| "You apologize!" "No you apologize!" "No you apologize!" "No you apologize!" |
Lisieux, France: A urological Surgeon and an Anesthesiologist exchanged insults, blows, and worse while their unconscious Patient lay on the operating table in mid-surgery.
The violent confrontation appears to have been a pitch-perfect metaphor for the disfunction of the United States Congress, the Trump administration, the bureaucratic outrageousness of ICE in separating young children from their parents, and numerous intra-party rivalries among both Republicans and Democrats.
According to the online journal FranceTVinfo and others, the violence began when the anesthesiologist arrived in the operating room at 4 PM to help wake up a patient who had been under anesthesia during urological surgery.
Informed by the surgeon that he hadn’t finished yet, and that there was yet another procedure to be performed, the anesthesiologist evidently became irate. One report had him calling the urologist
"an incompetent shithead" ("connard incompétent," for those of you who'd like to learn to cuss in French.)
"an incompetent shithead" ("connard incompétent," for those of you who'd like to learn to cuss in French.)
“We don’t treat emergencies in this clinic,” the anesthesiologist reportedly said. Furthermore, his lawyer declared, “In this clinic you’re not allowed to program surgery after 4 PM.”
The news report did not explain the reason for the rule. Presumably, it’s because that’s quitting time, and like Donald Trump, golf and personal welfare are more important than life-and-death matters like an unconscious patient on the operating table in mid-surgery. Or like avoiding World War III.
Nor did the news report explain what a doctor is supposed to do with a patient if it's quitting time and the surgery isn't yet complete. But never mind.
In the operating room, the dispute between the two docs grew angrier and angrier. The surgeon became so enraged that he threw a bottle of antiseptic in the anesthesiologist’s face. In response, the anesthesiologist grabbed a pair of scissors and went after the surgeon until a nurse blocked him.
All this took place at the edge of the table where the patient lay unconscious. But it didn’t stop there. The confrontation continued in a changing room outside of the operating room, where the surgeon whacked the anesthesiologist in the eye with his computer case — so hard that the anesthesiologist suffered a blowout fracture.
“My client could have lost an eye,” huffed the anesthesiologist’s lawyer.
Moralizing a bit about the insouciance of the other side, the anesthesiologist’s lawyer added, “This story would never have reached the disciplinary chamber if the surgeon had apologized before leaving.”
This last statement resonated here in the United States, where any time anybody says anything in public, the opposition demands an apology, most especially the people around a snowflake named Donald Trump, who is supposed to hurl the insults, and not get hit with any himself.
The French journal did not report what became of the patient. Or as an English-speaking French acquaintance of The New York Crank said, “Patient? What patient?”
The fight between the doctors occurred in 2017. It only came to public attention when a hearing was held about it recently. For all anybody knows, the patient may still be lying there, surgical instruments protruding from his body, by now conscious, in pain, and screaming his head off.
Donald Trump, in a metaphorically-similar matter, answered the question of what happened to the patient by saying, “We shall see.”
