(no subject)
So last night I spent a few hours listening to a plastic surgeon speak about his career. Boy, does medical school sound fun. Nothing like being poor and overworked for a decade! This poor guy had trouble remembering when his kids were born. But I digress... I just have to comment on the absolute coolness of medicine. He went through quite a few before and after photos of trauma patients that he had reconstructed, things like shotgun wounds to the face, amputations, and exploded limbs. Some of them you couldn't even tell the difference. Medicine can now take a man who has blown off the bottom half of his face and fix him so that you won't be able to tell a year later. Wow. Also, this guy described about the most surreal scene I can imagine:
So I had just gotten out of a surgery at two in the morning. I was sitting there in the empty hallway, putting on my shoes and enjoying that post-surgery adrenaline residue, when I hear Led Zeppelin playing somewhere. It was Kashmir, throbbing slowly and steadily. Everything was dark this time of night, so I started wandering around, looking for a radio someone left on or something. Well, I finally find an operating room emitting a glow, so I start to edge my head around the doorframe. The first thing I see is the anesthesiologist, napping in a chair. Every once in a while he would look up to check a screen, then close his eyes again. The machine he was watching was bathed in a red glow from somewhere. Then as I got my head around the frame, I saw the operation in the middle of the theater. The patient was on the table, which had been elevated above the head of the two doctors present. The only bright lights in the room are focused on him, like spotlights at a hollywood premiere. He had a broken femur, and two doctors were putting a long metal rod into the bone. The doctors were hammering the rod in to the rhythym of Led Zepplin. da da DA, da da DA, da da DA. Every time they would hit the rod with the sledgehammer, a red spray would fly into the air, looking black against the red glow of the room. And as I stood there one of the doctors slowly turned around and looked at me, blood spraying against his face shield at the command of the electric guitars. And he stared at me for a second, then turned slowly back to the body and continued working.
How fucking awesome.
So I had just gotten out of a surgery at two in the morning. I was sitting there in the empty hallway, putting on my shoes and enjoying that post-surgery adrenaline residue, when I hear Led Zeppelin playing somewhere. It was Kashmir, throbbing slowly and steadily. Everything was dark this time of night, so I started wandering around, looking for a radio someone left on or something. Well, I finally find an operating room emitting a glow, so I start to edge my head around the doorframe. The first thing I see is the anesthesiologist, napping in a chair. Every once in a while he would look up to check a screen, then close his eyes again. The machine he was watching was bathed in a red glow from somewhere. Then as I got my head around the frame, I saw the operation in the middle of the theater. The patient was on the table, which had been elevated above the head of the two doctors present. The only bright lights in the room are focused on him, like spotlights at a hollywood premiere. He had a broken femur, and two doctors were putting a long metal rod into the bone. The doctors were hammering the rod in to the rhythym of Led Zepplin. da da DA, da da DA, da da DA. Every time they would hit the rod with the sledgehammer, a red spray would fly into the air, looking black against the red glow of the room. And as I stood there one of the doctors slowly turned around and looked at me, blood spraying against his face shield at the command of the electric guitars. And he stared at me for a second, then turned slowly back to the body and continued working.
How fucking awesome.