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Surviving the Hawaiian missile crisis: My personal perspective on reality
Emergencies in the OR and in real life benefit from staying calm and focusing on safety.
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I finished picking up my registration materials for Hawaiian Eye 2018 in Wailea on Saturday, Jan. 13, and uploaded my presentations. I returned to my hotel room and kissed my sleeping wife on her forehead, with plans to head to the gym before enjoying paradise on a glorious sunny day on the beach with my wife. I was walking toward the elevator when a mother was running down the hall in her flip-flops and basically giving whiplash to her baby screaming, “We are going to die.” I asked if I could help her, and she said to look at my phone, which to my dismay read: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” The next 38 minutes seemed like an eternity.
I decided not to work out after all and returned to my room to unfortunately wake my wife from a restful sleep just so she could read the same text message on her phone. She was quite shocked at first, too. We turned on the television to see if CNN, CNBC, MSNBC or any local news media was airing this warning, but there was no information about the alert on any channel. We decided to look up on our smartphones how to survive a nuclear holocaust, which believably gave a glimmer of hope for us if a nuclear missile was really going to splash down. The key was to find a shelter with thick concrete walls and the ability to survive for 2 weeks in the shelter, allowing for complete nuclear fallout and minimal radiation exposure.
Our hotel recommended we go to the main ballroom, which had minimal concrete protection and a lot of anxious and progressively goofier folks who could have displayed unpredictable behavior at any given moment. We each packed a backpack with bottled water, nonperishable food items, a change of clothes and electronics such as battery backups for phone charging (although I doubt any cell phone towers would be operational after a blast anyway), and we each had a small hand-held LED flashlight as well. Of course, this “safety Mitch” behavior, as my wife always refers to me, was all for naught as we really thought there would be no chance to find a thick concrete wall shelter on Maui within 5 minutes from our location to even give us a chance in the first place.
We ended up finding a good hideout in the lower level of the hotel away from other unpredictable people in panic mode. I called my sister to give her our location and talked to my professional computer gaming son, who went online immediately to find out, at 36 minutes from the initial text I received, that it was actually a false alarm. The formal all-clear came at 38 minutes. My son at least gave me an extra 2 minutes peace of mind. And that was the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey from WGN Radio used to say at the close of every radio session. We went to the beach and had a few cocktails to calm our frayed nerves and enjoyed the rest of our Hawaiian vacation.
In retrospect, I try to relate this to my daily surgical OR experiences when all seems to be going so routine and perfect: Your premium surgeon world comes crashing down when you suddenly see the Red Sea part and you lose a big nuclear fragment of the cataract into the vitreous, or a large zonular dialysis suddenly appears, or a partial Descemet’s membrane detachment occurs while sealing the wound of a seamless uncomplicated cataract case. Always expect the unexpected in surgery, and always plan to be that “safety Mitch” my wife refers to in real life in the OR. Always have plan B ready to go with whatever anterior segment elective surgery is being performed that day. Will it be capsular tension rings, segments or hooks (MicroSurgical Technology) for zonular issues such as past trauma or pseudoexfoliation? Iris hooks, rings, expansion devices or Omidria (Omeros)? Pars plana vitrectomy for secondary glued IOL? White 9-0 Gore-Tex for scleral-fixated IOLs? miLOOP (Iantech) for dense cataracts? ORA (Alcon) for pseudophakic toric IOL axis alignment? Or just a good plan for an optic capture or reverse optic capture posterior chamber IOL approach for a posterior capsular tear?
The approach in surgery for the unexpected is the same for the unexpected in life. My “safety Mitch” approach really didn’t keep us alive any longer, but our resolve to stay calm and survive the Hawaiian missile crisis gave me a new perspective on reality as I continue to live life as if it were back to normal.
- For more information:
- Mitchell A. Jackson, MD, can be reached at Jacksoneye, 300 N. Milwaukee Ave., Suite L, Lake Villa, IL 60046; email: mjlaserdoc@msn.com.
Disclosure: Jackson reports he is a consultant for Omeros.