My third and final week of placements flew by. All except for the last half hour. That last half hour lasted longer than the three weeks of placements put together. Instead of going through day by day, I thought I’d just write of some highlights of the week.

I got to spend a day in theatre.

Young Man With Crohn’s Disease asked me out to lunch.

I got through the whole three weeks without ever seeing anyone vomit.

I only had the one incident with bloody ass poo.

I got to go home early on the Tuesday because I worked through my lunch time.

I got to work with great preceptors all week!

I met Robin Williams exact double who was a theatre technician. It was freakin’ scarey how identical they were. I wanted to ask him if I could call him Patch Adams, since, all people in theatre wear blue scrubs and you can’t tell if they’re nurses, technicians, surgeons or doctors.

I’ll detail my day in theatre because that was pretty cool. So. Our facilitator found me in the ward and said “c’mon, Suzy, we’re going to theatre!” and she took me by the elbow and led me down to level four and through a big pair of sliding glass doors into a bright, white (no natural light) rabbit warren, then through to the female change rooms where I got to get changed into light blue scrubs! It was awesome right from the start!

I met this middle-aged lady they were to be operating onand that I was to be observing and she was a bit nervous, as you would be. I held her hand and she squeezed back tight whenever her anxiety would creep up. I tried to take her mind off the surgery by asking her about who’s waiting for her at home and her family and what she does for a living. She was lovely! And chirpy! I walked with her into the operating theatre and held her hand, watched as the anaesthetics team worked thier magic and felt her grip lessen and lessen ’til her fingers slipped through mine and she was out cold.

She was having a double procedure, a gall bladder removal and a goitre removal. I was pretty lucky really because I got to see both micro and macro surgery. I must say, theatre’s not like it looks like on t.v.’s. I was expecting the whole:

Surgeon: “Scalpel.”

Nurse: “Scalpel.”

Surgeon: “Blood bucket.”

Nurse: “Blood bucket.”

Surgeon: “Priest.”

But it was far more relaxed.

The first thing they did to her after she was under was tape her eyes shut with sticky tape. Then they shoved a big hose down her throat that I assume helps her breathe or perhaps pumps her stomach with m&m’s. Not sure. Then they covered her with green blankets. Even her face. The only part of her exposed was her chin, neck and the top of her chest. I think they cover her in blankets because it’s cold in there and blankets have a calming affect even for those out cold with generals. So then I watched as Surgeon #01 cut her neck with a surgical knife, a 15 cm incision just above her collar bone. I couldn’t help but grab at my own neck in sympathy as I watched blood dribble out. But surgeon #02 caught all that blood with gauze and before I knew it, no blood was seen at all.

Surgeon #01 then started cortorizing the wound and cutting deeper and I saw little globules of fat underneath the skin and before I knew it, we were at the thyroid! I learnt that when surgeons have to cut blood vessels they use this clampy looking tool that’s electric and connected to a big machine. So they put the clamp on the vessel and  the machine will make a prolonged beep and then when the vessel’s good to go, the machine will beep again, but a major seventh pitch away from the initial prolonged beep. There was a heart monitor machine hooked up to the patient and the heart rate was represented by a beep whose pitch was a perfect fifth above from the prolonged beep pitch of the vessel cutting machine. It ended up being frustrating because there’d be this constant perfect 5th beeping, every now and then there’d be the prolonged tonic beep, and then to finish, the major seventh. I never got resolution! It would’ve been perfectly fine to my ears if the heart monitor was beeping a semi-tone above but alas … it wasn’t. And no resolution was ever had.

I think the frustration was amplified because I hadn’t eaten since 6am (and it was now 10:45am), and I’d been standing still for a solid two and a half hours. And anyone who knows me knows that I can’t handle standing still for five minutes so this was killing me.Luckily, a theatre person noticed I was looking a bit weak and told me to go have a break in the break room. And either someone was having a farewell party or they treat the surg. team like gods because the massive bench in the break room was blanketed in cakes, donuts, slices, strudels, biscuits, cup-cakes, muffins. I was too chicken shit to try anything (easy to be because all the surg. staff look at you with this “get f*cked” look on thier face) so I just made a cup of tea and sat in the corner by myself and watched the clock til I fell asleep and then woke up and realised I was supposed to be back in theatre.

I worked my way back through the rabbit warren and into the theatre room and watched as they removed the patient’s massive goiter. I got back in time for that and I was stoked! Then I watched as they did a laparotomy. That’s when they jam a thick, metal rod down someone’s belly button that has a video camera inside and then they manouvre that around as they make “lap sites” which is where they pearce 2, 3 or 4  instruments through the tough outer layers of the belly and into the sticky, slimey, smelly cavernous abdomen. They then do everything they need to do with those instruments. With lap sites, patients don’t take as long to recover because all that is left by the time surgery is all over is some puncture wounds. They heal a LOT faster than massive incisions. It was all absolutely fascinating. I watched as they took an instrument and pierced the patient’s gall bladder and watched on a big t.v. screen as golden, sparkly syrup oozed out of her punctured organ and into her abdominal cavity. It was kinda gross.

The surgeons finally removed the gall bladder up through the patients belly button and I watched as they placed it into a green kidney dish.  Then the theatre nurse cut up the gall bladder and squeezed out a number of hard, bumpy, yellow and black balls, each about the three times the size of a regular garden pea. The patient was getting her gall bladder out because of these stones, see. Pretty cool, eh? Apparently they smell worse than anything in the world but I wasn’t game enough to give them a sniff.

So, once the surgery was all done, the patient was wheeled into recovery where I waited for her to wake up. And when she finally did, she smiled up at me and gave my hand a big squeeze and didn’t let go! Until I pried my hand from her anyway. It was great to see her before during and after surgery. And she was right as rain!

Theatre is very humbling. We’ve come a long long way as a human race. Look at what we do to ensure our survival? Look at what we’re now capable of as a species. I couldn’t stop thinking that the whole time I was watching the operations. Every now and then I’d burst out laughing though,  I couldn’t help it. I was reflecting on an episode of David Attenborough on orangutan’s and how like us they are, one such orangutan on this episode liked to hammer nails. Only, being an ape, his accuracy wasn’t really that good and he’d just sort of lose interest every now and then and look at the camera or out into the expanse of forrest that lay before him. He wouldn’t stop mindlessly hammering though. The whole episode had examples of this human-like behaviour only, you know … it’s funny because it’s kind of … retarded. They’re slap dash about whatever they do. Even cracking open a piece of fruit on a hard surface looks funny. Ingenious yes, but definately slap dash. So I’d imagine orangutans in an operating theatre, masked, gowned and gloved and doing the same operations to one of thier own with the same sort of hap hazard approach, every now and then, losing interest and looking up at me with a vacant, adorable expression as they continually fiddle around with thier instruments, mussing up thier sterile field, not paying attention.

Aaaah …

Anyway, that’s it from me and placements, folky folks. Thanks for reading. I’ll write a new blog soon on nothing in particular. Until then loyal, lovely readers, may good health, happiness and good fortune find thier ways to you. And Happy-No-Swine-Flu getting. Let’s wash our hands lots, ok? Youse guyses and me.