Remember this tear-jerking part from the movie, Marley and Me? It perfectly captures how all of our trivial ordinary daily moments quickly add up to our whole lives, don't you think? Did this, did that, went there, saw them, ate this, laughed about that...
It's like you're going about your little life and making plans for the future and desperately wanting the future to get here and all of a sudden-- you're living in West Palm studying for the MCAT, wondering where the heck the time went and why you didn't enjoy the moment more.
Anyway, that's how this blog post is gonna go. Just some snapshots of the last six months of my surgical debut taken from all of the blog posts I started and never finished. (Bad.)
IT JUST WENT SO FAST but was such an incredible experience and changed my entire life that I have to memorialize it on my little blog. My passion for medicine has been forever stoked...
Watching people's bodies being sliced and pried open became routine. Witnessing disease and sensing impending death and watching smoke billow from cauterized human flesh became just another day in the OR.
Putting still-warm cancerous tissue that would have meant certain demise for a patient into a path cup and sending it away, watching Death fade into the shadows and a happy ending emerge-- a daily reality.
An organ in my hand, warm blood on my shoes, racing heart, shaking hands, the smell of hope and disinfectant in my nose--this was my life on the Surgical Services Unit. And I loved every second of it.
.................................
Wake up to my phone alarm-- screaming for me to get up. It's dark outside and my feet ache and my back groans. Pull on my v-neck, faded blue OR scrubs from the hospital. The fabric is three fibers thick and perpetually cold as metal. Know this is as warm as I'm going to be today. Scrubs are wrinkled to hell and my shoes have blood red and Iodine yellow stains on them. Knuckles are cracked from scrubbing with harsh antiseptics all week.
Disheveled and grumpy, yet excited and nervous. Repeat every morning for six more months. Indoctrination into the OR world: complete.
Get pumped for the day listening to this song on repeat, speeding along the dark, cold highway in my white coat.
Dancing happens during this time. Catch other people on the highway dancing in their cars. Feel like starting an Ungodly-Early Morning Commute Club.
Skip eating breakfast. Regret mid-thoracotomy, mid- mastectomy, mid-knee replacement...wonder what kind of person can be hungry amid cutting and cauterizing. Worry.
Send Kevin a quick text picture of my locker or the sunrise or my lunch because I miss him.
Have my hand jammed in a very-ill, lung cancer patient's fifth intercostal space by surgeon I'm assisting.
He asks me what I feel. Time slows as my fingertips rest on something beating. It's his heart. I'm touching his heart. I watch the patient's blood dry on my glove for the rest of the surgery. Contemplate life.
Asked during surgery if I want to feel an elderly patient's cystocele before it's repaired.
Outside Self: Well, yes, of course! Thank you so much Dr. B!
Inside Self: (Arghhh I put my finger where?!)
Hesitantly and awkwardly put my finger into a vagina and try to feel this woman's bladder. Told that I'm like all the med students- BAD, not confident. Made to do it again, find the bladder, actually pretty cool. Still scarred.
Handed a scalpel over a sleeping woman awaiting her abdominoplasty (tummy tuck). Told to make the incision...
Hold scalpel wrong. *Palm to forehead* Taught how to hold it, then taught how to breathe. Take deep breath and put knife to skin. Skin is tougher than I thought it would be. Power through like a Pro. Told I'm a natural. Don't want to give scalpel back.
Sit on a stool gazing into a remarkably 3-dimensional screen with my fingers through robotic hands. Clamp a woman's uterus 8 feet away. Decide surgery is the coolest thing ever.
Walk Tyson...
Exhaust Tyson...
The Circle of Life song plays theatrically in my head-- I cry harder.
Continue passing instruments to surgeon. Can't see through tears and snot. Baby Daddy catches me on family video. Become a laughing stock around the OB floor. Record-setting number of c-sections while I'm there. Cry. every. time. -- yet also get offered a job :) Hold a newborn for the first time.
Get the whole baby thing.
See Dad cutting up watermelon. Make him put on surgical gown. Call him Dr. Watermelon.
Perform emergency brain surgery on Elmo.
Tyson is relieved and thankful to have his best friend back. He promises to be more gentle.
First solo surgery-- success!
Fast-forward to today-- read chapter in organic chemistry for third time, curse my professor to hell, eat an avocado, sign up for $50/hr orgo tutoring with a guy named Armin, eat a bowl of cereal, write-up workout plan for me and Kevin, pat myself on the back and eat a gummy worm (seven) from my stash, call Dad, memorize sexual life cycle of mushrooms in the Phylum Basidiomycota for bio class.
Basically variations of eating, studying, driving to Boca and sleeping. Oh, and stressing. Oh, and missing the hospital life :)
Up next: Surgical Tech Wrap-Up Part II! Thanks for reading :)
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