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Friday, December 02, 2005

Lasers

I had gone over the entire operative procedure, the risks she was about to face, and answered pretty much every question that she and her family could come up with.

"Do you have to leave a scar?"

The sheer idiocy of this question gave me pause. From looking at her, I could tell the question wasn't in jest. I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to approach this without making her feel stupid. While I was trying to figure out how to reply as to not hurt her feelings, she follows her question with, "Can you do this surgery with lasers?"

We were about to remove a tumor in her abdomen that was as big as a cantaloupe. I looked around the room and all of her family were sitting there just waiting anxiously for my answer.

But all of a sudden, all I could think about were the sharks with laser beams from the movie Austin Powers, and the one scene where Mini-Me is humping the giant laser in the background as Dr. Evil is threatening the White House with death by laser beams.