Time to look up.
* I feel loads better, and thanks to my friends who offered a word of support, its really helped me stay on track and keep perspective on things.
* I love her so much, I want to reply. My heart is too heavy for my head to find the words it wants to say.
* Here's something a little more interesting to read for you all, a snippet into the life of a retrievalist....
I'm standing there in my sterile scrubs, hands up, holding my scalpel. I'm ready to put knife to skin for the very first time, a milestone in my professional career. Popping my retrievalist cherry. My job was to slice from the very top of the right femur from as near as possible to the pelvic bone without hitting the right femoral catheter drain that was there (we can't remove any of the med equipment -- this guy arrived with about 10 kilos of tubes and bag and wires) all the way down to just above the knee and join it with the smaller of 2 deep lacerations on his knee (for neatness). Then, after making the guiding slice, I had to cut down allllll the way through the muscle until I hit bone. Then from there, I had to fillet the skin layer away from the muscle to clear a path to then start clearing muscle away from the bone in order to fully expose it all the way up to the femoral head where its cradled in the pelvis in the acetabulum and down to just above the knee to the point where I had the electric saw charged and ready. At this point a few of the morgue techs had amassed at the viewing window into our work room. haha. I get the saw and I'm sawing away to dissect the distal end of the right femur about an inch above the knee. except i suck at using the Stryker Saw and it wasn't a clean break. I had to get the mallet and wedge to cut thru the last of it. I'm hammering away and this is clearly what those techs wanted to see when they were watching... and soon after they were gone. Greg suggested that they'd gone for a vom. At that point I realised that even morgue techs are grossed out by our work, its a pretty unique job. I suppose none of them have ever seen quite what we've just done in that room before.
Anyway, the rest of the retrieval went off without a hitch. Greg was impressed at how cleanly we sewed it up, with neat little stiches running down the donor's legs. Being an amateur seamstress in a past life, mine were beautiful and watertight (no seepage) :)
* I love her so much, I want to reply. My heart is too heavy for my head to find the words it wants to say.
* Here's something a little more interesting to read for you all, a snippet into the life of a retrievalist....
I'm standing there in my sterile scrubs, hands up, holding my scalpel. I'm ready to put knife to skin for the very first time, a milestone in my professional career. Popping my retrievalist cherry. My job was to slice from the very top of the right femur from as near as possible to the pelvic bone without hitting the right femoral catheter drain that was there (we can't remove any of the med equipment -- this guy arrived with about 10 kilos of tubes and bag and wires) all the way down to just above the knee and join it with the smaller of 2 deep lacerations on his knee (for neatness). Then, after making the guiding slice, I had to cut down allllll the way through the muscle until I hit bone. Then from there, I had to fillet the skin layer away from the muscle to clear a path to then start clearing muscle away from the bone in order to fully expose it all the way up to the femoral head where its cradled in the pelvis in the acetabulum and down to just above the knee to the point where I had the electric saw charged and ready. At this point a few of the morgue techs had amassed at the viewing window into our work room. haha. I get the saw and I'm sawing away to dissect the distal end of the right femur about an inch above the knee. except i suck at using the Stryker Saw and it wasn't a clean break. I had to get the mallet and wedge to cut thru the last of it. I'm hammering away and this is clearly what those techs wanted to see when they were watching... and soon after they were gone. Greg suggested that they'd gone for a vom. At that point I realised that even morgue techs are grossed out by our work, its a pretty unique job. I suppose none of them have ever seen quite what we've just done in that room before.
Anyway, the rest of the retrieval went off without a hitch. Greg was impressed at how cleanly we sewed it up, with neat little stiches running down the donor's legs. Being an amateur seamstress in a past life, mine were beautiful and watertight (no seepage) :)