Like a Rolling Stone

I experienced Another Bizzare Moment in medicine the other day.

Here I was, holding a retractor, peering into a deep whole in a man's side, looking at his kidney which the surgeon was (rather vigorously) trying to free from the surrounding fatty tissue. The patient was a 50-something year old gentlemen who recently found out that he had disseminated renal cell carcinoma. His prognosis was poor. All this had come upon him rather suddenly. And now he was asleep on the operating room table.

It was a pretty quiet operation, as things go. The surgeon grunted and puffed away, muttering obscenities under his breath. The kidney, apparently, was being stubborn. The tumor was bigger than originally thought. My mind wandered, which happens often to whomever is holding the retractor. Then the incessant buzz of the background music stopped and over the radio waves, clear as could be, I heard:

Once upon a time you dressed so fine

You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?

People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"

You thought they were all kiddin' you

You used to laugh about

Everybody that was hangin' out

Now you don't talk so loud

Now you don't seem so proud...

It's hard to describe how fitting that song was, in that moment, amid the sterile steel and bright lights. One of those ironies of life, I guess.