I tend to get chatty when I’m nervous, so a few years ago, as I was lying on my side in an operating room watching the surgical team prepare for my procedure, I started making small talk with the anesthesiologist.
I know what you’re thinking — a gentleman of a certain age tipped over on his side in an operating room? It must have been one of those procedures, one of those little-camera-on-the-probe type deals. You’re probably wondering why I was nervous. These things are pretty routine. And as anyone who has ever had a colonoscopy will tell you, by the time you’re on the table, the worst part, the preparation, is over.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t that kind of procedure.
I was there for a bone marrow biopsy (spoiler alert: turned out to be nothing), but those words in that order are pretty alarming. So as the nurse was inserting the IV and the doctor was issuing gruff orders, I asked the anesthesiologist what I thought was a simple question.
“How does anesthesia work, anyway?” I asked breezily as a nurse was drawing a black circle with a Sharpie at the base of my spine. The circle was there to guide the surgical drill that was going to pierce my skin and bone to the marrow and extract a sample of the gooey whatever-it-is. How exactly anesthesia works seemed like a relevant subject for conversation.
The anesthesiologist smiled awkwardly. He had the expression of someone who was trying not to say something.
“I mean,” I went on, “it’s not like sleep, right? If I’m asleep and you drill into me, I am probably going to wake up. So how does it work?”
“Well, you know, it’s complicated. There are, you know, um, competing theories … ”
“Theories?” I said, moving away from the drill apparatus.
“Well, no, not theories, like, guesses, but it’s one of those things that … ”
At which point, the surgeon looked up sharply at the anesthesiologist, who got the message and turned the knob that began to flood my IV with Propofol.
“Wait, so you’re telling me that we have no idea how — ” was all I got out before the drug hit. However it does its job, Propofol, I am here to tell you, works terrifically. Didn’t feel a thing.
I thought about that moment this week when I read an article in Scientific American with the disconcerting title: “No one can explain why planes stay in the air.”
I went to some pretty elite schools, so I am an expert at pretending to know and understand things I am utterly clueless about. I’ll spare you the act. I never really got physics. Ever since the moment in middle school science when they tried to get me to accept that a heavy thing and a light thing fall at the same rate (crazy, right?), whenever I hear physics stuff, I just tune out.
But I’ll do my best to summarize. There are two competing theories that address the question of aerodynamic lift. One of them explains it this way: The air moving on top of the wing is moving faster than the air moving underneath the wing — the top side of the wing is curved, and the bottom side of the wing is flat — and this creates a low-pressure zone above the wing. This creates lift. That would be all there is to it, except it doesn’t explain how planes can fly upside down, which they can.
The other theory is from Newton, and it’s basically this: Air has mass, so the wing pushes air down (the action), and that pushes the wing up (the reaction). But that doesn’t explain the other theory, and what I’ve learned from physics is that you really do need to tie it all up into a neat little package.
Research is apparently underway to explain exactly why planes don’t fall out of the sky, but in the meantime, we’re all standing at the gate, trying to sneak into Group 2 with our wheelies and our Cinnabons, blissfully uninterested in how it all works — or doesn’t. When they drilled into my spine, extracted some marrow, tested it, and found (to my intense relief) basically nothing, I didn’t restart my investigations into the nature of Propofol.
I took my good news, and I didn’t ask questions.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
