A Significant Moment

For the past few years, I have had a lot of trouble with my right leg and my back. To make a long story short, what began with unexplainable pain in my leg, soon developed into a severe case of scoliosis, which was also accompanied by a significant amount of pain. Scoliosis is a curve in your spine. My spine was curved in the shape of an ‘s’ to such an extent that surgery was the only possible solution. The most significant moment in my life was the few seconds in the operating room before the anaesthetic kicked in, because unfortunately for me, surgery was, and still is, my worst fear.
I will try to describe this moment to you as best I can. It’s the kind that will be etched in my memory forever. I was lying on one of those hospital beds, the ones with wheels so that they can roll you around. I was wearing a blue hospital gown. You know the ones with no back, that everyone feels really uncomfortable in. There was cream on the back of both my hands, covered in tape, to numb the spot where the first I.V. would go.
To understand this moment, you have to understand that my absolute worst fear is surgery. The idea of lying unconscious on a table while doctors and nurses cut me open and do god-knows-what to me makes me sick to my stomach. I can’t even think about any sort of surgery without making myself sick. Can you imagine the feeling of knowing that you are about to undergo one of the most painful surgeries you can have? The only way I can think of to describe how I was feeling is pure terror.
Even as I was lying in the hospital gown on the bed, with my family and some doctors and nurses around me, about to be wheeled into the operating room for six or seven hours, during which time anything could happen, I managed to hold it together. I gritted my teeth and stared at the ceiling, determined not to break down. Since the moment I had found out about the surgery, I hadn’t let it get the best of me. I hadn’t cried once, and I was set on not crying then.
But as my family stepped back, away from the bed, and the nurse began to push me towards the operating room, all the fear that had been building inside of me for the past several months came racing through me head and I couldn’t contain it any longer. I was still staring silently up at the ceiling, but now it was with a helpless and hopeless feeling, as tears streamed down my face and soaked the pillow that my head was resting on. The nurse tried to reassure me, and tell me everything was going to be fine, but I couldn’t hear him. By the time I was in the operating room my mind had stopped racing. There was nothing in my head. I was lying there, frozen with dread and panic, tears still pouring down my face, and all I could feel was the fear. I can’t explain it to you, it just consumed me.
The nurse squeezed my right hand tightly as the anesthesiologist put the I.V. into my other hand. “It’s going to feel cold,” he said, as he pumped the anaesthetic into me. A cold tingling crept up my left arm and across my chest as the room spun and faded into darkness.
Looking back on this experience, I’ve realized that I have a lot more courage and strength than I thought. All of my limits were pushed, but I did pull through in the end. At the time I would have told you that I was without a doubt the least courageous person in the entire world, because I was scared out of my mind, but I’ve come to realize now that courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the presence of fear, and yet the will to go on.