you compartmentalize the person from the body? Likewise, looking down from above the table, does the doctor push aside their own feelings … emotions … in the moment? How do they not hear the voices of the patient’s hopes … fears … spirit? How do they not hear their own hopes … fears … spirit? “A surgeon knows what he knows and does well to stay in that box. Yeah, you hear the voice, but you stay in your lane, do your thing in your moment, focus on it, stick with it.” Dr. Bruce Lehnert. Confidence … it’s not swagger … it’s focus … it’s knowing yourself … it’s not arrogance … or will … or ego. It’s self-awareness, paramount and supreme and comfortable Self-awareness. In Can Tho, I watch a woman wheeled out of the operating room post-surgery waving from the gurney at one of the attending nurses. I realize this is the right stuff.
gratuitous violence. There is NO bad moon rising here. There IS a constant cacophony of beeps and the grinding whine of scooter motors. There are loud speakers and megaphones blaring out from scooter-driving pitchmen letting us all know about a nightclub, a party, a brand of cigarettes. There’s the old lady sitting on a milk crate next to a cracked Igloo cooler, her gouty hand wrapped in an ace bandage; her dark blotchy dark skin flaking off her shin, yelling across the street over the maelstrom of pedestrians, scooters, taxis, tour buses. ‘You! You! You buy water! You buy beer! Tiger bia! Bia Ba Ba Ba! (333 beer)!” There’s a Vietnamese cover of “Never Going to Give You Up” spilling out from a sidewalk bar. Yeah, in case you were wondering, you can get Rick Rolled in Can Tho. All the sounds smear together like an aural version of a kindergarten finger painting project. It’s not Simon and Garfunkel. There is no sound of silence on Hai Ba Trung along the Mekong River. But there is a harmony and a flow to everything. It expands beyond mere sound. It attaches to everything … part of the whole. It’s sound in three dimensions. You can hear it in the street din. You can see it in the ever-flowing tapestry of people weaving in and out of the unceasing traffic. The discordant consonance of ground level. The soundtrack of Vietnam. In the O.R., the banter of the doctors discussing the patient and procedure adds yet another note to the melody. Someone has brought in a Bluetooth speaker. Climbing above the buzz of the bone saw, something familiar rises up. The Allman Brothers Band. “You’re my blue sky; you’re my sunny day; don’t you know it makes me smile when you turn your love my way.” We’re back to classic rock. Only now it’s different. The music isn’t punctuating Hollywood helicopters flying over jungles or firefights in rice paddies — in a glorification of violence. No, it’s
THURSDAY, JANUARY 4, 2024
“We need some music in here, man. It’s getting too serious. ” — Dr. Bruce Lehnert
The first thing that hit me when I got to Vietnam is that the soundtrack is all wrong. My understanding of this place up until this point has a very distinct and specific soundtrack. Classic rock … Credence Clearwater Revival … The Rolling Stones cranked up to 11 “IT AIN’T ME! IT AIN’T ME! I AIN’T NO FORTUNATE ONE” “OOH SAID THE STORM IS THREATENING MY VERY LIFE TODAY. … IT’S JUST A SHOT AWAY! IT’S JUST A SHOT AWAY!” The songs are always irrevocably shackled to CGI images of napalm and firefights … the beauty of the music hobbled and handicapped by scenes of
2024–2025 red & gold | 25
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