The Big Red One

The most cynical surgeons like to say that anesthesiology is ninety-nine percent boredom, and one percent sheer terror. Strange Daze is about the one percent....

Today’s episode is a case that involved a man who served in The Big Red One, the U.S. Army’s First Infantry Division, during WWII. He was among the tens of thousands of soldiers in The Big Red One who faced almost certain death when they landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, June 6th, 1944.

Forty years later, he faced death once again. This time, he was under my care scheduled for coronary artery bypass surgery. That morning, I was prepared for just about anything… except the complication that threatened his life. It’s never the shark you see that bites you; it’s the one you don’t see. How can a case go so wrong? In about a million and a half different ways. The Big Red One is just one of them.