My eyes opened in wide terror as the olympic triathlete/surgical patient's muscular jaw clenched down on the ET tube, attempting to draw against the closed circuit and flood his lungs in a deluge of negative pressure pulmonary edema. At that moment, I knew that my destiny as the best anesthesiologist's shadow ever was to stick my finger between that patient's incisors and sacrifice myself as a her bite block. I know I will never recover these two lost fingers and become the world's most dextrous plastic surgeon, but I know that only by becoming a most impactful anesthesiologist will I become a human human being again -- well, at least on the spiritual level.
