by… it was absolutely absurd! I finally just had to chime in.

“Guys… I gotta say, you really aren’t instilling a lot of confidence over here…”

They stop, they look at each other, they don’t say anything… so I carry on…

“Well, you can’t operate my Bed but in 20 minutes you’re going to be operating on my Head!”

Their faces were priceless! I was shaking with laughter, they were in shock and then realized it was all okay, and then I got to give them the good news: “By the way, this is going in my blog. You guys are going to be famous.”

So here you go Andrew and Calvin… your 15 seconds of fame!