What Your Doctor Won’t Tell You About Surgery

Click-bait articles are arguably the worst invention of the past decade (dubstep being a close second). We’ve all seen the über-catchy headlines time and time again that almost compel you to click them because they sound so amazingly amazing: 10 SECRETS YOUR AIRLINE PILOT WON’T TELL YOU. 15 THINGS YOU EAT EVERY DAY THAT YOU SHOULD NEVER TOUCH AGAIN BECAUSE THEY WILL TURN YOU INTO A ZOMBIE. You know it’s going to be complete claptrap, but your curiosity is piqued. So you click . . . and you instantly regret it. You’re whisked away to some horrible slow website that only shows you one of those 12 things per page, each of which is plastered with advertisements for everything from weight loss pills to organic dog food to singles dating sites.

This is not one of those articles. Mostly.

The field of surgery seems to be shrouded in mystery. You go to sleep on the operating table, someone does something to some body part while you’re under, and then you wake up, hopefully fixed. But what exactly happens in the interim? Even if you’re awake during the surgery (i.e. under epidural anaesthesia during a Caesarian section), the surgeon puts up a large sterile drape, which prevents you from seeing what’s going on below. As it goes up you can almost hear the Wizard of Oz bellowing, “PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!”