I liked the twist they did on the famous (and nauseating) Footprints in the Sand poem.
…Lord, you said once I decided to follow you,
You’d walk with me all the way.
But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life,
there was only one set of footprints.
I don’t understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me."
He whispered, “My precious child, the Sand People always ride single file to hide their numbers”
At least these days’ surgery is not quite the bloodsport spectacular it used to be 180 years ago. The UK is one of the few places that operating theatres are still called thus, not operating rooms. .
It is very very rare for the anaesthetic to kill, death in a operating theatre is usually due to the patients presenting condition where as happened in Afghanistan etc injury is so severe that death is inevitable or as in cardiac surgery, now very rare with ECMO available, the heart does not restart coming off bypass. Drug reactions are very rare but suxamethonium extended paralysis is a side effect of use, but that now is rarely used. Given the number of anaesthetics administered each year and anaesthetic mortality the risk is negligible, compared to the surgical risk.
Now pain usually chronic can and does reduce the quality of life in particular if it’s difficult to control, even causes suicide in some cases.
Next time you have surgery, just ask the anaesthetist to just sit in the corner and tell the surgeon to get on with the job, if you dare?
ETA Heart transplants are a classic for the implanted heart not to want to start immediately once implanted but considering it’s been paralysed with potassium chloride and local anaesthetic and ice cold preservation solution, taken out of the donor, put on ice bounced down the road or in an aircraft and then re implanted, warmed and shocked back to life it’s a wonder it starts at all. The surgeons as described to me in the past by a cardiac transplant surgeon are just sophisticated plumbers, it’s the person at the top of the table who makes sure the patient has the best chance of survival. A brilliant anaesthetist makes an average surgeon look good, but a brilliant surgeon is useless without a good anaesthetist.
They allow the evidence gathers cameras to stream directly back to the special operations room, so Bronze Intel, Bronze Crime and Silver (plus at these current Demos the CPS who are present in the room) can see and hear what’s happening in real-time.