Anterograde Amnesia

Retrograde, too

Many years ago when my kids were tiny, I had minor surgery. It was the kind of outpatient procedure where you stop eating or drinking after midnight, drive over to the hospital in the morning, get prepped for surgery, and drive home the same day.

When I got to the hospital, I did all the things you do. I left my belongings in a locker and put on the robe with the open back, which I pulled forward and clinched so it would cover my ass. Then I followed a nurse into another room where I got onto the table where the surgery would happen. She asked me some questions, verified allergies and confirmed I wasn’t on any medications. Then the anesthesiologist came in.

He was tall with dark, curly hair and had a mask on, so I could only see his eyes, but he smiled at me and told me his name. He confirmed my weight and asked if I knew how I normally responded to anesthesia. I told him in the past I’d always been very sensitive. He said he was giving me twilight medication, I would be breathing on my own, and able to respond to questions. He said if I felt uncomfortable at any time to let him know.

Photo by Stefanie Belinda on Unsplash

Then the doctor came in and he went over some things, too. He made the same jokes he undoubtedly makes before every surgery. He was a specialist I’d only met a few times, but he seemed like a decent guy. He and the anesthesiologist had a nice rapport. The next thing I knew I was counting backwards from ten, and then I was waking up in the recovery room. I was covered in a few blankets, but freezing, anyway, and I could hear someone sobbing. I realized quickly it was me.

A nurse came in and said it had taken me a lot longer to wake up than usual, my blood pressure had been lower than they’d expected. The friend who’d come to drive me home had been waiting patiently for over an hour. I called my kids on the way home. All I wanted was to get back and snuggle with them.

The next day I was hobbling around on my leg, the site of the surgery. My phone rang, it was the anesthesiologist. I sat down at my dining room table. My daughter, two at the time, was hanging off of me. My son was coloring with crayons. I was surprised the anesthesiologist was calling to check on me and not the doctor, but then I thought maybe he was concerned because it had taken me so long to recover.

“I hope you don’t mind, I got your number off your medical chart…” he began. That struck me as odd. Was he not supposed to make sure I was okay? “You were really funny during the surgery. We were cracking jokes back and forth, and I thought there was a vibe. I wanted to see if you might want to have dinner with me.”

I froze. I was completely stunned. I did not remember cracking any jokes, I did not remember anything. “I’m sorry…what?” I asked, “I was funny? I have zero recollection of anything that happened after I got to the number seven.” My kids both looked up at me. “Oh. Really?” he sputtered. “Okay. Yeah, I thought there was flirting, I’m sorry.”

“No, there wasn’t. I literally could not tell you anything at all about anything that happened. There’s just a blank space where hours of time from yesterday have disappeared. There was no vibe, because you drugged me for my surgery, a thing that is your job.” My hands were shaking and my voice was shaking a little, too, but I tried to smile reassuringly at my kids. I didn’t want them to be scared.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called you, this was a mistake. Could we please keep this between us? I could get in a lot of trouble. I’m sorry I bothered you.” He hung up.

My son asked me who was on the phone and why I was upset. He asked why my hours from yesterday had disappeared. Then he drew pictures of disappearing hours. I drew pictures too, but my mind was racing. The anesthesiologist got my phone number off my medical chart to ask me out because he thought there was a vibe. Wtf. He had drugged me.

When my kids were immersed in fun again and no longer asking about the man on the phone, I looked up the most common twilight medications. I found they usually give people some combination of propofol, midazolam, and fentanyl, and temporary and anterograde amnesia is a common and desirable effect — something the anesthesiologist must have known. No one wants to form memories of a surgery in progress, a thing I could have asserted, because I woke up during general anesthesia once.

I had a terrible feeling about the whole thing. Here’s a man tasked with putting people under, literally holding people’s lives in his hands. Too much medication and he might kill someone. This is a man whose judgement I shouldn’t be calling into question over something that ought to be obvious to any decent guy — if you have access to a woman’s number because of the work you do, but she didn’t give you her number, don’t “shoot your shot.” You aren’t owed a shot. Clearly, he had no sense of boundaries with his female patients. There was no way he hadn’t violated my privacy by accessing my medical chart.

But if I called my doctor’s office to tell them what he’d done, he’d probably get fired. If I called the Medical Board of California, I felt sure he’d get in serious trouble. My old wiring was firing up, the motherboard that sent messages like, “This is a bad thing he did, but you don’t want to be responsible for getting someone fired, do you? You don’t want to be the reason this man has his license suspended, right?”

My dad had taught me from the time I was a little kid, my job was to take care of him. I was supposed to keep his secrets and be his sounding board and his little wing-child when he took me on after-school dates with lady-friends. It was my job to let him sob in my arms because all these awful women — women who included my mom and later my stepmom — kept asking him to be faithful, and my poor old dad just wanted to be free to spread his vasectomy-safe seed far and wide. It was the seventies, man.

