Surgery Thoughts
1) It's taking over my life. I don't HAVE a life anymore. I have time that I spend sleeping (limited), and time that I spend in the hospital, and maybe two to three hours that are mine for the day. For some reason, three hours to do errands, cook food, eat food, see the boyfriend, relax, read news, and take a bath seems much shorter than three hours standing and retracting someone's skin flaps. I just get so disoriented...I lay in bed last night and heard something that sounded like distant fireworks and thought, "Oh, have we had the fourth of July yet?" When I am standing freezing in the OR, I think, "I wonder if it's almost Christmas". I just have no perception of anything anymore. I am frighteningly isolated. I see other people on surgery and my boyfriend. That's about it.
2) Today was really horrible because I was literally just coming upstairs to the team room with a much-needed cup of coffee and painful painful feet after five hours spent doing two thyroids, and the resident who I hadn't been working with caught me in the hall and really excitedly said, "Hey! Chang! We've just gotten a new surgery that you can scrub in on! It's now!" So I put the coffee down and scrubbed back in. During that surgery, I...
2a) realized that I don't really like huge huge gobs of blood. During the other surgeries, when something is bleeding on me (a little vessel that has been cut shooting blood drops up into the air and spattering my gown and gloves), I've sort of been very blase about it. It gets fixed. I don't really mind. But this surgery, we were re-opening this woman because a huge hematoma (blood and blood clot) had formed where we did her surgery yesterday and it was A HUGE amount and really disgusting, especially the gigantic clots. The attending wasn't even bothering to use suction or tools or whatever; she was scooping up handfuls of blood and clot and dumping it into a basin and that was quite disgusting. I had thought that the only body fluid I really minded was vomit, but apparently I don't like 750 mL of blood clots either.
2b) was in so much pain!! In the first place, I was in this stupid surgery that I didn't want to be in and had already done five hours that day. And yes, it might not be a lot for people in some programs, but for me, it is very tiring and painful, especially to the feet and back. And then, the attending didn't really seem to want me there. She said, "Oh, I'm sorry, Chang; this might not be very interesting because there's not a lot for you to do." Alas, then she found something for me to do. I had to retract from across the table with my arms outstretched and raised pulling hard to pull up the skin flap. I felt like my shoulder blade was driving directly into my spine. My back started spasming. Thankfully, the scrub nurse was SO nice and kept asking if I was okay because he knew I was in a really awkward position. I tried to hold on, but after ten minutes or so I was in so much pain that it was all I could do not to moan. So he asked me if I was okay and I said no and started crying. In surgery. Everyone was really nice and the circulating nurse led me out of the room and calmed me down a little and I scrubbed out, but I am so ashamed....I have to work with this attending again tomorrow, and she's kind of scary...and also, my back and shoulders REALLY hurt.
3) Surgeons do have a reputation for being really sort of mean and intense, but they do say that they are intense because what they're doing is so important. And that is true. It is really easy to screw someone up pretty badly. So I suppose you can't have a lot of latitude for mistakes, because mistakes actually matter. Surgeons (at least many of the ones I've talked to) do also seem to have a lot of insight into what I guess is the humanitarian aspect of surgery. They do feel both proud and honored that people allow them to cut open their bodies. I understand this feeling--I feel it about asking personal questions, that I can ask a patient about their sex life or drug use or whatever without any reciprocal information, without really any relationship with the patient, and the social contract suggests that they are supposed to give me an honest answer. I guess I would feel the same way about cutting someone open if I were actually in charge of anything besides retracting or if I were interested in it. Though, as a corollary, I learned that my name goes on the note of the operation under "Assistants". It says in the note, "Surgery Assistants: Russian Lady, PGY-3; Chang, JMS"! What? I'm assisting? No, I'm not assisting anything--I'm really just like a machine. You move me to a position; I hold the position. But regardless--I am generally impressed with surgeons' feelings re: the trust that patients place into them. If I may be anti-surgeon for a moment, I didn't think that surgeons thought that way...I thought they were just all muscleheads who liked cutting and chopping. Maybe that's ortho.
Given that I need to go to bed in an hour, I will go take my bath soon and jot down more surgery-related thoughts when I have them. I am in so much pain. OW.
Chang
2) Today was really horrible because I was literally just coming upstairs to the team room with a much-needed cup of coffee and painful painful feet after five hours spent doing two thyroids, and the resident who I hadn't been working with caught me in the hall and really excitedly said, "Hey! Chang! We've just gotten a new surgery that you can scrub in on! It's now!" So I put the coffee down and scrubbed back in. During that surgery, I...
2a) realized that I don't really like huge huge gobs of blood. During the other surgeries, when something is bleeding on me (a little vessel that has been cut shooting blood drops up into the air and spattering my gown and gloves), I've sort of been very blase about it. It gets fixed. I don't really mind. But this surgery, we were re-opening this woman because a huge hematoma (blood and blood clot) had formed where we did her surgery yesterday and it was A HUGE amount and really disgusting, especially the gigantic clots. The attending wasn't even bothering to use suction or tools or whatever; she was scooping up handfuls of blood and clot and dumping it into a basin and that was quite disgusting. I had thought that the only body fluid I really minded was vomit, but apparently I don't like 750 mL of blood clots either.
2b) was in so much pain!! In the first place, I was in this stupid surgery that I didn't want to be in and had already done five hours that day. And yes, it might not be a lot for people in some programs, but for me, it is very tiring and painful, especially to the feet and back. And then, the attending didn't really seem to want me there. She said, "Oh, I'm sorry, Chang; this might not be very interesting because there's not a lot for you to do." Alas, then she found something for me to do. I had to retract from across the table with my arms outstretched and raised pulling hard to pull up the skin flap. I felt like my shoulder blade was driving directly into my spine. My back started spasming. Thankfully, the scrub nurse was SO nice and kept asking if I was okay because he knew I was in a really awkward position. I tried to hold on, but after ten minutes or so I was in so much pain that it was all I could do not to moan. So he asked me if I was okay and I said no and started crying. In surgery. Everyone was really nice and the circulating nurse led me out of the room and calmed me down a little and I scrubbed out, but I am so ashamed....I have to work with this attending again tomorrow, and she's kind of scary...and also, my back and shoulders REALLY hurt.
3) Surgeons do have a reputation for being really sort of mean and intense, but they do say that they are intense because what they're doing is so important. And that is true. It is really easy to screw someone up pretty badly. So I suppose you can't have a lot of latitude for mistakes, because mistakes actually matter. Surgeons (at least many of the ones I've talked to) do also seem to have a lot of insight into what I guess is the humanitarian aspect of surgery. They do feel both proud and honored that people allow them to cut open their bodies. I understand this feeling--I feel it about asking personal questions, that I can ask a patient about their sex life or drug use or whatever without any reciprocal information, without really any relationship with the patient, and the social contract suggests that they are supposed to give me an honest answer. I guess I would feel the same way about cutting someone open if I were actually in charge of anything besides retracting or if I were interested in it. Though, as a corollary, I learned that my name goes on the note of the operation under "Assistants". It says in the note, "Surgery Assistants: Russian Lady, PGY-3; Chang, JMS"! What? I'm assisting? No, I'm not assisting anything--I'm really just like a machine. You move me to a position; I hold the position. But regardless--I am generally impressed with surgeons' feelings re: the trust that patients place into them. If I may be anti-surgeon for a moment, I didn't think that surgeons thought that way...I thought they were just all muscleheads who liked cutting and chopping. Maybe that's ortho.
Given that I need to go to bed in an hour, I will go take my bath soon and jot down more surgery-related thoughts when I have them. I am in so much pain. OW.
Chang