How Bad is a Conversation When Brain Surgery is a Welcome Interruption?

I was lying in pre-op wearing just a surgical gown and contemplating the brain surgery I was to undergo when a young woman wearing some sort of nursing uniform stopped came in and stood at the side of the bed. She introduced herself and then pointed out that my leg was shaking and asked me why. I explained that I was about to go into brain surgery to reduce the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease.
Then she said she didn’t think Parkinson’s affected the legs.
Now I was starting to get mad. Maybe my legs were shaking because I was nervous, maybe It was Parkinson’s or maybe it was because I was cold, but whatever the reason I did not want to debate it with some teenage candy stripper in the last few moments of lucid thought I may ever have.
“What do you want?” I asked. She said she was in the earliest stage of training to be a nurse and was visiting patients to ease their concerns.
You know it’s a bad conversation when you welcome the interruption of an orderly taking you to where someone is waiting to drill through your skull.
The brain surgery began by putting me under sedation, then opening one hole in my skull and inserting an electrode connected to a wire that goes under my scalp to a battery in my chest. Electrical pulses are then sent into the brain to reduce shaking caused by Parkinson’s.
They work me up after drilling the first hole in my skull and inserting the first electrode. They wake you after the first electrode is implanted to test whether it is immediately effective which mine proved to be. Then they drill the second hole in your skull while you are awake.
The drilling is a lot like a dentist drilling teeth, except it’s a machine that turns your skull to powder and then stops automatically before it reaches the membrane that protects your brain. My head was embraced by a steel sort of helmet to keep it from moving. I was groggy but aware of what was happening. I heard the brain surgeon say “about” when he was describing where he placed the electrode and I blurted out: “There’s no ‘about’ in my brain surgery. There’s no ‘almost’ or ‘sort of.’ Everything is exact and precise during my surgery.”
I then spotted the nurse in training standing in the operating room and chatting with a second person and I asked them if they were “waiting for a bus.’’

Shortly after that I was sedated again and woke up in post-op where I got into an argument with a nurse over why she wouldn’t give me more ice chips. When I mentioned my wife was coming, the nurse said “she must be an angel.” I said “Yes, how did you know?”
“Lucky guess,” she said.
I was to stay overnight for observation and after getting settled in my room my wife left to have dinner and who should walk in to visit me but that candy stripper and the first words out of her mouth were “I really enjoyed her brain surgery.”
Now you can probably tell I’m a very compassionate person but that comment got me angry.
“Look,” I said, “you can’t go around talking to patients saying the first thing that pops into your head. “I didn’t have brain surgery to entertain you. I’m fighting for my life not knowing whether I might die or become a vegetable and you’re going to walk in here and tell me you enjoyed it? I don’t give a rat’s ass how it appeared to you. You need to think about what might be comforting to patients before you talk to them. Otherwise they’re going to have to tell you to stop visiting patients.”
With that, she burst into tears, then turned her back to hide her emotions as the surgeon walked in to check on me. He said I could be released to go home the next morning and while he talked the candy stripper slipped out.
I barely slept and at 5:30am I asked to leave and called my wife to come get me. Yes, I called her at 5:30am. Ok it was closer to 5 am. Anyway, a nurse said I had a catheter that had to be removed and she could remove it but I had better brace myself. Now this is just a little aside not really part of the story, but nurses give shots and change bandages and do other things tha are uncomfortable with patients and usually downplay the pain saying things like “you may feel a pinch.”
So when someone who is accustomed to casually inflicting pain tells you to “brace yourself” you should probably have made a different choice. Let’s just say that was some PAIN when she pulled that catheter out.
So my valiant wife arrived about 615 to take me home and as we were leaving, the candy stripper appeared and thanked me. Thanked me after I made her cry and told my wife I had helped her become better at her job. And you all thought I was just a jerk didn’t you?