Surgery 2

The second surgery I am privileged to see is an open heart, coronary artery bypass operation. The patient is being prepared and I can go on in. The grey haired woman, of an age my mother would have been, is already anesthetized and still. The anesthetist monitors a gauge by her head. Nurses and technicians, in their OT attire, are bustling about the room when the cardiac surgeon walks in. He sees two young nurses working with a catheter and says curtly, ‘perhaps you need to call in a couple more to help you,’ his voice dripping sarcasm. A flustered nurse mumbles an apology and finishes up. An assistant completes the surgical disinfecting and draping.

It takes pressure, power and precision to cut down the centre of the sternum with a surgical saw, but it is done in less than a minute. The two halves of the sternum are gently pried apart and held open with a brace-like retractor. We look into the chest cavity as the surgeon explains that he is cutting through the pericardium – and then I see the beating human heart! This most vital organ which begins to beat three weeks after we are conceived and continues till the end of life. From time immemorial and in every culture, the heart has been revered as the core of our being and the centre of all emotion. I have, unthinkingly, uttered the word a million times - speaking of my heart beating faster or missing a beat or being in my mouth or sinking to my feet! But I was not thinking then of this fist-sized pump, this organ composed of muscle and designed to pump blood through the living body.  
 

As the surgery progresses, the heart is isolated with clamps and devices, in preparation for a cardiopulmonary bypass. Then a machine takes over the functions of this patient’s heart and lungs; both become eerily still, for the first time since she was born. There is a brief hush in the room. In any other circumstance, this person with no heartbeat, no pulse and no breathing, would be dead… The surgeon breaks the silence. He comments on how this tireless little machine has worked unceasingly for all these years and can now have a well-deserved (though brief) rest. The still heart allows the team to do its work - steady, swift and sure - and soon it must resume its task. The tension is palpable as we wait for the still heart to start pumping blood again and when it does, first tentative - then sure, I release the breath I did not know I held.   
 

I have watched this woman receiving life, as surely as seeing the birth of a new being. I wish her well and hope her heart stays strong and sound and steady, till the end.