Before surgery my senior resident muttered something about the surgery being 4-12 hours long. At first I thought it an exaggeration. Then I realized he wouldn’t do that. So I ran away from the OR.
Ok, I didn’t run. But I did walk quickly away; I headed straight for the cafeteria. Because at that point I hadn’t had anything to eat yet.
By the time I came back from breakfast the patient was in the holding room. I found my attending and resident looking over her chart. We then had a few words with her before leaving the holding room. Soon we saw her being wheeled into the OR by the anesthesiologist and the nurse. I followed her in. By now it was 7:50 AM. I was thankful I had taken the time to escape for food.
After the patient got into the room, it took a while before we had everything set to go. The eventual incision time was around 9:17 AM. This, of course, was after all the prep work we had to do beforehand.
Official closing time was about 5:50 PM. I stood for the entire thing. My hands trembled at times as I retracted massive amounts of fat. Throughout the surgery the surgeons kept complaining about the amount of fat she had. Fat really does make a surgery difficult. And I saw first-hand. At one point, I stuck my hand into her abdomen to see how much fat she had. I placed my hand along the entire depth of her subcutaenous fat. About 3/4 of my hand disappeared.
And now I’m home. It’s 7:30 PM. I want to eat. I can’t imagine how hungry I’d feel if I hadn’t eaten breakfast. And I don’t think it’s fair that while the surgery team has to stand there the entire time, the scrub tech and nurses get rotated out for scheduled breaks.
My legs are bitter.
And my stomach, too.
But I’m ok. Only one week left of surgery.
Oh, and I almost forgot. My attending taught me how to suture a JP drain in place! It looks rather ugly, but it works.
