My Grey’s Anatomy Moment

In honor of the 80 or so people I know that are having a worse January this year than I was having last year.

I have years of experience with doctors. I’ve been seeing them since I was a kid. And it’s been my experience that doctors, though amazing people, are generally speaking, not hot. I’ve never met a Doctor McSteamy, or McDreamy or whatever else you want to call them.

Apparently they’re all working out of one hospital in Seattle that doesn’t exist.

I’ve never been upset that I haven’t met a hot doctor because I’ve never gone to a doctor when I’m at my most beautiful or sexiest or wittiest or charmingest. For some reason I’m reluctant to encounter physical perfection when I’m so far from it my tongue might be growing moss.

All of this changed when I had a stent put in to relieve the intense pain from a kidney stone. The pain started on a Wednesday and by Thursday night I couldn’t take it anymore. I hadn’t eaten, hadn’t showered, hadn’t washed my face in two days and was in my pajamas with un-brushed hair. I spent a Thursday night and all Friday braless and on morphine in the hospital.

Friday night I went in for surgery (Praise the Lord). The nurses were wonderful, very comforting and encouraging and then one of them says “Your surgeon’s a really great guy, and he’s hot too.”

Of course he is. He’s about to insert a stent into my urethra, why wouldn’t he be the hot doctor?

And the thing is she said this like it would make my surgical experience better. Like I’d be happier knowing a hot doctor was going to go near my nether region while I was unconscious.

And then she told me to take off my underwear. Which was also great because sitting around on a slab covered in a flimsy sheet and wearing hospital socks, having not shaved my legs since last summer doesn’t make me feel vulnerable and exposed at all.

Here’s the thing about morphine and me. When I’m taking large doses of pain killer my perspective shifts. I guess that’s typical, and it’s probably also how some people get hooked. After all, not feeling much of anything is a surprisingly great feeling.

Here’s what it looked like for me: While I had that normal inward acknowledgement that this was all mortifying and unsettling – and could joke around accordingly – the rest of me was thinking “ugh, can we just move on to the surgery already?”

Sadly, hopped up on drugs and in intense pain means I don’t really care about the looks of the physician. So while I did check for a wedding band, and did note he resembled some famous actor or other (because come on, I’m not dead), I was more attracted to the anesthesiologist who promised me that if I woke up during surgery I could punch him in the face.

Clearly morphine does alter your perspective and your personality a bit, but in my case it was a weirdly positive change. There you have it. Drugs make me appreciate substance over style.

Crap. I forgot to check the anesthesiologist for a wedding band.