**HANDSHAKES ARE COLD. SURGERY IS COLDER. BUT MY ORGANS? THEY’RE HOT RIGHT NOW. 🔥🏥**
Let me tell you something real quick. You ever look in the mirror and think, “Bro, my insides are just *vibing* in there?” No? Just me?
Okay, sit down. Take a seat. Put your phone down if you’re driving (fr, put it down). I’m about to drop the most unhinged, underrated, low-key terrifying but also kinda iconic experience of my life: **getting surgery.**
And not just any surgery. I’m talking about the moment you sign your life away on a piece of paper that looks like a Terms & Conditions for a sketchy app. You know the vibe. “I consent to being sliced open, rearranged like a IKEA bookshelf, and potentially dying for a few seconds.” Sign here. Initial there. Don’t read the fine print. It’s fine. We’re fine. Everything is fine. 🫣
I woke up at 4 AM for this. 4 AM. That’s not even a real time. That’s the time vampires log off. I rolled out of bed looking like a gremlin who just got evicted from a sewer. No makeup. Hair in a bun that was more chaos than style. I looked like I was about to compete in a “Who’s the Most Tired Person Ever?” Olympics. And I was winning. Gold medal. No contest. 🥇
You get to the hospital, right? And it’s quiet. Too quiet. Like a library but sadder. The receptionist is typing on a keyboard that sounds like a typewriter from a horror movie. She asks for my ID. I hand it over. She looks at me. She looks at the photo. She looks back at me. I know I look rough. I know. But read the room, girl. I’m about to be unconscious in 45 minutes. Let me be crusty in peace.
Then a nurse comes out. Her name is Brenda. Brenda has the energy of someone who has seen 10,000 buttholes and is unimpressed by all of them. She calls my name. I stand up like a newborn deer. We walk down a hallway that smells like antiseptic and broken dreams. She hands me a gown. Not a cute one. Not a silky robe. A gown that is aggressively open in the back. Like, “Hey, let’s make sure everyone sees your cheeks. The whole bakery. Not just the loaves, the entire display case.” 🍑
Now here’s where it gets real. The IV. Y’all. The IV. I have a phobia of needles. Not like a “oh ew I don’t like it” phobia. I mean I will literally start crying and bargaining with God. “Lord, please let me keep my blood inside my body. I need it for TikTok dances.” The nurse, Brenda, is not having it. She grabs my arm. She pats it. She says, “Little pinch.” LIES. LIES. LIES. It was a big pinch. It was a betrayal. I felt the cold liquid enter my veins and I knew… I was locked in. No escape. I was now legally property of the medical system. 💉
They wheel me into the OR. And I gotta say… the vibe in there is unmatched. It’s like a spaceship. Bright lights. Beeping machines. A whole team of people wearing scrubs that look like pajamas but also like tactical gear. The anesthesiologist is the real MVP. He’s the guy who’s about to hit the “sleep” button on your brain. He’s like the WiFi router of consciousness. One click and you’re offline. No buffering. Just black. 💤
He puts a mask on my face. “Breathe normal,” he says. I breathe normal. Nothing happens. I look at him like “bro, is this a prank?” He smiles. That’s the last thing I remember. That smile. And then… nothing. No dreams. No thoughts. No “omg I forgot to post my story.” Just absolute nothing. A void. A reset. A full shutdown. It’s the closest you’ll ever get to being a PlayStation that’s unplugged mid-game. 🎮
And then… BOOM. I wake up. But not like a normal wake up. I wake up like a zombie from *The Walking Dead* but with better lighting. I’m in a recovery room. My mouth is dry. My throat feels like I licked a desert. I try to talk. “Waaaahhhrrrr…” That’s not words. That’s a dying whale. A nurse comes over. “You did great, sweetie.” I did great? I literally did nothing. I was unconscious. The surgeon did great. I was just the table. But okay, I’ll take the compliment. 😤
Now here’s the part nobody talks about. The post-surgery brainrot. You’re on drugs. Strong drugs. The kind of drugs that make you think you’re a philosopher. I was laying there, staring at the ceiling tiles, and I had a revelation. The ceiling tiles? They’re not white. They’re beige. But we call them white. Society is a lie. The matrix is real. I tried to explain this to my mom when she came in. She just patted my head and said, “That’s the morphine talking, honey.” She doesn’t get it. The ceiling tiles know the truth. 😵💫
The first 24 hours are a fever dream. You’re not allowed to eat. You’re not allowed to drink. You’re just a husk. A shell. A meat vessel that used to have a personality. You’re watching reality TV but you’re also the reality. Every time you move, you feel like your insides are doing the Macarena. You have to
Final Thoughts
Having covered countless medical breakthroughs over the years, I've learned that surgery is as much an art of judgment as it is a science of precision. The scalpel is a humbling tool; it can excise a tumor in minutes, yet it cannot cut away the patient's fear or the surgeon's own doubt. Ultimately, every operation is a stark reminder that medicine’s greatest victories are not just technical feats, but deeply human bargains struck between hope and the cold, unforgiving anatomy of our own mortality.