A Few Thoughts, in Limerick, From a Mayo Clinic OR
By Garrison Keillor, Star Tribune
16 December 17
When you come to the hospital, you come back to basics.
Coming to St. Marys Hospital in Rochester, I'm surrounded by men and women
in blue who did well in high school math and chemistry, and here I am, who
frittered away those years writing limericks and parodies and barely made it
to graduation, depending on science for survival. It's an awakening for a
gent of 75. I used to look down on science nerds as dull and unimaginative
and now I am grateful for their competence.
I'm here for the implantation of a pacemaker, my heart having decided to
sometimes hesitate 3.8 seconds between beats. At 5, you faint and fall down
and bang your head on the desk. So I get out of my suit and tie and into a
gown and lie on a gurney and am wheeled into Surgical Prep. I have brought
paper and pen, thinking to take notes, and my nurse, Kim, who has been
fussing with tape and an IV, says, "You're going to be sedated, you know."
"When?"
"As of five minutes ago."
Well, a man needs a challenge. So I write her a limerick. I've been doing
this all my life. I can do it sedated or excited, in a moving car or flat on
my back.
A cardiac nurse name of Kim
Says, "The chances of failure are slim.
You're not going to die."
And she points to the sky.
"Any questions? Address them to Him."
No patient ever wrote her a limerick before. She is impressed. It isn't that
easy to impress young people these days. Meanwhile, she wheels me into the
O.R.
It's a beautiful sedative. I'm still cognizant of people around, voices, the
clink and beep and hum of hardware, and I appreciate the coordination of the
team, and the anesthetist who keeps me informed of what she's putting into
me, as if I actually understood.
Meredith who did anesthesia
Said, "It won't lead to amnesia
But this sedation
May cause constipation.
We recommend milk of magnesia."
I wrote this as Dr. Bradley was scoping out the incision site. A very nice
man whose parents were doctors, a neurologist and a pathologist. He grew up
in southeast Minneapolis. He was a little kid running around on the
playground when I was a grad student at the U. I asked what type of
pacemaker he'd be installing and he was glad to discuss the merits of
Medtronic vs. Boston Scientific vs. another one, I forget the name. So I
wrote a few lines for him.
The electrophysiologist Bradley
Said, "This pacemaker I install gladly
In your chest today
Is a new Chevrolet
Nova and it works not that badly."
The device is the size of a wristwatch, minus the band, and a wire extends
from it down into the base of your heart where it's anchored by a screw that
your heart creates scar tissue around, and there it sits, stimulating a
steady 60 beats per minute for the next ten years until the battery needs to
be replaced. You carry a plastic ID in your billfold to show TSA so they
won't be alarmed when the scanner beeps. Several uncles of mine pitched over
and died who might've been saved by this device. One may or may not feel
better as a result, though the device is doing its work. It does not confer
immortality.
I feel better. My niece works for Medtronic and a cousin works for Mayo and
to me, St. Marys is Minnesota at its best, high competence combined with
great kindness and good humor. Back when I had heart surgery here in 2001,
Sister Generose Gervais was still patrolling the halls, the former hotel
administrator, retired but not really, a Franciscan nun of the Our Lady of
Lourdes congregation, one of the last of that line of valiant women who
founded the place in 1889 in collaboration with the clinic of Will and
Charles Mayo up the street. She died last year at 97.
The procedures I've watched people work on me were front-page news when I
was a boy and now they're more or less routine, but that spirit of kindness
and good humor is permanent. Our society today is plagued with the strain of
You-Can't-Possibly-Understand-Me-Because-You're-Not-Me but when you come to
the hospital, you come back to basics: we're blood and bones and skin, we
depend on the goodness of others, and it is here to be found, thanks to
people trained to be precisely competent.
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