Farewell Dr. Bishop, The Happiest Face in the O.R.

          “A good carpenter doesn’t blame his tools.”  He said it, and with a big grin on his face added that maybe he shouldn’t have said it to another ENT surgeon who was whining about how his instruments made it impossible for him to do the job the way it was supposed to be done.  Dr. William Bishop was one of those few surgeons made unflappable by experience and used to performing even the most delicate of procedures with the simplest of pieces of equipment.  With a scalpel, a Bovie cautery, a needle driver and a handful of hemostats and mosquitoes he could dance his was around the delicate facial nerves, dissect his way down to explore and excise an esophageal tumor, or remove a kid’s tonsils and adenoids.

               He was a damn good surgeon and a pleasure to be around inside or outside the operating room.  He told me once that he almost decided not to go into surgery because he had actually seen so many of his fellow physicians who became surgeons and do everything necessary to earn reputations as being both stereotypical surgeon-assholes.  But he like the work and so became a surgeon anyway, and I never once heard anybody say anything about him that did not reflect admiration and respect for the man and his skills. 

               When you saw him in his scrubs or white lab coat the first impression you might have would likely not have been that this man was an athlete.  He just didn’t look like a jock.  He didn’t sound like one either; but if you asked him about what adventures he’d had recently, his face would light up as he began to describe ocean kayaking, skiing down mountains you could only ascend by helicopter, hiking across Viet Nam, biking through India or just having fifty life size plastic pink flamingos delivered to the front yard of a nurse on her birthday.  If you asked what  might be his next big adventure something you never would have imagined had already been planned.  He loved life and knew how to get the most out of it. 

               Dr. Bishop never raised his voice in the O.R, never showed anger, impatience or even frustration that I saw.  He never in any way that insinuated himself to be superior to the nurses, transporters, technicians, aids or housekeeping staff with whom he worked every day; but the man was awesome.  He was the kind of person most of us, including and especially myself, should try our best to emulate.  But I would need to put in a lot of hard work.  He just did it naturally.