The Games We Play

This was first published in Tamarind Rice's
October issue in my column "An Appletini
A Day..." Click the picture to read the entire
 magazine online for free.

The other day, I was in the operation theater with a patient and about an hour into the surgery, there was only one thought going through my mind: I swear I'm going to kill this girl. Now, that's a pretty severe thought to cross the mind of a doctor and definitely not one you want to hear from the anaesthesiologist handling your case. I understand. The irony was the reason behind it, of course.

The girl on the operating table had fractured her leg and was posted for an orthopedic procedure to stabilize her bones. She was quite a brave one at sixteen years of age and unlike most people her age asked for a spinal anaesthesia so that she could be awake during the procedure though she would not feel the pain. Convinced she could handle it, I did give her a spinal and she was totally relaxed and calm as the surgery began, listening in on what the operating surgeons were discussing.

So far so good. The real issue began when she got bored of the surgeons and I gave her my mobile phone to play with. She was kind enough not to go through my mail and Whatsapp messages. But she was not as kind to my mobile game scores. In hindsight, I should have known what games pay real money since her talents could have been lucrative for me.

Within thirty minutes of handing over my phone, all the high scores on my mobile games had a new Top score and my initials had entirely disappeared from the lists. She resisted any attempts by me to gently extract my phone back from her, realizing my true intentions. 

Pretty soon, while the doctors were hammering in nails at one end of the drapes, a different battle was going on at the other end with the two of us trying to defeat each other in a game of slicing flying fruits on a mobile screen. Sufficed to say, I got my butt whipped by that young girl even as the surgeons cheered her on once they realized what was happening (traitors!!).

I remembered that incident this month for an entirely different reason. A long time ago, a fifteen year old girl named Hannah Greener walked into an operation theater just like this to get a toenail removed. She never walked out of that room. Hannah Greener died on the operating table, the first documented case of a death due to anaesthesia. That was back in 1848, barely two years after the first successful demonstration of anaesthesia and painless surgery.

If you look at any ancient depiction of a surgery, you will note the presence of a number of people holding down the man in agony while an operation was being done on him. Back then, patients often died because of the pain during the surgery rather than the surgery itself.

167 years ago, this month, the first successful demonstration of anaesthesia changed the face of surgical history. After twenty two centuries of performing painful surgeries, the doctor and the patient finally had a choice. Today, we have advanced so far ahead in the field of anaesthesia that no age group, no medical condition or deformity is considered a contraindication for surgery, given the right facilities. The risks remain as high as ever but the knowledge of what to look out for and how to prevent or treat it has advanced so far that it seems like an entirely different world from the day when Hannah Greener lost her life for a simple toenail. A world where a young girl is given the choice between whether she wants to be awake or asleep while doctors place rods in her leg, knowing that she will be comfortable throughout the operation. A world where the surgeons are laughing and giggling with the girl as they operate on her, advising her on which movie to go to once she leaves the hospital. A world where the only concern for the anaesthesiologist is whether he will be able to reclaim his mobile games high score or at least defeat the girl in one game while the whole staff is watching.

P.S. For the record, the answer is No. Her high scores in Fruit Ninja and a few other games are yet to be broken. And yes, I have stopped giving my mobile to patients till I reclaim my high scores in all these games.

Haappy Diwali everyone !