So while I waited for Dr. Shahid to mend another person, I was shifted to the pre-OT. Like I mentioned before it was more or less like the parking lot but with fewer patients and less space. By the corner was a table with one or two nurses going over patient files and papers. A few beds all had patients waiting for their turn to go under the OT lights. Each was another surgeon’s patient. I guess Dr. Ismail’s OT fell on the same day. There were a lot of piles of patients that day. This is when I met Moosa Kutty who’d come for piles treatment, that’s how I came to know about Dr. Ismail’s OT day.

Up until the sterile area I was pretty ok, you know when you have time on your hands and all you can do is lay around and wait, your mind starts getting a wee bit anxious. Ok ok a lot more anxious!!! 😁 So to stop my anxiety from going in to overdrive, I started a conversation with Moosa Kutty. Surprisingly, he was working in Saudi Arabia !!! ( I know know, Saudi Arabia is turning out to be a keyword in these blog posts of mine !! 😂 ) but that’s possible as many people are employed in the Middle East in these parts of Kerala where I am from. After a little intro and pleasantries between us, he wanted to know how my accident happened, I told him about the trauma I am having and I better not get into that at that moment, coz I didn’t want that to be the last thing on my mind that gets stuck in my head as I go into sleepsville, when I go under the OT lights 😬. He respectfully understood! 😊we got down talking about our upcoming surgery, He seemed more anxious than me, said it was his 1st time. He had a lot of questions regarding the anesthesia. The fact that I had the chance of going under anesthesia by one too many times by now, made me the experienced one !!😁

At that moment I felt my building-up anxiety fade away !! Funny how that works! When you come to know someone is in a worse mess or in my case anxious than you, you suddenly take on the role of “aw don’t worry about it! It will be faaaaiinnnee !! 😂. Not a minute back I was almost breaking out in a sweat!! And now hey it’s Mr. Cool! Been there and seen it all !! 😁😁
But the conversation had a mutual effect, he seemed less tensed as I kinda shared my experience from last OT dressing ( I purposely left out the parking lot bit 😁) and I also was able to relax a bit too

Hey, we got names! 

One of the things I noticed all of us patients were referred to our surgical procedure names or the name of the disease. Like now and then nurses from OT I guess would pop their heads in and ask out if the hernia was ready or in my case skin debridement. Then one of them would come towards my bed and take the file tucked away between the bed and trolley just below my feet. I had to ask a nurse to move the file from under my right foot which is the injured leg over to my left foot side!! 🤨 I don’t know what they wanted from the file, but a couple of times this happened, they’d call out “skin debridement” I’d just raise my hands, and say over here, that’s me “Riyaz!!” 😁, she’d come over not say a word go through the file, and tuck it back under the bed! 🤷🏼‍♂️

I would suggest having a large pocket or space on the trolley beds so the files can go there and not under the bed. I was joking with Moosa Kutty that we all should get name tags on the beds like in school except class and subject it would read [“ Name: Riyaz, Surgery Procedure/ Illness: Skin debridement, OT No: 5, Dr.Shahid”]😂😂

I am just trying to see a lighter side of things, I don’t know probably there is a good reason behind all the file reading tucked away under the bed or the surgery name-calling, what if there is more than one RIYAZ in the room !! That would probably create a lot of confusion. But from a patient’s point of view, it would be nice to be addressed by our names. Think about it, the patient is already in distress, pain, discomfort, and anything, even the tiniest of things that one could do to make them feel a little less stressed out goes a long way. Trust me on this!

A little around 11:30 they wheeled out Moosa Kutty. We exchanged well wishes and said our salaams. A couple of times the nurses came calling out skin debridement I would do my hand raising bit and respond “ RIYAZ” as if I was repeatedly training them to say my name 😊and if one of them would come over I’d ask if it was time, she would say not yet, then look at my file and walk away. They filled in the space with another patient, probably one of Dr. Ismail’s, piles patients again coz most of them I seen them go to the washroom and get back on the bed. One guy ‘walked in’ all dressed in the OT blue outfit, finds a bed, and just laid down. He almost looked like a pro full of confidence! Definitely not his 1st time!

A male nurse pulled up a dark green screen covering a patient’s bed and asked him to lay on his belly with his bottom-up. I suppose he was being given a shot on his buttocks or something, the screen didn’t do much justice to the patient’s privacy from the angle where I was put up. 😬 But I am glad I didn’t have my glasses on. There is a blessing in being nearsighted at times. It’s not just in pains sessions only.😊

Not long after the last nurse read my file and left. I heard “Is there a patient by the name RIYAZ here?? “ My Name … my name being called at last they learned my name! 😂 They wheeled me out of pre-OT and finally it was time to face the OT lights!