The next stop only asked for one person, which turned out to be me due to the fact that I was at the front of the group. They have me a lead apron and a lead neck cover to protect my body and especially my thyroid from the radiation of the x-ray they were using inside. So not only was I alone, but I was under about 20 pounds of weight at all times. My person was an older man (late 80's) that had fawn down and broken his neck. The doctors had gone in ventrally four days before, but it didn't work and now they were trying it from the back instead. The anesthesiologist came over and described all that was happening and what kind of anesthesia he was using. He would even show me what happened if say, the tubes were disconnected or the flow was too low/high by actually demonstrating the scenario (meaning he disconnected some tubes and made the flow too low/high) and having me observe what happened to the patient. It was super cool, and at one point he gave the patient curare, a substance that paralyses the skeletal muscles for a few hours and can cause suffocation, so that the patient wouldn't fight the artificial breather. Since the opposition was set to last for about 8-10 hours and the paralyzer wears off in 6, this was actually a good thing.
Unfortunately, my last two experiences with surgery held true and about an hour and a half through the surgery, the smell and sound of the surgeons cutting into his neck hit me and I either had to leave or pass out. It's not the blood, or the gore, but try to cut someone open in front of me and I get dizzy after a while. It was real disappointment because I was really looking forward to it, and I actually got a good surgery (fixing a broken neck? Heck yeah!), but I had to leave and the fact that this has been a consistent reaction has cemented my decision to not be a surgeon or any related surgical occupation.
Some of the people who watched surgeries
After we changed back into clothes, no pictures allowed on the operating floor
After that unfortunate incident, we were supposed to go to the History of Anesthesia Museum, but our tour guide and good friend of Dr. Wasser was stuck in Switzerland, so we had to basically switch the days that we were touring the museum and having class. Luckily I had no class either way, so I went to get something to eat, and then went home to go back over notes and maybe do some BMEN homework. I got through 2 of the 9 reruns of the lectures and 3 of 10 questions of the signals before I went downstairs to hang out with my host family. That actually has some good news in that I could understand about 50% of the conversation going on around me, and even spoke a bit of Deutsch to my littlest host sister Marie.
View coming back from the hospital
It was a nice day to boot
On my way home, I saw these clouds and thought it would be pretty
Soon it was time for the kids to go to bed, and even though it was a bit early, I decided to head up as well to get homework done. Yeah...that didn't happen. Instead I (finally) gave into the temptation I've had for about 3 weeks to watch the musical Jekyll and Hyde. It was amazingly good, giving a more morally ambiguous reason for Jekyll to repeatedly become Hyde rather than the "I felt like it" the book gave. Anyway, now I can work on homework for a bit without that constant thought going through my head that I need to watch this musical.
Tomorrow is when we go to the History of Anesthesia Museum and give our 5 min presentations on previous techniques used as anesthetics (I got Chloroform) and more studying for my test on Friday. At least tomorrow is rather easy.
Bis Bald,
Erin Zebrowski
Your reaction to the surgery was similar to mine. I was watching a bone marrow tap from the hip bone. I remember hearing the crunch going through the bone. When I woke up it was all over.
ReplyDeleteI am loving all your blogs and pictures. There is so much to see and I'm thrilled that you are seeing so much.
Thanks for all your work.
Love ya,
Nana