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Show 95 "You'll need to make sure the anesthesiologist has the correct recipe," I begin, but he interrupts me: "It's just a local," he is saying. "We don't do general anesthesia for this -just local anesthesia." I am stunned by his generalization. "And just how many of these twenty port-a-caths have you placed in people with bad stiff-man syndrome under 'just local anesthesia'?" I am asking, already knowing the answer. "It doesn't matter," he says and is walking out the door before I can stop him. "It's a simple procedure." "Do you understand what might happen to me if you don't understand what might happen to me?" I am asking after him. He is ignoring the question as he exits, off to impress a more innocent patient with his sterling surgical skills. Surgery on me is always tricky. But the nurses have been getting me to it down to a science. It always begins with preventing startle. Headphones over my ears, playing my favorite music at high volume - rich Bach orchestral suites, rowdy Celtic dances, lyrical YoYo Ma. Then clearing the hallways of all unnecessary personnel - no food carts, x-ray techs with their machines in tow, or gaggles of interns arguing about a diagnosis. When it is time, Lisa herself rolls my bed quietly |