Last Tuesday morning, roughly at 7:40 am, as I lay on an operating room table, I heard, “Buon Giorno, Signor Zima. Come stai?”
I knew it was my surgeon. As we met to plan the surgery, we learned that we lived in Roma, Italia as two 21-year-old college students. I like narrative connections like that.
“Molto Bene, E Tu?” I replied.
My second open-heart surgery started with a discussion in Italian. I like that.
I once had a conversation in Italian with Pope John Paul II as I attended a papal audience with Loyola University’s John Felici Center. That was a powerful as well.
“He’s a Roman people, so we are going to take good care of him today”, my surgeon announced.
The anesthesiologist then started asking me about my time in Rome. As I conversed, she placed a mask on my face, I started to sound weird and off topic, at least to me, and then the lights went out.
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