Brain Surgery? Herniated Disc, Anyone?

Tonight, brain surgery and herniated disc are on the menu. Molly steels her nerves to enter the den of the neurosurgeons, neurologists and other sundry medical folk at Molly's Virtual Pub.

Kathleen and the younger wait staff dart in and out like hummingbirds afraid to alight for the patrons here are, shall we say, prickly? Demanding? No, of course not, we would never say that, it is only that their standards are "exacting."

A disk that was going askew
Was no problem from his point of view
So the brain surgeon fixed
As a wild optimist
With a drill, and a scalpel, and glue.

The patient presented with howls
With certainty he disavows
That his problem's not real
As clinician, you feel
He whines more than the picture allows.

The patient complains of migraine
With a cause that you can't ascertain
Supratentorial?
Extracorporial?
His serum has "high porcelain"*?

"Well, yeah, but this spinal stenosis couldn't walk ten feet…" "That's nothing, this foot drop came in, and he thought maybe he'd come back after vacation to have it fixed! Took me twenty minutes to get it through his thick skull that…""The carpal tunnel took thirty minutes, skin to skin, piece of cake…"

"So you don't pop your cork and then bleed
We will wait up a while now, we need
Some stabilization
Of vascularization
And the stroke that a floater could breed."

Does he have foot drop? That's a "go"
For a surgery NOW, as you know
Those nerve cells are dying
No time to be trying
Conservative things, time to sew.

Regrettably, in this room, one does not hear about "Mr. Jones" or Ms. Doe," but "the herniated disc" or the "brain aneurysm" or this "myelopathy" or that "carotid endarterectomy." Nor is this limited to brain surgery, perhaps it is a sort of "medical synecdoche"?

"Take those socks off, I need to, I think
Determine if you're in the pink."
But the brain surgeon knows
He must look at those toes
Ignoring the guy's stinky feet

The profile, it's just a dead ringer
(For Gods' sake, don't utter "malinger.")
For a person who hopes
As he hopefully gropes
For insurance to pay a humdinger.

This room is vacant until late evening, when the night crew settles in at the hospital and the tired and care-worn staff of the hospitals and clinics blow in for an impromptu Grand Round of sorts, minus the patients. No one is on call, so all pagers are off, for beepers and Guinness mix poorly.

The pressure is building, the goal?
To relieve it before there's a toll
On the elegant brain
Which we'd like to keep sane
How 'bout we just drill a burr hole?

The "ologists" ponder and plot
About all the treatments they've got
But those crazed neurosurgeons
Have "cutting up" urgin's
"Prima donnas," they are, the whole lot.

Neurosurgical folks, you can peg
With their technical mumblety-peg
They can make it all right
For with their insight
They think they'll unscramble an egg.

In former times, the nurses would hie themselves off to a separate room, but by and by, lines blurred, and now a gaggle of nurse practitioners hoist a cold one shoulder to shoulder to all the other folks in their haute culture blue scrubs (in which they also sleep, but I digress). Between the modern demographic of male nurses and female physicians (a wonder never seen some decades hence) one cannot determine who does what.

Hail the father, cantankerous Cushing
Adept as he was at ambushing
With his hissy fits
When given dull bits
The egos of staff he was pushing.

In a specialty laden with pain
The poor resident for the brain
Has a life with no sleep
(He can nap on his feet)
Postponing material gain.

Residency's like hugging cactus
But you think now that once you're in practice
Life will be heavenly
(You won't have time to pee)
And be certain you pay your malpractice.

One thing is for certain, however, they do not seem to mind discussing pus with pizza, nor axe trauma with tuna. Here, the most embarrassing crevices of the human anatomy provide lively dinner conversation. The suppurating wound, and the oozing tumor, go with steak, chicken or fish. One wonders if they do this on purpose, for it keeps out accountants, teachers, and lawyers (except for an odd one with a fetish for ambulances).

So you say that the patient's on cumadin?
And needs surgery? Maybe we'll do it when
That thinner subsides
But while it abides
We'll try waitin' and waitin' and waitin'.

Occasionally, there's a person
Who's seductive (this wicket could worsen)
Leave good paper trails
Regarding her ails
Keep a nurse in the room to be certain.

Your training is arduous and long
Your productive life short, so it's wrong
If you don't get top pay
For these years, while you may,
Like a baseball star, charge pretty strong.

Warped sense of humor, they have here. On the wall, a sign says, "Brain Surgery While U Wait." Where is the door...?

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For the poem count at Here Be Limerick Poems visit our home page. Brain surgery makes you think of rocket science?