Code Brown!

Somewhere in the handbooks of medicine, someone should mention that general surgery is not all that general....its pretty much always bowel....and I think we all know what is contained in bowels....it's not pretty.

Thankfully, most people who are going to have bowel surgery have a bowel prep. Well, thankfully for me, but not really for them. I hear that it tastes AWFUL and clearly something that is meant to clean out every little bit of anything that might be inside you - is not all that pleasant.

However, some people have to have emergency surgery, in which case we have to take them however they are. And in one such surgery - I had the pleasure of standing between his legs. Literally between his legs. The nurses and I put a towel across his crotch so that at least I did not have to spend the whole surgery face to face with his genitals. (And as an aside - to all the men out there who have ever made fun of women for getting saggy breasts as they age....men get such saggy scrotums that they have to be TAPED OUT OF THE WAY!....*shudder*)

So anyway, here I am standing between his legs, with nowhere to put down my hands (cause I can't put them on his crotch!) so I have to hold them up the entire 3 hour surgery, and every time they pull and push on his colon to try to remove it - he farts. And sometimes...stuff leaks out. Let's just say....its a good thing my shoes are washable. And basically its disgusting, and it smells bad which makes you want to gag, but eventually it becomes so funny that you can't help but laugh and make jokes. In fact- my chief resident made an excellent puppet out of this man's colon (once it was out of course) that discussed why it smelled so bad! This complete lack of professionalism may have topped the day that I blurted out - "oh my gosh, we have our hands right inside this person, this is awesome!".

So basically, surgery is proving to be much more fun than I anticipated. It is fairly incredible what all we can do fix someone. And I really enjoy all the hands on stuff. However, surgery is definitely a 'boys club'. Some days I love the surgeons, cause most of them used to be engineers! But I have actually been told (right in front of a patient I just performed a minor procedure on) "that's pretty good, for a girl"!!!! I realize that he was semi-joking....but still - that's not appropriate in ANY situation. *sigh*

And the beautiful light at the end of the tunnel is that in two sleeps I get to fly to Quebec City for 4 days of drunken debauchery....I mean for a conference ;)

Lots of love
Pamela

Currently listening to: my new CD from Ray
Currently reading: Surgical Recall