So today was OR day. Yay!! I got my surgical scrubs on, foot booties, hair net, face mask, and glasses on and got prepared to enter the room. It is freezing in there. It can't be warmer than like 60-65 degrees as to not accelerate bacterial growth. First surgery of the day wasn't too exciting..so I'm not going to go into it. But the second one was with this cute old man, we'll call him Mr. XY. We talked to him in the pre-op room and get permission for us to watch the surgery. He's 89 years old but doesn't look too shabby at all. He is a WWII veteran and was stationed on Midway Island. He is hard of hearing, so we all have to speak loudly to him right next to his ear, and he in turn yells everything as well. He 'yelled' at me, "Do you know who John F Kennedy is little girl?" Yes sir!! "Did you know that I have drank more whiskey and smoked more cigarettes with him than you would ever believe!! Boy he was a hoot!" Mr. XY then told me how he was assassinated in 1963 and questioned when I was born. Ummm 1987 sir. He got a good chuckle in. He also explained to me that he raises pigeons and if he dies in surgery, he wanted me to remind his children that he wants his ashes spread over these pigeons and let them free so he can still travel the world. I'm sure the pigeons would appreciate having human remains sprinkled on them.
We head into surgery and Mr. XY is under general anesthesia. I got to watch them intubate him, which allows a ventilator to artifically maintain respirations for him and keep the airway open. I also saw a transesophageal echocardiogram (TEE) down his throat which is an ultrasound of the heart and the valves are monitored there. I believe that they keep it there during the whole surgery to monitor for blood clots and just to make sure that if they go into funky rhythms then they can see exactly what is going on.
*Surgery begins-CAUTION-I am not editing this*
First of all, the music is turned on. Seems rather fitting that we start out with "Stayin Alive" and everyone's dancing. The main doctor, who was pretty hilarious and is dancing, throws a towel at the circulating nurse. She spins it and snaps it at his butt and they start acting like siblings. Is this for real? So Scrubs isn't totally a fictional show? People settle down for the most part with some still singing to the music, but the cutting begins. Mr. XY has colon cancer and was found when he had a colonoscopy. They tattooed the beginning and the end portion of the colon that was cancerous so when the surgeons go in they snip out that part of the bowel and sew it back together. Mr. XY is obese, but quite frankly he seems like a somewhat normal looking old man with a round belly. They start to open him up and there is hole is about 4 inches wide and 4 inches long. With their tools and camera, they move around the bowels and the omentum. The omentum is HUGE. It's all over the place. Fat is everywhere. It was literally a first hand look at how fat affects your body. They eventually find the tattoos and they start digging with their hands and pull most of the intestines out of the abdomen. Intestines are spread all over outside the body cavity, and they even flip a part out so it's resting on the medical students hand. Haha sucker. They cut out the cancerous part and the Attending brings it over by me and slaps it on the table. He starts cutting it open and starts yelling, "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I hate poop!! I freaking hate poop! Oh my gosh I hate poop...and this guy totally had carrots for dinner last night. Yummy...you want some for lunch?" You are disgusting Dr. But I laughed. He showed me the cancer and diverticula that result from our Western world diet.
*Diverticula= canal-like pouches that results from increased pressure in the intestines as a person ages. It's a problem if they get inflamed, and about half of Americans over age 60 have some diverticulosis. If you are over 60, you would have abdominal pain, so don't freak out yet.)*
He said that when he worked in Africa, no one had these canal-like holes in their colon because they eat so much roughage and little red meat. When I did some clinicals in the endoscopy lab, most people who had colonoscopys had diverticulum. It's pretty 'normal' to see in people.
They sewed it up and the anesthesia started wearing off. I felt so bad for him, even though I know he won't remember anything, he just seemed so confused and in pain. It was a great learning experience because now I really understand why people are in so much pain after surgery. It was like they threw his insides around and stirred them, inflated his stomach with CO2 (because they did to detach the organs and fat from the skin wall), and a couple times during the surgery the docs yelled out "His arm fell off the table!" "His leg fell of the table!" Your body is thrown into all these uncomfortable positions and you can't compensate for any discomfort so you are just sore after.
I also saw part of a bunyonectomy, but that wasn't that great. For the last little while, I always swore I wouldn't be an OR nurse because I thought you just stand around watching, but you move around a lot more getting supplies and it would probably be pretty interesting to do for a year or two.
Tomorrow, I am in dialysis. Probably won't be too exciting, but I will keep you posted!
*Diverticula= canal-like pouches that results from increased pressure in the intestines as a person ages. It's a problem if they get inflamed, and about half of Americans over age 60 have some diverticulosis. If you are over 60, you would have abdominal pain, so don't freak out yet.)*
He said that when he worked in Africa, no one had these canal-like holes in their colon because they eat so much roughage and little red meat. When I did some clinicals in the endoscopy lab, most people who had colonoscopys had diverticulum. It's pretty 'normal' to see in people.
They sewed it up and the anesthesia started wearing off. I felt so bad for him, even though I know he won't remember anything, he just seemed so confused and in pain. It was a great learning experience because now I really understand why people are in so much pain after surgery. It was like they threw his insides around and stirred them, inflated his stomach with CO2 (because they did to detach the organs and fat from the skin wall), and a couple times during the surgery the docs yelled out "His arm fell off the table!" "His leg fell of the table!" Your body is thrown into all these uncomfortable positions and you can't compensate for any discomfort so you are just sore after.
I also saw part of a bunyonectomy, but that wasn't that great. For the last little while, I always swore I wouldn't be an OR nurse because I thought you just stand around watching, but you move around a lot more getting supplies and it would probably be pretty interesting to do for a year or two.
Tomorrow, I am in dialysis. Probably won't be too exciting, but I will keep you posted!
1 comment:
I LOVED this surgery report, and look forward to many more. And I'm not at all surprised at the OR horseplay. But as long as they get the job done, they can screw around all they want, for all I care.
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