“You’re going to like his playlist,” Dr. Brian Mekelburg’s nurse said to me. I had come to the office to get what he referred to as a “dangerous looking” mole removed. This mole was on my back, so I had never seen it. I imagined it was shaped like Osama Bin Laden. I figured they would slice my mole off, put a vaguely Bin-Laden shaped Band-Aid over it, and I’d be off to lunch. But as I started to take my shirt off, the nurse used the word “operation.” I figured she was using this word to make dermatology seem like a real medical field. Which was stupid of me. If she wanted to make dermatology seem like a real medical field, she would not have decorated the office with ads about looking younger. Cardiologists’ offices don’t have posters of hot middle-aged women bragging about the confidence they feel now that their left ventricle looks ten years younger. As I lay face down on a table and got numbed up with injection after injection, Dr. Brian Mekelburg fiddled with his phone. I feared he was YouTubing “How to Remove Osama Bin Laden shaped mole,” but he was actually on Spotify. A few seconds later, a song came through speakers I had not seen. The song was Sex Machine by James Brown. Dr. Brian Mekelburg asked me if I liked it. He asked me with the same tone a waiter at a very expensive restaurant asks if you like your food. I told Dr. Brian Mekelburg that while, in many circumstances I would enjoy Sex Machine by James Brown very much, there are others I would not. For instance, if my mom played it in her hot tub. Or I heard it on my first night in prison. Or touring a preschool. Really, lots of places, including an event we were all agreeing to call surgery. Because I couldn’t see anything, I pictured Dr. Brian Mekelburg shedding a cape, holding a scalpel high above his head, and strutting toward, and then away from, and then back toward me, before falling to the ground in exhaustion as the Hardest Working Man in Barely Surgery. To reassure me, Dr. Brian Mekelburg explained that his Motown list was on shuffle, which I did not find reassuring at all. I spent entire days in high school setting up the perfect order of songs – establishing a mood, building momentum, creating a break in the tension, crescendo-ing, relaxing – just to make out with a girl. This guy was performing an operation. And he was going to do it to a random play order? What if he was about to slice around Bin Laden’s face when Martha & the Vandellas Dancing in the Street came on? Or maybe he’d hit a back artery and have to quickly suture when Smokey Robinson’s Cruisin’ popped on? An operation can have lots of potential non-Cruisin’ situations. I left Dr. Brian Mekelburg’s Motown operation with a bandage nearly the size of my back, not knowing if that was due to how dangerous my mole’s appearance was or that things got sloppy during I Want You Back by The Jackson 5. A few weeks later, I went to get a colonoscopy. (Look: You’re the one who signed up for a Substack called The End of My Career.) The day before, I opened a bag from the pharmacy with a box of pills to evacuate my bowels, and followed Dr. Edwin Share’s instructions. To prepare to get my professional pictures taken, I didn’t eat anything other than clear liquids. I took a bunch of pills¹. I didn’t drink water the morning before my photo shoot. I got to experience exactly what it’s like being a model. When I saw Dr. Edwin Share fiddle with his phone in the operating room, I knew what was up. “This is an incredibly beautiful song,” he said as he played I Want to Know What Love Is by Foreigner. I don’t know what song I would play before I looked up someone’s butt, but I’m pretty sure it would have been on that make-out playlist I made in high school, and I Want To Know What Love Is was definitely on it. I told Dr. Edwin Share that Kurt Loder says that whenever he hears that song, he cries. Dr. Edwin Share understood. This was my way of giving Dr. Edwin Share a hint. I was hinting at the fact that a man wearing a robe without a back, who is about to be professionally roofied and explored anally doesn’t want his doctor singing
Dr. Edwin Share got my drift. He said, “You know what’s a really beautiful song?” and went back to touching his phone. I was starting to worry, for his sake, that he would keep touching his phone during the procedure. He played I Can’t Find My Way Home by Traffic. Again, not the best choice for someone about to put something really far up your butt and then, far more importantly, try to take it back out. We didn’t get far into I Can’t Find My Way Home because Dr. Edwin Share pointed to the anesthesiologist and said to me, “You’re going to go on a magic carpet ride.” Then Dr. Edwin Share played Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf. I was thinking that a lot of patients wouldn’t be familiar with Dr. Edwin Share’s ancient classic rock list until I remembered that everyone who sees Dr. Edwin Share for his expertise is over 45. Look, I play music while I write. But there’s something about operating on people’s bodies that feels like maybe it’s not time to party. So I asked some medical professional friends if this is normal. Apparently, as the show Scrubs explained years ago, it very much is.  Allen Maniker, a retired neurosurgeon, said that he strictly played classical music, and never started until the patient was asleep. And this was coming from a guy who isn’t overly serious. I know this because when I wrote in a column that I was worried that I’d accidentally pick a name for our baby that kids would mock via rhyme, he sent me a step stool with removable block letters that spelled out “Smesticles.” Allen said it didn’t feel inappropriate because, “in the most serious surgeries you are so concentrated you aren't even aware of the passage of time let alone the music.” I found this reassuring. Less reassuring was every single other response I got from a surgeon. Meryl Christlieb, an anesthesiologist assistant who comes from such an upstanding family they somehow were given the Lord’s name, told via Facebook that listening to music during a surgery is totally normal. “When you've performed the same surgery thousands of times, it's like driving a car. Everyone listens to music while driving because it would be boring without it. Could you imagine driving for two hours with nothing playing? I couldn't do it.” All this argument did was convince me that you should not listen to music while driving a car. She said that surgeon’s do shut off the music when they “get a patient with a difficult or unique anatomy. I know that when the music is shut off it's because the surgeon has been presented with a real challenge and needs to concentrate.” I did not believe that. Because what is more difficult or unique than a “dangerous looking mole”? Also, I don’t know if this is a weird thing about doctors or the people I know on Facebook, but a lot of surgeons said they listen to Rush. This is something I did not want to know. It’s bad enough to live with an unjust healthcare system without our surgeons listening to libertarian space operas while they crack open our ribs. Here’s the real problem: As respect for institutions and expertise crumbles, everyone is dropping their pretense. Doctors no longer wait until we’re unconscious to blast 2112. We get to see them as they really are. And I need something more to believe in when I’m going under in a robe with no back. I need formality. I need pretense. I need adults. 1 Dr. Edwin Share believes liquid prep works better than pills, so I actually drank my prep. But I believe that pills work better for the analogy to living like a model, so I lied. Thank you for paying to read my column. Wait: This is for the people who didn’t pay? Then I owe you nothing. You are the ones contributing to the end of my career. If you want to pay an exorbitant amount of money to get one extra post a month – which often won’t even be that good – upgrade to a paid subscription here:
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Thursday, April 11, 2024
Sex Machine
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