| The Funny Bone |
Faint of Heart Locked knees worked best, and also squinting, so that everything below my waist remained rigid and everything above looked fuzzy. The combination worked through months of pediatrics, dermatology, and—that bloodiest of specialties—psychiatry. I survived the first few weeks of my surgery rotation, too, by hovering around the edges of the operating table, as far from main events as possible, locking and squinting, locking and squinting. The whole experience started to seem like a case of successful desensitization; my own exposure therapy. I began to feel a little cocky. Home for the holidays, I dropped words like anastomosis and roux-en-y at the table. The family beamed. Back in the operating room, I opened one eye during a gallbladder removal. Then I looked a bowel resection straight in the face. As long as I had no physical contact, proximity without personal trauma seemed possible. Upright started to feel natural. But I had not yet reached the peak of a surgery rotation: when the medical student gets to hold the heart during a cardiac transplant. It is a famous moment, an honor—like holding the baby at the circumcision while the rest of the family looks on. The honor was to be avoided at all costs. The donor heart had been harvested. “Move in, move in!” the nurses urged. “You’ll get the best view!” I was skulking on the edge of the crowd, trying to keep my gloves above my chest and my heartrate below 120. It was my preferred position. I didn’t want the best view. I wanted the worst. But the nurses kept nudging me closer. They must have mistaken my stricken gaze for excitement, or maybe they just didn’t like medical students. “Where’s the med student?” the surgeon demanded. “Send him over.” Heads swiveled. Eight or twelve or a hundred spectators looked around. Where’s the med student? Their mutterings grew louder. An aisle formed through the crowd, and I started to walk down it. It was terribly bridal. The groom, or part of him, waited on the table. We had never met before; this was an arranged marriage. As I took the tiniest steps, I passed glances of envy, glances of nostalgia, glances that seemed to reminisce, “Long ago, I, too, once held the heart.” “Hurry up,” a nurse snapped, in case I was enjoying myself too much. The surgeon was waiting. Maybe surgeons relish this moment. It must feel like touching a callow knight’s shoulder with a sword as he kneels. It’s a kingly opportunity, if a surgeon has time to think about it. This one didn’t. “Hurry up,” he barked. In another minute, the entire room’s attention would shift from the body draped on the table to the one sprawled on the floor. But now, I had that long walk down the aisle, before the eyes of the many. Honor was waiting. Everything else—my life, the life of the patient, the surgery itself—was on hold. Salvation was out of the question. There was only one way to proceed. Fainting is efficient. It comes naturally, like hitting the deck in an air raid. I remember darkness rising up, then nurses moving in, and someone far away, possibly in California, pronouncing in annoyed tones, “It’s the med student.” I felt warmly toward that person. At least he knew who I was. Elissa Ely ’88 is a lecturer on psychiatry at HMS. This article appeared in the Autumn 2004 issue of the Harvard Medical Alumni Bulletin. Photo: Blue Lantern Studio/Corbis |
arrived from all corners. A psychiatrist told me to lock my knees when standing—it used to work for him. My mother just knew that if only I would admit my fragility, attending physicians would gladly make exceptions for the artistic constitution.
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