Our managing editor, Stephanie Wasek, had a salivary mucocele removed from the inside of her right cheek last month. I scrubbed in to observe while her surgeon removed, one tiny red shard at a time, the little friend that had been growing inside her mouth for three months - which is how Steph referred to what the op report said was either a "lesion" or a "neoplasm of uncertainty." The cause: Her incisors had landed wrong on a hard bite down. We hired a photographer to take photos, nearly 700 of them, not only so Steph could see what she looked like intubated and oh-so-happy on Versed, but also so we could illustrate the stories we bring you.

I felt like a junior member of the surgical team, unsure or where to stand (not too close to the sterile field, the tech warned) or what to do (no eating the package of graham crackers I'd gotten from Nurse Cindy to settle my squeamish stomach and tucked in a pocket). So I watched and I listened. Here are some observations from a June morning (6/6/06) in the short procedure unit (or SPU, which could mean it's not exactly a day at the spa) at Phoenixville (Pa.) Hospital.

• This was Steph's first surgery; guess what had her most uptight. That's right, getting the IV started. "You'll feel a stick, a burn and then pressure," warned Cindy as she went feeling for a vein. She issued another warning as she pushed the needle in: "First a pinch, then a sting." Steph winced, tightened and then relaxed.
• They marked the site by drawing a purple dot on Steph's right cheek. I should have asked why they didn't use YES or the surgeon's initials.
• Steph very much appreciated the warm blanket she received in the cinderblocked OR.
• Surgeon Laurence Cramer, MD, gave you a sense of supreme confidence: cool and calm and in complete control. He took great care to make sure his iPod's portable speakers were set up just so on a stool near the surgical field. "Raise the volume," he asked when Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" came on.
• This was odd: Steph had an all-male surgical team - surgeon, CRNA, tech and RN.
• Paper charting is so cumbersome, something I noticed throughout Steph's case and even more so as we prepared this month's high-tech issue.
• Later, in recovery, I noticed a clatter behind me. I turned to see two nurses helping a wobbly co-worker onto a rolling stool and pushing her toward a storage-room door. What on earth? Here, the RN had gotten her hand caught between two stretchers and nearly fainted from the pain and the sight of her own blood. Glad I had my graham crackers.
• Once Steph got her Percocet and coffee in PACU, we both felt well enough to go home.