Free The Cost of Hope by Amanda Bennett Page A

pretty new to surgery, having just finished his residency at University of Chicago. He’d done fewer than twenty such surgeries himself. And he was eager to make his mark. As a resident, he had been working with other doctors on what they called “minimally invasive surgery” back in Chicago, mainly working with living kidney donors. “I drove the camera,” he says. But hardly anyone had been doing this kind of surgery for something as big as a kidney here in Oregon at that time. Dr. Turner really wanted to do it. “I wanted to do something cool,” he tells me now. “I wanted to be out there pushing the envelope. I wanted to be the guy. That was common for us early surgeons.”
    I can’t say I’ve ever thought of surgery as “cool,” but listening to the excitement in his voice as he recalls operating on my husband almost convinces me. I hear in his voice the same confidence that we saw on his face those many years ago. A kind of professionalpride that I can admire. An intellectual curiosity and taste for adventure that I know Terence could have related to—if he could somehow have gotten past the idea that these are HIS guts, and this is HIS life.
    Dr. Turner now tells me that Terence’s surgery would be by far the most complex he had done. “This was a chance to do something innovative again,” Dr. Turner recalls. “It was a great challenge for me to step toward. It was a cool surgery, and the benefit of the extra work was going to be huge.” Of course, he adds, in a phrase I am comfortable hearing only at the distance of years, “I was still developing the technique on how I was going to apply it.”
    I now think Terence would be excited to know how he helped advance the technique. I am glad neither of us knew at the time.
    Dr. Turner tells me something else that I am glad Terence and I didn’t know back then: He had met many of the people working with him in the operating room that day for the very first time. And that wasn’t unusual. As a surgeon, he has his own company. He doesn’t work for the hospital. And when he comes to do surgeries he, like other surgeons, doesn’t get to pick his own team. The scrub nurses, the attendants, even the anesthesiologists are all assembled anew for each operation.
    I know that professionals can come together and work effectively bound by nothing more than their years of common experience. I watch Terence’s pickup Dixieland bands perform in just that way. Would I have been happy to know that Terence’s complicated surgery was being handled, not by an experienced and well-rehearsed team, but by people who didn’t know one another? I think not.
    In any case, Dr. Turner says, although tempers can sometimes run high when these professionals’ work styles clash, nothing of the sort happened during Terence’s surgery. It all went smoothly and well.
    The Blue Cross records I’ve gathered show that the bills forthat feat were relatively modest—just over $25,000. Most of that is for the hospital—$1,944 for the room; $124 a day for oxygen; $10,000 for the use of the operating room. Dr. Turner bills $2,590.
    As I begin to think about all that we have done and all that we—or someone—has spent to keep Terence alive, a test keeps popping into my head: Would you have paid for this if it had been your own money? That sum—$25,000—is more than half the cost of this year’s college tuition for Terry. It’s just about what my sister spent to turn her back porch into a comfortable family room. I have a friend who spent twice that for a new kitchen. Would I spend $25,000 for a shot at keeping Terence alive for five years? Damn straight. As it turns out, we paid $209.87. The rest was covered by insurance—in reality by my employer, who footed the bill.
    Looking back, I find it astounding how little we knew both about the surgery itself, and about how much it cost.
    Instead, our focus was on the bullet we dodged. Terence and I went home to sleep it all off.

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