Saturday, I go to get a Covid-19 test; next Thursday, I go into the hospital for a catheterization, an intervention, a procedure, or a cardiac heart procedure, as I like to call it.

The medical people are quick to point out that it’s not real surgery, like open-heart surgery, it’s something further down the line (the medical community has its share of snobs too), although it can be just as life-changing.

Or if we’re honest, life-altering or ending.

Messing with somebody’s heart is never a small matter, even though it is becoming quite routine.

I’m excited about the “intervention” and nervous at the same time. Like most of you, I know a fair number of people who went into the hospital for minor surgeries and either didn’t come out or came out altered.

The odds against serious mishaps are very long, and I have great faith in my surgeon and cardiologist.

But they moved the procedure to a hospital with a cardiac surgeon on emergency standby, and I have been warned a few times that there are no guarantees in that world.

Somewhere along the line, I’ll be asked to sign a paper saying I accept the operation even though it could fail or kill me. I’ve signed a few of them by now, and I’ve not yet hesitated.

I am very upbeat about this procedure; I would be a robot if it didn’t make me nervous.

It’s curious, though, I also look forward to next Thursday. There is something mystical about entering a hospital; it is a passage to another world. In it, I leave my identity and dignity behind.

Maria drops me off; I walk into the lobby, check-in, answer many Covoid-19 questions and get my temperature taken. I go to an admitting room, pay my co-pay, show my ID, go over my life, phone numbers, and medications.

The outer world and its travails recedes.

I am taken into another room, shown a locker, surrendered my clothes, iPhone, Cross Necklace, shoes, and socks.

In exchange, I get a gown that is too small, strips me of much dignity, is cold and uncomfortable, and comes back out to surrender myself to that world.

The nurses are always nice, competent, brisk.

Procedures and surgeries are serious business and taken seriously. I try to joke, and sometimes they joke back. I try to take my iPhone in so I can take some photos, but they usually just laugh at me.

I’ll ask to keep my cross necklace on, they will say no. I’ll be nice. You don’t want to piss anybody off in that room.

Someone comes to put two or three IV needles and patches into my arms, and a surgeon comes in to explain what he is doing. I try to listen, but it’s the fourth or fifth time I’ve heard it. I get it, I agree, let’s get it done.

Usually, he or she gives me some new information, I try to take it in, but I’m not really focused on the details. I know Maria is somewhere worried, and I remind the doctor to call her soon.

The nurses straighten me out and re-arrange me and transfer me to a very narrow bed on wheels.

I’m rolled into a surgical theater with very bright lights and up to a dozen people, each with a different role, each scurrying around, talking to each other as if I’m not there.

A nurse asks me how out of it I want to be, and I say I’d love to sleep through it, but she says they want me conscious of making me happy and sleepy. Usually, I wake up not knowing I was asleep, but the nurses assure me I was snoring.

It is hard for me to imagine snoring while somebody is sending a wire through an artery to my heart.

If there’s a mishap, I’ll be rushed into an operating room, an even bigger room, and they’ll really knock me out there.

I feel very confident about this procedure, and I relish the idea that in eight days, I will have three arteries pouring blood into my patient and abused (by me) heart.

I’m working hard to be in the best shape for this intervention. Eating well, losing weight, exercising, working at cardiac rehab, taking walks. This part is up to me, and I take it seriously.

The rest of it is out of my hands. If it doesn’t work, I’ll wake up in intensive care. If I wake up in the catheter lab, it either went well or the surgeon decided he couldn’t do it.

I want it to work.

When I wake up, I’ll be kept absolutely still for up to three hours, and I hope to have my music and earphones handy. I will have to go to the bathroom a lot, and I will need help doing that, something it is very uncomfortable for me to accept.

But the nurses have seen it all, and worse than me.

We all end up laughing at my exposed butt and loss of any shred of dignity. We figure it out together. I wake up gradually. I’ll call Maria if I can.

After my waiting period, I’m wheeled up to a hospital room, always with a roommate. I know I won’t sleep until morning, every half-hour someone comes in to check a bandage, give me water, take my urinal out, draw blood, give me my medicine.

I think Maria will visit me about that time, and then there will be a long and dark night.

I’ll read a book and listen to music and wait for the doctors to show up in the morning and release me. Nurses will drift in and out like ghosts with their carts full of meds and needles and tubes.

Sometimes the roommate is in great agony, sometimes they are quiet.

A few more hours of waiting, and they take out the catheters and the tubes and help me get dressed and lecture me about taking it easy and remind me of my medications, and talk about wound care, and then walk or ride me out to the lobby to meet Maria and come home.

Something is liberating about being cut off from the wider world’s tribulations, something peaceful about being so carefully observed and cared for. Good nurses are angels.

So are loving wives. I’ll blog if I can, or sleep if I can’t.