As I got older, the messages kept coming. My job as a young girl was to be kind and polite. Don’t talk back. Don’t be sad. Don’t be angry. Don’t be loud. Don’t be so quiet. Don’t make things uncomfortable. Put a smile on your face. Don’t be rude. Say please. Act like you’re having fun. Say thank you. Boys act that way because they like you. He didn’t mean to hurt you. Don’t cry. Don’t eat too much. Boys will be boys.

He said it was consensual, and I believe him.

It took me a couple of hours, and maybe it helped that my daughter was wanting to be held, wanting to be picked up, wanting to rub my earlobe between her thumb and index finger — a habit she formed when she stopped nursing. Whatever it was, I realized if I called to tell the doctor what had happened and the anesthesiologist got fired, it wouldn’t be because I called. It would be because the anesthesiologist called me. He was responsible for his choices and his actions.

I couldn’t live with the thought that some woman might get hurt because I was worried about protecting a man like him. Why would I protect a man like him? I called the doctor’s office and he got fired. I called the Medical Board of California and filed a complaint. I don’t know what happened after that.

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We all have choices to make, and ultimately our choices define us.

I have a hard time with people who make choices but make them slant. Last week when we were in the lead-up to the jungle primary out here in California, I saw the comment of a man who said he’s voting Republican because his family is Republican and he’s always voted Republican, but he’s not a MAGA Republican, and doesn’t like MAGA policies. He believes in equal rights for women, he supports the LGBTQ community, he doesn’t want ICE rounding up anyone’s great-grandmas, he thinks the anti-DEI stance is wrong, and he believes in climate change and science.

That’s the kind of thing it’s hard for me to walk by, because it makes me want to bash my head into the nearest wall. If you’re voting Republican, you’re voting for the current Republican Party, led by the current president who is the head of MAGA and all related policies. It’s his party, and there’s no opt-out circle you can fill in, nowhere you will find: “Republican, but not like that.”

I know they’re trying to mess with the time-stamp rules at the USPS, but there’s no time warp with the ballot. It’s not like you vote Republican and somehow your vote is retroactively cast for Richard Nixon in 1969. It’s amazing how Watergate seems so quaint these days. I remember growing up hearing, “It wasn’t the crime, it was the cover-up.” Nixon used the FBI and CIA to try to obstruct justice and block the investigation into the burglary at the DNC.

The harder he tried to hide it, the worse the crimes he committed. Articles of impeachment were drawn up, and he resigned, throwing his famous Victory signs in the air for the last time. This is not that picture.

https://nara.getarchive.net/media

No one resigns today, though, and no one gets impeached. Crimes happen in broad daylight, and are announced on podcasts. Ivanka and Jared dive off the boat of friends and just happen to “discover an island in the Mediterranean.” They swim to its shore and hike barefoot to the highest point, becoming captivated. LOL. It’s Sazan Island — a former Cold War military base off the coast of Albania in the Adriatic Sea — and the “peninsula” she’s talking about is a wildlife and bird sanctuary. Of course they want to build a luxury resort there.

People in Albania are making their choices, too. Protests are massive and ongoing, and The Special Prosecution Office Against Corruption and Organized Crime (SPAK) is investigating the deal.

But let’s circle back for a moment, because we all have choices, regardless of party, regardless of gender. There’s a mess in Maine four days before their primary election, because Democrats stuck with Graham Platner when they could have had Governor Janet Mills. No matter how many scandals came out, they just kept giving the guy more rope because he’s handsome! He has trauma. He has a redemption story if you look at it in the right light and upside down and through a sheet of glass in the rain.

Remember Governor Janet Mills at the Governors’ lunch at the White House? Remember how the president tried to intimidate her in a room full of governors because she wasn’t throwing transgender kids in Maine under the bus when he threatened to withhold funding? Remember how she said, “See you in court”? I do. Did the people in Maine forget? Did progressive women around the country forget? Do we all have amnesia?

After the exchange, Mills released a statement saying, "If the President attempts to unilaterally deprive Maine school children of the benefit of Federal funding, my Administration and the Attorney General will take all appropriate and necessary legal action to restore that funding and the academic opportunity it provides. The State of Maine will not be intimidated by the President's threats."

Oh. And then she won in court.

Anyway, we have to flip the Senate. If I have to choose between Graham Platner and Susan Collins (and I don’t, because I’m in California), I’d pick Platner. It’s just stupid that’s the choice. I’d rather vote for Mills.

I don’t know what to tell you my progressive feminist friends (and the men who purportedly care about us), but if we want things to change, I think we need to make better choices, too. Starting now. It’s like we all have retrograde and anterograde amnesia. Like the anesthesiologist has visited except for some unknown reason, he’s convinced us there’s a vibe. It’s the same vibe every time. If we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we’ll keep getting what we’ve been getting.

Personally, I’d love a world where we have a lot more time to make memories, because we aren’t so worried about trying to survive and keep each other safe.

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