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BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
bells and whistles.
Is it legal to pull hair?
As it turns out, the delays were the easy part. The CRNA starts the sedation and the surgeon starts the local, but the patient's still moving. I see his arm break free of the tuck job I did and jump on it like it's a fumble on the 10-yard line, trying to secure it.
It's around this time that the scrub at the field requests more local. I'd like to get it for you, I tell him, but I'm a little restrained here, seeing as how the patient's got me by the hair. Then the surgeon's pager goes off. When you get a chance, he asks, could you get that for me? An intercom voice from outside the OR even chimes in: Could someone please pick up? Again, nothing doing until the patient has unhanded me and my blue bouffant hat.
I work myself free, but freedom is relative: The patient is still in his underwear. Two pair, and they aren't clean. Why? Forget why, the answers I want are from the pre-op nurses. This case is a cysto. Did you think the surgeon was going in through the fly?
I must have blocked out the rest of that case, because the next thing I remember, I'm staffing another room. I'm still in good spirits because it's a hernia case, the paperwork's done, everything the surgeon needs is already on the field. I'll be out of here in no time. But I'm growing more uneasy as the surgeon repeatedly tempts fate, messing around something red and squishy with his pointy instrument. Leave that red thing alone, I'm thinking, you're too close. Then: Now you've done it.
Sometimes I'm convinced that medicine's not a science, not even an art, but controlled chaos that often works out for the best, despite our best efforts to foul it up. All in a day's work, I guess.
OSM
Ms. Watkins can be reached at
pwatkins12@comcast.net
