OM in the Operating Room

In 7th grade we dissected frogs. I told my lab partner, "I can't do this." The formaldehyde, the flesh, the thin blade of the scalpel. "Shush," she said with scorn as she slid the blade from gullet to gut, then used her bare fingertips to peel away the flaps of skin, opening the body of the frog where hundreds of slick black eggs lay in a heap. She showed me how to insert a pin through rubbery flaps of flesh. How that sharp point would pop the layers clean to the other side. "Here, " she said, "hold the skin back so I can dig out those eggs." I tried, I really did, but I could not get past the feeling of amphibian flesh and its tug on the spines of metal flaying the frog flat on its back in a sea of formaldehyde fumes. In a moment my breath was stuck in my stomach, my skin cold and wet. The girl across from me said I turned three shades of green before waving a little wave and melting to the floor, out cold.

Twenty years later I found myself strapped to a table in an icy operating room surrounded by nurses and needles, blue caps, and round, bright lights announcing unnatural sterility. Then the anesthesiologist with the metal and medicine between the bones of my spine that would numb me from feet to chest.

'This is not how a baby should be born,' I thought, but it was too late for another choice.

The ceiling tile above my head was aglow with smears of brown and orange shaped like fall leaves. I resisted them because the earth outside was still glowing green, even if it was the deep green of latest summer just before the leaves begin to turn. Nothing was real in this white room. My legs were the first to leave me. I clenched my fists and tugged my arms instinctively against the leather straps.

"I can't breathe," I said to the anesthesiologist. But indeed I was breathing, hyperventilating as the two doctors took their places, one on either side of my frozen torso. Smiling at me behind masks before beginning what appeared to be some interesting task. An oxygen mask was put over my nose and mouth.

"Inhale deeply," I was told. I tried but my ribs were not my ribs anymore, they did not lift, or if they did, I could not feel them. A tear slid from the corner of each of my eyes. With tremendous resistance I held back the many tears that would have followed. I didn't want to cry, it would clog my nose and I had no hands to blow it. I turned to my husband, who until then I didn't realize was in the room. He was seated to the left of my head. I said, "Tell me a story." He couldn't think of one. I said, "Tell me about Franco." My friend, the bravest cat I've ever known. "Tell me about him," I said. Russell began speaking. I tried so hard to listen, to follow the story, but it was no use.

Turning away from him, I stared at the facade of leaves on the ceiling trying to imagine being under a real tree, but the doctors were pulling now. I could feel the tug of my thick flesh. I knew organs had been removed, that there was a hole in my body big enough to fit hands in and out of. The tugging and the murmurs of the doctors around the tugging and the blood, the slipperiness of the blood that helped them pull my body inside-out made me sick. My eyes darted around for a place of comfort to rest, but finding none lost my breath and slipped back to hyperventilating.

The anesthesiologist leaned over my face. "You're okay," he said, "don't worry, it won't be long now." I didn't believe him. I could still feel them down there pushing and pulling, the nurses moving to and fro like ants around my bloody entrails, and still no baby.
My breath was caught in my chest like a bird caught in a box of light, seeing its way out and banging against every pane of glass unable to break free. The tears were rising again and my face was getting hot.

"No," I said to myself. "You are stronger than this. Breathe."

I thought about the three-part-breath we learned in my prenatal yoga class. Since most of my body was numb I was afraid to begin it, wondering how it might effect the doctors' work. I began anyway. Imagining my belly filling with air, then the space inside my ribs, then, finally, the space around my heart. I filled my body to the collar bones with air, once, twice, three times, four. Then the OM came to me. First into my mind, then into my upper chest, the only part of my breathing I could really feel. It opened there, the OM, and rose up through my throat, out my mouth and into the air of that unholy place. Over and over OM vibrated itself along my vocal cords and soothed my soul. My arms stopped straining against the straps and my eyes closed peacefully around the sound. My daughter was lifted out of me to the resonant hum of that sacred syllable, and I was glad.

The following day, the anesthesiologist visited me in my room. He looked at me curiously before asking, "Do you meditate?"
"No," I said, "I do yoga."
"I wondered," he said, "because when you were on the table and you began to chant, your heart-rate dropped from 90 beats per minute to 65 beats per minute in a very brief time. I've never seen anything like it." My face lit with a smile which he logged with the same curiosity he came in the room with, then cordially, he departed.

Returning to my prenatal yoga class at four months postpartum, I couldn't wait to share this amazing experience. I wanted these women to know that what they were doing was not just exercise, but a deeply spiritual and healing practice that would help guide them in even the most frightening journeys. I wanted them to understand how blessed they were to be able to practice yoga, and to share that practice with their unborn babies. That in some way, what they were doing was giving their child light and peace, as well as giving it to themselves.

My teacher was beaming when I conveyed the experience to her, and of course she wanted me to share it with the roomful of women. I told it in my best story voice so as to keep their attention, but I noticed that some of them began grazing the floor with their eyes or picking lint from their pants. "There is proof," I said, brandishing the testament of the anesthesiologist and his little piece of paper that would show beyond the shadow of a doubt how OM had come to my rescue. Most of the women looked at me blankly. I made one further attempt to rally them, so great was my desire for them to understand the miracle of this practice, but I ended up having settle for a smile or two before taking my place to sit, and breathe.