Surgery

content/gender/surgery/002.html

@@ -80,21 +80,3 @@ dealt you. You had the job, you had the insurance, the means.
 You made the call. You took the step. You passed the screens.
 <strong>You</strong> did this.</blockquote>
 </pre>
-
-<!-- I don't think it hit home that surgery was real until six weeks beforehand. Not that I thought it was not going to happen --- though there was some of that, of course --- but that it was something truly surreal. Some unknown and unknowable procedure would happen, and then I would be on the other side. It was almost eldritch: I would close my eyes to miss the madness and awake changed.
-
-I say six weeks because that, specifically is when I got a call from my surgeon's office reminding me that I needed to bring my approval letters in with at the pre-op appointment so that they'd have them on file.
-
-"But I already gave you them," I said. "Don't you still have those?"
-
-"Well, yes, but they expire after a year."
-
-> Fuck.
-
-Yeah, fuck. Thus began a two-week scramble to find new doctors to write new letters to send in to the surgeon's office. After all, I'd moved states since I'd gotten the first letters written, and even if I hadn't, one of the doctors who had written one had retired.
-
-I wound up getting four additional letters, as there were some questions about the validity of some of the therapists' statements and credentials.
-
-> So it felt real then?
-
-Yes, coming to terms with the fact that the surgery might have been canceled is what made it seem as though it was something real and tangible. Real things can be canceled. Real things can be destroyed. -->

content/gender/surgery/004.html

@@ -60,4 +60,21 @@ You spent all that time polishing your will. How could you begin
 to deny the death-thoughts inherent in a nine-hour surgery?
 That you didn't still leaves you feeling like you're living a forgery
 of a life.</blockquote>
-</pre>
+But then I was in. I was in that room with surprisingly green walls.
+The nurses dropped me off, and from down those hidden halls
+came surgeon, anaesthesiologist, what seemed like dozens of people.
+"Here, hold this over your face," someone said as a needle
+wandered into my Iv's injection port. "It's just oxygen."
+My hand began to slip. Oxygen? Some sort of intoxicant?
+They laughed, repeated, "No no, you have to hold it up."
+Perhaps it was O2, but whatever was injected began to interrupt
+any train of thought. The jazz music they'd put on, at my request,
+was overwhelmed by static. My vision followed. Silence: blessed.
+Speed: surprising. Is this death? A rush of nothing. Is this death?
+Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Is this death? Nothing. Is this death?
+Nothing.
+<blockquote>Nothing. Was this death? Nothing, death? Nothing, nothing. Nothing.
+Death? Was this death? Nothing. There was nothing. Death? Nothing.
+Silence. Static. Nothing. Death. Death. Silence. Death.
+Static. Static. Silence. Static. Death, static. Death.
+And then you woke up.</blockquote></pre>